bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Independence of moral from Religious Discourse in the Believer's Use of Language
Authors: Nelson Larry K.
Published: June 2011

In the continuing debate over the question of the independence of morality and religion there is a set of issues pertaining to the relation of moral obligation and the expressed will of God which would benefit from some further conceptual clarification. Most often the debate amounts to a defense of one form or another of the following alternatives: either it is true by definition that whatever God wills ought to be obeyed because an expression like “ought to be obeyed” means “willed or commanded by God” (in which case morality is entirely dependent on religion) or it is only a contingent truth that whatever God wills ought to be obeyed because an antecedent moral judgment as to the goodness of God's will is required for its assertion (in which case morality is entirely independent of religion). It is my contention, however, that so long as the debate is carried on in these limited terms we will necessarily be dissatisfied with whichever way the argument goes, for neither alternative can be made fully to harmonize either with our common moral and religious sensibilities or with the facts of our moral and religious usage.
Guilt and Martyrdom: The Case of John Bradford
Authors: Byman Seymour
Published: June 2011

Most analysts acknowledge that guilt is a pervasive element in modern society. Possessed of a strong sense of impending doom through nuclear warfare, crises of ecology or overpopulation, modern man is haunted by an overriding sense of fear and guilt, wondering what quality in himself caused such an imminence of death. But surely this sense of guilt is not a creation of the modern world. Indeed guilt in the form of sin is even more comprehensible in earlier periods of history, where the culture was religiously oriented and where the wrath of a personal God could be visited upon a population in the form of plague or famine because of the sins of the people. Theories of guilt as applied to history, however, are much too sparse. One reason for this deficiency is that in order to use the psycho-historical technique, historians would be removed from the factual world and would be forced to probe the labyrinthine internal world that is illogical, devious and intangible. A few brave souls have explored the uncharted realms of the unconscious in the study of religion, both past and present. Yet, strangely enough, no one has ever focused upon guilt as an impetus in perhaps the most important aspect of religion—at least of Christian religion—the role of witness, better known as martyrdom.
4QLXXNum: A Pre-Christian Reworking of the Septuagint
Authors: Skehan Patrick W.
Published: June 2011

The MS published here in all its extant fragments represents the remains of 3 successive columns, about 30 letters to the line, 34 lines to the column, from a scroll written at about the turn of the era. Contrary to the writer's earlier published impression, its text is not such as can be supposed to underlie the form presented in later Septuagint codices; it is instead a considerable reworking of the original LXX to make it conform both in quantity and in diction to a Hebrew consonantal text nearly indistinguishable, within the limited scope of our evidence, from that of MT.
The Quest for the Spiritual Sense: The Biblical Hermeneutics of Jonathan Edwards
Authors: Stein Stephen J.
Published: June 2011

It is an irony and something of an enigma that the Bible, one of the shaping forces in the theological development of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), has largely been ignored in the assessments of this colonial divine. Edwards himself acknowledged its influence, especially during his youthful years. “I had then,” he wrote, “and at other times, the greatest delight in the holy Scriptures, of any book whatsoever.” From his meditation on its pages he derived great personal pleasure as well as guidance and substance for his preaching. His enthusiasm for scriptural study never failed. Six months before his death he disclosed to the trustees of the College of New Jersey that he had undertaken two major exegetical projects with the hope of publishing “an explanation of a very great part of the holy scripture; which may…lead the mind to a view of the true spirit, design, life and soul of the scripture, as well as to their proper use and improvement.”
The Two I–Thou Relations in Martin Buber's Philosophy
Authors: Charmé Stuart
Published: June 2011

Maurice Friedman, the leading scholar of Martin Buber's work, notes that “the question must even arise whether the philosophy of dialogue, the I-Thou relation between man and man, cannot stand by itself as an autonomous ethic, grounded in Buber's anthropology, but not necessarily tied with the relation between man and God.” Friedman then suggests that Buber's philosophy of religion and interpretation of the Bible do provide an important source of his ethics. An examination of Buber's thought reveals, however, that the tie between his philosophy of dialogue as an ethics and his view of the relation between man and God is indeed not necessary in some ways and perhaps not even possible.
A Written Greek Sayings Cluster Older than Q: A Vestige
Authors: Robinson James M.
Published: June 2011

A scribal error has turned up in Q! This has wide-ranging implications and consequences, to which the present paper is designed to point. If there is a scribal error in Q, then Q was indeed a written Greek text, behind which stood an older written Greek text asVorlage. This, of course, finally puts to rest already outdated theories of Q being only an Aramaic text, or only a layer of oral tradition rather than a written text. It also has important implications for the current view of Q and points into the future of pre-Q research as well. The history of the synoptic tradition is no longer dependent only on the forms of oral transmission, but now has a series of written texts bridging much of the gulf back from the canonical gospels to Jesus.
The Transformation of Pauline Arguments in Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho
Authors: Werline Rodney
Published: June 2011

