Browsing by Subject "Old Testament"
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Item Open Access Before the Next Storm: A Pastoral Approach to Conflict Transformation in the Local Church by Reviving the Old Testament’s Theological Language(2024) Kelley, Wesley GannonLocal churches suffer from insufficient preparedness for intragroup conflict. Thisproblem may be addressed fruitfully by pastors and their local church leaders when they encounter Old Testament narratives of intragroup conflict with their theological imaginations. With the working metaphor of storm preparation, the author examines how imaginative theological speech gives a constructive shape to the local church’s conflict cycles. Drawing from John Paul Lederach’s work on the role of the imagination in conflict transformation and the work of Brent Strawn on the Old Testament’s theological language, the author developed a Bible study that trains participating local church leaders in four elements of conflict preparedness: imaginative theological fluency, Lederach’s conflict transformation skillset, empathic practical wisdom, and the capacity to rehumanize an enemy. The Old Testament is an essential theological resource for the local church cultivating intragroup conflict preparedness, because the Old Testament itself contains many narratives of intragroup conflict as well as rich intertextual theological conversations that illustrate the productive intragroup tensions abiding within God’s people. A pastor may tap into these narratives and conversations creatively in this Bible study to develop participating leaders’ imaginative theological speech about conflict in their own lives. The quantitative and qualitative outcomes of this Bible study’s first iteration in the local church are analyzed and interpreted theologically in order to reimagine the storm metaphor itself. By intervening with the Old Testament’s theological speech during low-intensity phases of a conflict cycle, the pastor weatherproofs their local church leaders before the next storm.
Item Open Access Piles of Slain, Heaps of Corpses: Lament, Lyric, and Trauma in the Book of Nahum(2017) Onyumbe, JacobWith its description of God as wrathful and vengeful and its graphic depiction of war and violence, Nahum has often been treated as a dangerous book, both in church settings and in academic circles. This dissertation is an effort to confront violence, both in my community and in the book of Nahum. It is a contextual reading of Nahum against the background of the wars that have plagued my country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo since the early 1990s. It argues that Nahum’s description of God and its depiction of war scenes were meant to evoke in seventh-century BCE Judahite audiences the memory of war and destruction at the hands of the Assyrians. The vivid images of YHWH’s war against Nineveh do not give readers a historical report on the fall of Nineveh, neither do they intend to foreshadow the historical fall of that Neo-Assyrian capital city in 612 BCE. Rather, they more likely reflect the prophet-poet’s attempt to depict a world that would have spoken to the painful collective memory of those who survived the destruction of Lachish and other Judahite towns during Sennacherib’s invasion of Judah in 701 BCE. The prophet uses lyric poetry to evoke (rather than narrate) Judah’s memory of war and reveal the immediate and comforting presence of YHWH within the conditions of war. He presents that revelation by adapting two traditional literary forms, the biblical Oracle against foreign Nations (OAN) and the Ancient Near Eastern city lament. Given the rhetoric of the book within its early audience, I show that this book can also speak powerfully into the conditions of Congolese Christians who have suffered the trauma of war.
Item Open Access Profiles in Deception: Lying and Falsehood in 1 Samuel(2018) Abernethy, DianaSeveral recent studies have sought to identify conditions under which deceptions are justified in the Old Testament. For criteria, these studies employ conceptual frameworks, including the deceiver’s gender, the deceiver’s intentions, and the relative power of the deceiver and the deceived. While these factors illuminate some trends in the Old Testament's portrayal of deception, they are not comprehensive. By attending to the genre of biblical narrative, this study shows how theological themes provide a more thorough framework for assessing the function of deception in a large unit of biblical narrative—the book of 1 Samuel.
This study uses 1 Samuel as a case study to demonstrate how theological themes elucidate the narrative function of deception. Through narrative analysis in character studies of Saul, Michal, Jonathan, Abigail, and David, this study shows that acts of deception instantiate the central theme of 1 Samuel: the Lord’s selection of David as Israel's next king and the Lord's rejection of King Saul.
Saul's deceptions give texture to his multifaceted portrait, and the complexity of his character reveals the space in which the Lord chooses a new king. The narrative uses Saul's deceptions to develop both his capabilities and his failures, illustrating the interplay between human and divine agency in his loss of the kingship. Saul couples deception with violence as he seeks to eliminate David, but his efforts fail to harm the rising king.