In his Dialogue with Trypho, Justin extensively quotes the Jewish scriptures and includes several citations of logia of Jesus. Furthermore, while explicit citations from Paul are peculiarly absent from the text, Justin, writing from Rome, certainly knows Paul's writings in detail and uses them. Indeed, it seems that the Dialogue provides a perfect occasion for him to employ Paul because in it he addresses the relationship between Judaism and the church, a central topic in both Romans and Galatians. Besides the appearance of Pauline quotations, several of Justin's arguments directly rely on Paul's thinking. For example, Justin probably has Galatians 3 before him as he composes Dialogue 95–96. Oskar Skarsaune's analysis of Justin's writing also indicates that Romans is one of Justin's preferred sources for quotations of the Jewish scriptures; that is, he sometimes quotes the Jewish scriptures as they appear in Paul rather the LXX. He draws especially from the Jewish scriptures quoted in Romans 2–4 and 9–11 because the chapters examine the problem of Torah and the Jews' rejection of the gospel, also two important issues in the Dialogue.
“Chose” or “Collected”: Concerning an Aramaism in Logion 8 of theGospel of Thomasand the Question of Independence
Authors: Baarda Tjitze
Published: June 2011

One of the methodical approaches to the tradition in theGospel of Thomasis the search for Aramaisms in order to ascertain the Semitic background of the logia of Jesus. Aramaic, admittedly, was the language of Jesus and of the earliest strata of the Gospel tradition. Therefore, the discovery of Aramaisms or at least of a Semitic coloring in the Greek or Coptic wording could be helpful in reconstructing a pre-Greek or presynoptic stage of tradition. Some scholars have claimed to have traced genuine Aramaisms in the logia of theGospel of Thomasthat would carry us back to the earliest stages of oral or written tradition in the Aramaic speaking communities. It has been argued that in several cases Semitic coloring in the sayings of the Gospel of Thomas is stronger than in their synoptic parallels. If this observation is true, it would help in establishing the independence of theGospel of Thomas. In itself this methodological approach is legitimate and should be applied to each of the logia preserved in this document. It is important, however, to avoid generalizations. If real Aramaisms are found in a logion, this may point to the archaic character of that specific logion, but this is not proof that thewholedocument is therefore rooted in early Aramaic tradition.
The Harpagmos Enigma: A Philological Solution
Authors: Hoover Roy W.
Published: June 2011

Modern discussion of the enigmatic οὐχ ⋯ρπαγμ⋯ν ⋯γ⋯σατο τ⋯ εἶναι ἶσα θεῷ of Phil. 2:6 received its most significant contribution from Werner Jaeger in a notable article published half a century ago. Jaeger contended that this much-disputed phrase belongs to a cluster of idiomatic expressions in which literal notions of robbery or violent seizure are not present. These idiomatic expressions feature double accusative constructions in which ἃρπαγμα as well as ἒρμαιον, εὔρημα and εὐτύχημα regularly appear with such verbs as ⋯γείσθαι, ποιείσθαι and τίθεσθαι with the meaning, ”to regard something as a stroke of luck, a windfall, a piece of good fortune,” etc.2 When it occurs in such a construction ἃρπαγμα is to be understood as a synonym of the above-mentioned nouns (”Studie,” pp. 548-49)—a judgment which Jaeger believed is most patently indicated in Heliodorus, Aethiopica VII.20, since there both ἅρπαγμα and ⋯ρμαιον occur in the same phrase: οὐχ ἃραγμα οὐδ⋯ ἒρμαιον ποιείται τ⋯ πράγμα
Patterns of Religion in Paul and Rabbinic Judaism: A Holistic Method of Comparison
Authors: Sanders E. P.
Published: June 2011

There have been two principal ways of comparing Paul with Judaism, each of which has suffered from characteristic defects. One has been holistic in a certain sense. Taking “Paul” to be essentially represented by the doctrine of justification by faith and “Judaism” to be essentially represented by works righteousness, many Christian scholars have understood Paul and Judaism as antithetical. The characteristic weakness of this sort of comparison is that Paul is oversimplified, Judaism is both oversimplified and misrepresented, and the comparison is made in order to show the superiority of Paul to Judaism. That is, such comparisons have generally been pejorative and biased. The other principal method has resulted in more of a genuine comparison. Instead of dealing with generalized essences, this approach concentrates on individual motifs. It may properly be called atomistic, although the termMotivsgeschichtemight better describe the method. Those who have followed this approach have generally answered the question of whether or not there is a positive relationship between Paul and Judaism affirmatively. The characteristic weakness of this approach — and this is a much less serious weakness than that of the other approach — is that a conclusion about some of the parts may lead too quickly to a conclusion about the whole. One may, for example, learn a great deal about the relation of what Paul says about Adam to Adamic speculation in Judaism without being able to determine whether or not Paul's religion was basically Jewish. As David Flusser has seen, building blocks from one edifice may be used to put together quite a different construction. Seeing the similarity, or even the identity, of some of the stones should not lead one to conclude that the building is the same. Thus a comparison of the two wholes as represented by their generalized essences generally goes awry, but the same may also be true of a comparison of any number of parts. Is there any way around this difficulty?
The Tragic Play of Symbols
Authors: Niebuhr Richard R.
Published: June 2011

Here in this particular world—of our Divinity School, the Center for the Study of World Religions and the Committee on the Study of Religions and all who are associated with us — we devote ourselves to the understanding of the spiritual and social laws which govern what authors of old called the sense of divinity and the religion that is born from it, making us beings who seek what is of surpassing worth, seek that which is and does not come into being or pass away, seek that which can bestow on us fullness of life and arouse us to adoration and imitation. The identification and the interpretation of these laws is the guiding purpose both of the study of religion and of theology, which also criticizes them. The appropriation of these laws, the incarnating of them into our spiritual reason, is the serious purpose of religion or of the communal and personal faith, into a full measure of which we aspire to grow. But what we call the serious work of appropriation—the task of realizing and becoming the faithful, religious beings we are in potentiality—also involves an element of play. That, at least, is the observation of the historian Johan Huizinga; and it is an observation that many of us have come to accept. The word “play,” however, here signifies something other than the simple copying of exemplars or obeying of rules of action; “play” means participating in the actualization of the ideal realities'that summon us. Hence, our spiritual propensity to retreat into ourselves and to venture out beyond ourselves in order to discover and to celebrate such being as constrains our whole-hearted respect and love, subordinating all our other inclinations and tendencies: that propensity is our spiritual play by which we help to actualize the supreme worth we seek. And in nothing characterizing our human nature does this native propensity show itself more plainly than in the imagination's play with symbols. It is about this play of symbols that I propose to speak— as a tragic play.
The Gospel According to Tolstoy and the Gospel According to Proudhon
Authors: Matual David
Published: June 2011

During a tour of Europe in 1860–61, Lev Tolstoy had the opportunity to meet the internationally famous French socialist, Pierre Joseph Proudhon, who was then living in exile in Brussels. Since by that time Proudhon's reputation in Russia was already well established, and since the young Russian author was thoroughly familiar with his Qu' est-ce que la propriété?, Tolstoy looked forward to the meeting with great anticipation. By all accounts he was not disappointed. The two men hit it off remarkably well, and even toward the end of his life Tolstoy remembered Proudhon with affection and admiration. This is not to say that their views on politics, society, religion, and international law were in complete accord. Tolstoy was, after all, quite skeptical about Proudhon's socialism both before and after their encounter. But in the main he respected him for his impassioned commitment to moral truth and social justice.
The Ritual Background of the Dying God in Cyprus and Syro-Palestine
Authors: Robertson Noel
Published: June 2011

In Frazer'sGolden Boughthe leading instance of the central figure whom he called “the dying god” was Adonis, famous from Greco-Roman literature and art but firmly localized in Semitic Phoenicia, Syria, and Cyprus. Since Frazer wrote, his other Near Eastern instances have been so transformed by increasing knowledge that it can be doubted whether they severally belong to the same type or indeed whether any general type exists. Adonis has hardly shared in these discoveries and debates, for research has emphasized instead the large developments which overtook his worship within the Greco-Roman world. Most of this research does not bear at all on the origins of Adonis, but scholars have sometimes been so bemused by the Greek elements as to forget or deny the Semitic. Everything has been called into question at different times. Such features of his myth as the boar and the myrrh tree and the incest are discounted as Greek embroidery; his peculiar festival, with mourning women and miniature gardens of lettuce, is traced to the preoccupations of Greek urban society; even the Semitic derivation derivation of his name is disputed. This Greek exclusivism cannot be sustained. All accounts of Adonis' life and lineage, and all analogies for his worship converge in the Levant — not in a single site or land, but in Phoenicia, coastal Syria and Cyprus together, lands which from the Late Bronze Age onward display a distinctive common culture, above all with respect to religion. This is where Adonis is at home, and where we may look for evidence to explain the figure of the dying god.
American Catholic Expansionism: 1886–1894
Authors: Wangler Thomas E.
Published: June 2011

It was demonstrated elsewhere that after a visit to Rome in 1886–87 a small group of American Catholic bishops, later known as Americanists, came to hold a number of religious convictions which accounted for the reformatory activity of these men between that visit and the papal condemnation of Americanism in 1899. Briefly, a faith or myth was born alongside the standard Catholic orthodoxy of the period, one which affirmed God as rearranging the world, determining the decline of Europe and the emergence of the United States of America as a “New World,” destined, as in the puritan dream, to shed its influence around the world. The unique features of this American Catholic reinterpretation of the puritan myth were that it was housed within an international religious institution, and its object was not exactly the spread of political liberty or a purified Christianity, but a modernized or Americanized Catholicism.
Celestial Entertainment in Eden: Book V of Paradise Lost
Authors: Rosenblatt Jason P.
Published: June 2011