Saul’s children, Michal and Jonathan, utilize deception to transfer loyalty from their father to the newly anointed king, David, and this shift guides the reader from Saul’s reign to David’s. From Jonathan and Michal, David learns to use deception as an alternative to violence; this skill allows him to secure his kingship without murdering Saul, which manifests David’s election. Abigail's use of concealment to establish her allegiance to David echoes Michal's and Jonathan's earlier uses of deception to transfer their loyalty from Saul to David. As a result of her indirection, Abigail persuades David to refrain from violence, a key lesson for David as he moves toward the throne.
David's own deceptions continue to refine his skilled cunning and allow him to secure the kingship without harming Saul. David's deceptions also play a pivotal role in developing the contrast between Saul and David, particularly insofar as they display David's trust in the Lord to establish his reign and his ability to manipulate the Philistines.
By interpreting acts of deception in their literary context, this study synthesizes insights from previous studies focusing on the justification of deception in terms of conceptual frameworks such as the deceiver’s gender, the deceiver’s intentions, and the relative power of the deceiver and the deceived. This study thus provides a comprehensive account of deception in 1 Samuel that reveals the theological foundation of election therein. The Lord’s choice of David determines whether the narrative portrays acts of deception positively or negatively more reliably than the deceiver’s merits, gender, or motivations.
Item Open Access Singing and Suffering with the Servant: Isaiah as Guide for Preaching the Old Testament(2020) Stark, DavidThis dissertation argues that domination in its many forms (political, economic, cultural, theological) continues to significantly affect Old Testament hermeneutics and homiletics. Those who write about preaching the Old Testament frequently depict the Old Testament as a sort of Suffering Servant—despised, rejected, and acquainted with grief. However, as a review of literature in chapter 2 shows, despite the helpful strategies and insights offered by homileticians who write on Old Testament preaching, the majority do not significantly address larger issues of domination and marginalization in their treatment of these texts. By contrast, a close reading of the four Suffering Servant Songs as preaching in chapter 3 highlights several key ways in which domination affected, and continues to affect, homiletical approaches to the Old Testament. These insights are developed further in chapter 4 by reflection on the work of Alexander Deeg, a German, Christian homiletician learning from Jewish hermeneutics and working to undo centuries of Christian domination. Examination of recent leading African American homileticians in chapter 5 also shows a long-standing and developing homiletic that frequently draws on the Old Testament to respond directly to contexts of injustice.
Preaching the Old Testament with an awareness of ancient and contemporary domination leads to a different homiletic approach. The Old Testament becomes an ally and example for combatting marginalization and a model for proclaiming older texts in new contexts. Further, Second Isaiah’s use of the Servant trope, Alexander Deeg’s work on preaching in the presence of Jews, and the witnesses of African American preaching invite Christian proclamation that focuses on undoing the oppression of othering, preaches with the Spirit, announces the Liberating, Creator God, and engages messianism without being anti-Jewish. These approaches demonstrate that the Old Testament sings good news, especially in contexts of suffering and domination.
Item Open Access The Economics of Redemption and Retribution in Isaiah 40-66(2022) David, Cody NathanEconomics primarily focuses on describing the systems that govern the allocation of resources in human society. Many religious traditions also use terminology from these economic systems to express theological concepts; within the Hebrew Bible, this is especially evident in Isaiah 40-66. Drawing from theories from the field of Cognitive Linguistics, particularly the Blending Theory of Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner and treatments of literary metaphor by Paul Werth and others, I argue that redemption in Isaiah 40-55 draws from the ancient economic practice of paying a price to buy somebody back. YHWH, having sold Israel into debt servitude in the exile to pay off the debt of her sins, later redeems her by paying off this debt himself. The language that the authors use to express YHWH’s retribution also comes from the economic realm—YHWH pays wages to Israel and YHWH’s enemies in exchange for work. These two images are distributed unequally in different parts of Isa 40-66, as redemption discourse abounds only in Isa 40-55 and retribution discourse abounds only in Isa 56-66. Other economic metaphors also appear on a smaller scale in this corpus, which shows the extent to which economic thought was starting to take hold of the imaginations of the Judean thinkers of the time.
By explaining the meanings of redemption and retribution in their original historical contexts, this dissertation also sheds light on many other key motifs in Isaiah 40-66 (such as sin, forgiveness, atonement, mercy and retribution), which leads to a better understanding of the section as a whole. My conclusions also bear on other discussions in Hebrew Bible scholarship. First, this study fills a lacuna in treatments of metaphors in the Hebrew Bible by treating economic metaphors, which have not received sufficient attention. Second, it argues that the rise in economic rhetoric amongst the Judeans started already in the exile and thus earlier than previously recognized. Third, it indicates that different authors wrote Isa 40-55 and Isa 56-66. Finally, it shows that Isa 40-55 is an authorial or editorial unity and that Isa 56-66 is a composite text.