Although the relationship between the Biblical figures Abraham and Adam underlies episodes in Books V, VIII, XI, and XII of Paradise Lost, only the significance of the parallels in the last two books has been explored fully. Barbara Kiefer Lewalski finds that the transition from vision to narration in Michael's presentation of history, coinciding with the story of Abraham, symbolizes Adam's initial revelation through faith of a covenantal relationship with God. Stressing the similarities between Abraham's departure from Ur and Adam's from Eden, Mother Mary Christopher Pecheux believes that this association “enriches and universalizes Milton's theme, helps to emphasize the virtues of the Christian hero, and reinforces the paradox of the fortunate fall.” Moreover, the topic of Abraham's departure from his homeland affords Milton the opportunity of incorporating the epic-journey motif into his poem.
Journeys to Moriah: Hegel vs. Kierkegaard
Authors: Taylor Mark C.
Published: June 2011

Abraham, born in Chaldaea, had in youth already left a fatherland in his father's company. Now, in the plains of Mesopotamia, he tore himself free altogether from his family as well, in order to be a wholly self-subsistent, independent man, to be an overlord himself. … The same spirit which had carried Abraham away from his kin led him through his encounters with foreign peoples during the rest of his life; this was the spirit of self-maintenance in strict opposition to everything—the product of his thought raised to be the unity dominant over the nature which he regarded as infinite and hostile (for the only relationship possible between hostile entities is mastery of one by the other). With his herds Abraham wandered hither and thither over a boundless territory without bringing parts of it any nearer to him by cultivating and improving them. … The groves which often gave him coolness and shade he soon left again; in them he had theophanies, appearances of his perfect Object on High, but he did not tarry in them with the love which would have made them worthy of Divinity and participant in Him. He was a stranger on earth, a stranger to the soil and to men alike.
Knowledge of God in Bernard Lonergan and Hans Küng
Authors: Braxton Edward K.
Published: June 2011

Can the existence of God be rationally demonstrated? This question has occupied philosophers and theologians for centuries and in a particular way since Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. This essay will examine the question of the knowledge of God as it is met by two contemporary Catholic theologians, Bernard Lonergan and Hans Küng. These two scholars are not chosen arbitrarily for comparison. Not only is each of them on the forefront of current theological development, but I shall argue that on the question of God the ambitious, but ultimately unsuccessful, efforts of the former are significantly complemented by the latter.
Religious Experience, Emotion, and Belief
Authors: Proudfoot Wayne
Published: June 2011

In the wake of Kant's critique of speculative metaphysics, many students of religion and theology have sought immediate access to the real and a foundation for doctrine and belief in religious experience. It was thought by some that a mode of experience might be discovered that was unscathed by the activity of the imagination in the construction of the forms and categories, and that would be broader than Kant's exclusively moral account of religion. It is not accidental, then, that the phrase “religious experience” has come to be reserved almost exclusively for aspects of experience that are allegedly prereflective, that transcend the verbal, or are in some way free of the structures of thought and judgment that language represents. The search has been for some channel of cognitive immediacy, whether the chosen mode of experience was volitional or affective.
The Rape of Persephone: A Greek Scenario of Women's Initiation
Authors: Lincoln Bruce
Published: June 2011

Within the last fifteen years, scholars have shown considerable interest in the ritual life of women in antiquity, and have been particularly successful in recognizing the traces of women's initiatory rituals in various Greek and Roman ceremonies and myths. With regard to the Greek materials, the Arrephoria and Brauronia festivals have been treated in this light, as have two ceremonies in which details of the Demeter-Persephone mythos were reenacted: the Thesmophoria and the Haloa.
Jonathan Edwards, Solomon Stoddard, and the Preparationist Model of Conversion
Authors: Laurence David
Published: June 2011

As a youth of nineteen, Jonathan Edwards was full of questions and anxiety about his conversion. Like many another Puritan seeker, Edwards was eager to obtain the reward of faith but found it impossible not to doubt the genuineness of his religious pretensions. Doubt and self-distrust were hardly unusual in the religious life of a New England Puritan. Indeed, as Edmund Morgan has observed, they were an expected, even prescribed, part of the Christian pilgrim's journey toward God. “This was the constant message of the Puritan preachers: in order to be sure [of one's standing before God] one must be unsure. … [T]he surest earthly sign of a saint was his uncertainty….” Edwards' reflections upon his experience, however, brought to light another, more interesting reason for hesitation—and one that was anything but conventional. He observed a marked discrepancy between what he had experienced and what the theorists of conversion—among them his esteemed grandfather Solomon Stoddard—said he ought to experience. Furthermore, far from glossing over this discrepancy between theory and experience, Edwards brought it to the very center of his attention. He did not seek to evade his difficulty but determined instead to make this aporia the basis for an inquiry that eventually led him to reject the step-by-step model of conversion that had provided the framework for New England's discussion of the knotty problem, never satisfactorily resolved, of how to formulate a reliable procedure for determining who were the visible saints. Even those skeptical about the possibility of arriving at such a procedure, like Solomon Stoddard, phrased their objections within that framework. Stoddard never doubted the truth of the preparationist, step-by-step description of conversion; he did doubt that any reliable procedure for distinguishing true faith from its imitations could be constructed on the basis of that description. Edwards' eventual rejection of his grandfather's open communion practice was a consequence of a critical reevaluation of the step-by-step model upon which New England thought and practice had been based.
The Faithfulness of God and The Priority of Israel in Paul's Letter to the Romans
Authors: Beker J. C.
Published: June 2011

It is a joy for me to contribute to a volume of essays dedicated to Krister Stendahl. I owe him a particular debt of gratitude. From the time that I—an immigrant from Holland—started to teach at Union Theological Seminary in New York in 1955 until today, Krister has been a model for me of what it means to be not only a conscientious scholar but also a Christian theologian. Through the turbulent years of the sixties and early seventies he always found time to counsel and guide me—however much we were geographically separated from each other.
Jewish Women's History in the Roman Period: a Task for Christian Theology
Authors: Brooten Bernadette J.
Published: June 2011

As a teacher, as a scholar, as a dean, and as a churchman, Krister Stendahl has worked for decades to further Jewish-Christian relations and to promote women's studies and women. It is out of gratitude to him that I present these theses, which I see as a continuation of his work.
Jewish-Gentile Continuity in Paul: Torah and/or Faith? (Romans 9:1–5)
Authors: Epp Eldon Jay
Published: June 2011

Judging from his relatively few surviving letters, Paul—whether as Jew or Christian—was a person with both outer and inner conflicts. We know much less than we would like about these external confrontations and inner struggles, but time and again his letters show evidence of his wrestling with one or another serious ambivalence. Actually, it is not often a present struggle that is portrayed or revealed, for Paul writes with a remarkable maturity and with the confidence of one who has moved well beyond the tossing and turning of a continuing inner struggle. Yet at times, most notably in Romans 9–11, Paul's simple statement of a mature judgment still evokes, in the very restating of his conclusions, the intensity of the original ambivalence and conflict. A further indication that Paul was this kind of person is found, if only incidentally, in his dialectical mode of thinking: if he mentions “death,” at once he thinks of “life”; if he refers to “flesh,” immediately “spirit” crosses his mind, or if he speaks of “slaves” or “slavery,” then “sons” or “freedom” is instantly present.
Jews, Gentiles, and Synagogues in the Book of Acts
Authors: Gager John G.
Published: June 2011

Modern criticism of the book of Acts began with a hyper-Cartesian decision to doubt everything simultaneously. The author was not to be trusted as a reliable reporter on any issue of significance—the character and fate of the believers in Jerusalem, the status and role of Peter, the teaching of Paul, and so on. Recently, a former student of Krister Stendahl, A. T. Kraabel, has proposed that we should extend our skepticism to yet another area of Acts, to wit, the presence of Gentiles in all of the synagogues visited by Paul on his missionary journeys.
Greeks, Jews, and Lutherans in the Middle Half of Acts
Authors: Kraabel A. T.
Published: June 2011

Krister Stendahl taught his American students in many ways, none more important than by compelling to us to look at the way we look at the ancient texts.
A Physical Description of Paul
Authors: Malherbe Abraham J.
Published: June 2011

When Paul is placed in his Greek context, it is generally his thought, vocabulary, and literary style that receive attention. This is to a degree at least also true when attention is given to the early church's interpretation of his letters. Greek influence can also be perceived in early Christian reflections on the physical appearance of Paul. Less well known to most students of early Christianity than the literary evidence are the artistic representations of Paul, but the curious literary portrait of Paul in theActs of Paul and Thecla, which in some respects agrees with early Christian paintings, is well known. There, Onesiphorus sees Paul as “a man small of stature, with a bald head and crooked legs, in a good state of body, with eyebrows meeting and nose somewhat hooked, full of friendliness; for now he appeared like a man, and now he had the face of an angel.”
Christians and Jews in First-Century Alexandria
Authors: Pearson Birger A.
Published: June 2011

Krister Stendahl represents, to my mind, the very best of Scandinavian-style “realistic interpretation” of the Bible, resolutely faithful in his exegesis to the historical situation of the text and its author but then marvelously insightful in eliciting from the text a fresh and sometimes surprising address to contemporary issues in church and society. As is well known, it is precisely Stendahl's interest in relations between Jews and Christians (Jewish and Gentile) that has made so much of his New Testament work so stimulating and innovative. As it happens, though, his research has tended to concentrate geographically on that large sweep of territory “from Jerusalem and as far round as Illyricum.” What I want to do in this article in his honor is to explore an area relatively untouched by my teacher—Alexandria—in an effort to see if anything can be said of Jewish-Christian relations there in the first century. In doing this I must perforce extend our investigation mainly to noncanonical sources. Even so the task is formidable, for the first-century Alexandrian church is, as Stendahl says, something “about which we know nothing.” What follows is, therefore, largely a matter of inference, at least insofar as it bears upon first-century Christianity in Alexandria. Insofar as it bears upon first-century Judaism, that giant among Jewish exegetes and philosophers, Philo Judaeus, will play a substantial role.
The Armenian Vision of Ezekiel
Authors: Stone Michael E.
Published: June 2011

The document which is presented here is extant in MS no. 31 of the Library of the Mechitarist Fathers in Vienna. It was described by J. Dashian in his magistral catalogue of that collection. The MS is without colophons and so the names of the scribe, as well as the place in which it was copied, remain unknown. Dashian dated it on palaeographic grounds to the 17th-18th centuries. Although the primary document transmitted is a collection of fables, there are many diverse documents interspersed among them. One is the present work, of which Dashian notes no other copy.
Vilification and Self-Definition in the book of Revelation
Authors: Collins Adela Yarbro
Published: June 2011

New Testament scholars, as well as preachers, are in frequent danger of perpetuating negative stereotypes about the Jews. The reason for this state of affairs is that the polemical anti-Jewish remarks in the NT are often simply repeated or paraphrased in the interpreter's context without attention to the difference in meaning these remarks have when read in their original social and historical contexts. Krister Stendahl has done much to sensitize Christians to this danger in his writing, public speaking, and teaching. This concern about relations between Jews and Christians today is a major reason for doing a historical analysis of the passages in the book of Revelation in which Jews are vilified (2:9 and 3:9).
The Black Church: Its Development and Present Impact
Authors: McKinney Richard I.
Published: June 2011

The Black church, historically, is the most significant institution in the Black community.

I. History and Development of the Black Church

A. There were differences of opinion with respect to whether slaves should be Christianized.

B. The Christian religion was accepted by the slaves because it offered hope and salvation.

C. Although at first religious instruction was given the slaves, this was later discontinued, then renewed after the Revolutionary War.

D. Three major denominations split over the question of slavery.

E. Independent churches were established by free Negroes in the North.
An African Theology of Decolonization
Authors: Said Dibinga Wa
Published: June 2011

W. E. B. DuBois was right when he said, “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” That is to say, regardless of your own definition of your own being, you fall into one of four racial groups, namely, yellow, black, white, and red. But you cannot stand in or belong to more than one racial group. But history shows us that some racial groups have been victimized by another or other groups. But I am not interested in what happened in history in human relations — of all racial groups. I am particularly interested in the conditions of my Black existence under the most barbaric and inhuman system of man's inhumanity to man. That is to say, I would like to examine the conditions of my being which is oppressed by another kind of racial group — called “white.” The nature of my oppression is also shared by my brother, Ho Chi Minh, when he said, “It is well known that the black race is the most exploited and most oppressed of the human family.”
Theodicy and Methodology in Black Theology: A Critique of Washington, Cone and Cleage
Authors: Jones William
Published: June 2011

Our study criticizes the respective theodicies and methodologies of Joseph Washington, James Cone, and Albert Cleage. Our argument is reducible to the following propositions. (1) On the basis of their own presuppositions, the point of departure for black theology must be the question: Is God a white racist? (2) Accordingly, a viable theodicy, one which refutes the charge of divine racism, must be the foundation for the edifice of black theology. (3) The theodicies of the above theologians leave the issue of God's racism essentially unresolved. Consequently, the remainder of the theological system lacks adequate support.
If I Suffer … Epistolary Authority in Ignatius of Antioch
Authors: Stoops Robert F.
Published: June 2011

Sometime during the second decade of the second century CE, Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, was conveyed under guard to Rome where he expected to leave this world through the mouths of the beasts in the arena. Along his journey he stopped at Philadelphia and Smyrna. At each stop he received visitors from a number of churches in the area. He, in turn, wrote letters to those churches and to the church at Rome. The letters of Ignatius have been the subject of scholarly investigation for over a century. The authenticity of the middle recension of those letters is almost universally acknowledged. These letters have been studied for the light they can shed on church structure in Asia Minor at the beginning of the second century, the theology of Ignatius within its historical context, and the distinctive personality of Ignatius. One aspect of these documents which has implications for all other interests has not been satisfactorily explained, namely, how Ignatius understood his own letter writing activity. What gave Ignatius the audacity to interfere in the life of churches outside of Syria, and what kind of authority did he expect the admonitions contained in his letters to carry?
The Inquisition and the Jews of France in the Time of Bernard Gui
Authors: Yerushalmi Yosef Hayim
Published: June 2011

The Papal Inquisition of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries cannot be assigned so prominent a position in the history of French Jewry as that which the “New” Inquisition later occupied in the destinies of the Jews of Spain. It is perhaps for this reason that the Jewish aspects of the Inquisition in France have attracted comparatively little attention from scholars. The paucity of original documents relating to the subject may also have been a contributing factor. Still, though it can be understood, this neglect remains unfortunate. In addition to its intrinsic interest for the study of Franco-Jewish history and of Jewish relations with the medieval Church, research into the treatment of the Jews by the French Inquisition can shed much light on the later development in Spain. For all the difference in the historical situations, the Papal Inquisition adumbrated, in its dealings with the Jews, the institution which was to play such a formidable role in the Iberian Peninsula. There is surprisingly little in the theoretical, procedural, and even the practical approach of the Spanish Inquisition to Jewish affairs for which one cannot find the archetype in the earlier Inquisition.
Present and Future Life
Authors: Hick John
Published: June 2011

It is a curious feature of the present time that a boom in secular interest in the idea of a life after death seems to be matched by a recession in high level theological interest in that possibility. There is today a wave of popular non-religious concern about death and about a post-mortem existence, expressed in parapsychology, occultism, thanatology, and talk of mediumship, reincarnation, out-of-the-body experiences and the reports of those who have been revived after having been clinically dead. And yet at the same time some of the best Christian thinking today is inclined to deemphasize the idea of the life to come, even to the point of virtually abandoning it as an element in the Christian message. It is true that there is much talk of the future (sometimes with a capital F), and of Christian hope and of the radically eschatological character of the gospel. For example, Jürgen Moltmann has said that “From first to last, and not merely in the epilogue, Christianity is eschatology, is hope, forward looking and forward moving. …” But when we read on we find that the hope of which he speaks is, in so far as it has any content, a this-worldly hope and that ‘the life everlasting’ has been reduced to a penumbra of mythic imagery.
Rhetorical Structure and Design in Paul's Letter to Philemon
Authors: Church F. Forrester
Published: June 2011

What has Paul to do with Quintilian? For a host of scholars this question would answer itself, rhetorically. A stock device, the rhetorical question has long been favored in argument. Even Paul is no exception. “Where is the wise man?” he asks. “Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” (1 Cor 1:20). Paul would appear to be dismissing everything his contemporary, Quintilian, stood for. Yet one point remains. As Cicero once wrote of Plato, “it was when making fun of orators that he himself seemed to be the consummate orator.” The following, a rhetorical study of the letter to Philemon, will suggest that Paul too employed basic tactics of persuasion taught and widely practiced in his day.
“The Rope Breaks When it is Tightest”: Luther on the Body, Consciousness, and the Word
Authors: Miles Margaret R.
Published: June 2011

Martin Luther's revolutionary insight concerning the location of the event of justification in the “bottom of the heart” contained, as is well known, some ancillary results toward the displacing of external activities—”works”—from a central position in the quest for salvation. One effect of his theology was a radical redistribution of weight in his anthropological understanding, a shifting of focus away from a person's active participation in liturgy and the sacraments, asceticism and good works, and toward the event of justification in the “consciousness,” “depths of the heart,” or “the inmost heart.” Moreover, a new understanding of the psychological situation in which the Gospel can operate involved Luther in new methods for preparing and reinforcing the justification event. This article will examine Luther's description of the psychological situation in which justification occurs; his revised anthropology, especially as it affected his view of the human body; his identification of the ear as the direct access to the “bottom of the heart”; and, finally, the consequences of Luther's anthropology for the understanding of asceticism, death, and the sacraments.
The Confession of Altona
Authors: Ahlers Rolf
Published: June 2011

During 1933 and 1934 the German Protestant church produced a “high tide” of confessions and ecclesiastical pronouncements. Among these the well-known Barmen Declaration is of prime importance. The first of these confessions, the Confession of Altona of January 1933, however, is hardly known at all, and no English translation has ever been published.
The Widened Heart
Authors: Niebuhr Richard R.
Published: June 2011

Believing belongs to experience. It does not generate itself. When men today repeat the Lord's Prayer, saying Jesus' words after Jesus, “Lead us not into trial but deliver us from evil,” they are giving voice to their believing for a reason. The reason is the experience of being diminished and enlarged in the world of death, beauty, and renewal — in the great world of action that is the “circumpressure” of God. Believing (literally, holding dear) arises in times of testing in which human faithfulness takes shape and becomes tangible as an affection. How faithfulness becomes palpable is the subject matter of the following account.
The “Idealism” of Jonathan Edwards
Authors: Rupp George
Published: June 2011

That Jonathan Edwards is an idealist is a commonly held view among historians of American philosophy. Not surprisingly, the early essays “Of Being,” “The Mind,” and the so-called “Notes on Natural Science” figure prominently in the substantiation of this judgment; for they offer not infrequent and at times unambiguous testimony to a tendency in Edwards' writings which seems to reduce all reality to the status of exclusively mental existence. Yet despite the claim which such a characterization can lay to Edwards's own words, it can be seriously misleading unless viewed within the context of his broader theological, scientific, and epistemological commitments. Because the very works which are most conspicuous in their idealistic tendencies also evidence the countervailing emphases entailed in Edwards's empiricist orientation, an examination of those early essays can itself serve to place his metaphysics in perspective.
One Jesus and Four Primitive Gospels
Authors: Koester Helmut H.
Published: June 2011

To deal with the problem of the “historical” Jesus is to deal with the synoptic Gospels (with occasional appropriations of Johan-nine material).

To use the apocryphal Gospels does not seem to be advisable, since their inclusion is beset with a number of notorious difficulties. First of all, any attempt to recover historical material from the vast sea of noncanonical tradition has proved to be an arduous labor yielding only negligible results.
The Doctrine of Transubstantiation from Berengar through Trent: The Point at Issue
Authors: McCue James F.
Published: June 2011

It will be the purpose of this paper to trace the doctrine of transubstantiation from the point at which the problem begins to come into focus down through the Council of Trent. It is widely supposed that the history of this doctrine is a fairly simple one. The assertion of the physical presence of Christ in the eucharist quite naturally and inevitably evolves into the doctrine of transubstantiation, given the context of Aristotelianism in which theology works from the early thirteenth century on.
Four Entered Paradise Revisited
Authors: Gottstein Alon Goshen
Published: June 2011

The story of the four who enteredpardes, or the orchard, is thecrux interpretumof the study of ancient Jewish mysticism. The answer to the question of how much mysticism existed in rabbinic Judaism depends on the interpretation of this story. In the history of scholarship of the past several decades, two major approaches have been taken. One approach, spearheaded by Gershom Scholem, although by no means initiated by him, sees in this story a record or some testimony of a mystical experience. The various terms employed, and in particular the termpardes, are seen as expressive of a heavenly ascent into paradise, and thus as a testimony of a mystical experience. The other approach, which consciously seeks to tone down the mystical and ecstatic element of thepardesstory, sees in this story a parable. If it is a parable, then we do not have a record or testimony of an event of a mystical nature. Of course, even if the story is parabolic, the question of the subject of the parable remains open. Ephraim E. Urbach, who first took this line of interpretation, suggested that the story is a parable, and not a mystical record. The story refers, however, to the study ofmaʿaseh merkabah(“the work or story of the divine chariot,” referred to in the first chapter of Ezekiel), and thus retains esoteric significance.
“Male and Female He Created Them”: Gen 1:27b in the Context of the Priestly Account of Creation
Authors: Bird Phyllis A.
Published: June 2011

In the history of biblical interpretation and dogmatic speculation, Gen 1:26–28 has proved remarkably fecund as a source of exegetical and theological reflection. Literature on the passage is now boundless, but shows no sign of ceasing or abating, despite the appearance in recent decades of several exhaustive treatments of the text and the existence of substantial consensus among biblical scholars. The reason for the perpetual fascination of the passage lies in the nature and limits of the text. The verses contain a fundamental, and unique, statement of biblical anthropology and theology–presented in a terse and enigmatic formulation. A rare attempt within the OT literature to speak directly and definitively about the nature of humanity in relation to God and other creation, the statement is at once limited in its content, guarded in its expression, and complex in its structure. As a consequence, philologist and theologian are enticed and compelled in ever new contexts of questions and understandings to explore anew the meaning and implications of creation “in the divine image”–for it is this striking and unique expression, above all, that has dominated the discussion.
The Legacy of Channing: Culture as a Religious Category in New England Thought
Authors: Robinson David
Published: June 2011

In assessing the importance of William Ellery Channing to his generation, Ralph Waldo Emerson pronounced him “our Bishop” and put in sharp focus what was for him an intellectual problem, and what has remained for us a historical one. It is not the word “bishop” that is problematic, for almost no one disputed the leadership of Channing in the first decades of the nineteenth century, that crucially formative period for our culture. His first biographer, nephew William Henry Channing, noted that he “was everywhere recognized as the most eloquent and effective preacher in Boston,” and after his death Emerson remarked that he “left no successor in the pulpit” (JMN, 1. 470). New Englanders generally recognized him as the key spokesman for the liberal or Unitarian theology, and social reformers of all stripes looked to him with hope to support their endeavors. On the basis of a handful of literary essays and religious polemics, he became, in Sydney Ahlstrom's phrase, “the most influential American religious thinker being heard abroad,” and Robert Spiller noted that in the critical world, he was “among the first American writers to win British critical consideration.”
The Critical Value of Negative Theology
Authors: Kenney John Peter
Published: June 2011

If metaphysics seems today to have buried its undertakers, then negative theology may soon silence its critics. Having established a significant if sometimes recessive presence in Western theism, negative theology is again an important element in contemporary philosophical theology. While Anglo- American philosophy of religion remains dominated by analytic neoscholasticism, in the last decade a countercurrent has emerged that makes common cause with the apophatic tradition. The Gifford lectures of Stephen R. L. Clark are examples of this development, as are the works of Leszek Kolakowski. Each thinker has attempted to expand discussion beyond the scholastic parameters of the field and make connections with important historical figures who are often neglected in the literature. Neoplatonism has featured prominently this development; as the principal philosophical foundation for apophatic theology in the West, it has been invoked in both its original Greco-Roman guise and its subsequent manifestation within the Abrahamic tradition (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam).