Review of Pieter G.R. de Villiers and Jan Willem van Henten (eds.), Coping with Violence in the New Testament, for International Journal of Public Theology 8 (2014): 114-115 (original) (raw)
Related papers
HERMENEUTICAL PERSPECTIVES ON VIOLENCE IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
The paper investigates the way in which violence is discussed in New Testament texts. It analyses the prominent role in these texts, violence perpetrated in and in the name of the Bible, forms of violence, early Christians as agents of violence, and violence as perception.
Violence in the Christian Bible: Assessing Crossan’s use of ‘violence’ as a key analytical concept
In this article Crossan’s analysis of violence in the Christian Bible is assessed by means of two overlapping strategies. The first strategy takes seriously the insistence by scholars of comparative religion that the application of theorised key concepts to case studies may throw new light on an issue. By taking David Chidester’s mapping of definitions and theories of the concept of ‘violence’ as a point of reference, Crossan’s conceptualisation of violence in the Bible is assessed. Secondly, Burton Mack’s critical application of Girard’s theory of violence to early Christian myth formations and their legacy in the West is compared with and used to assess Crossan’s analysis. In conclusion, the imperative to reflect further on the ethical question of violence is highlighted.
Tyndale Bulletin, 2023
The question of violence in John's Apocalypse is a perennial issue producing numerous treatments with a variety of solutions. Nevertheless, very few of the many treatments seriously engage the combat myths of the ancient Near East and how they may relate to the issue of violence in the Apocalypse. This lack of engagement is surprising given that the Apocalypse seems to draw from the plot elements, characters, and overarching concerns common to combat myths. This essay aims to rectify this by situating the Apocalypse within the combat myth tradition. When one does this, I argue that John's use of the mythic pattern furnished by combat myths renders the violence of the Apocalypse intelligible while at the same time undermining the violent imagery with strategic departures and alterations.
This article surveys traditional and modern interpretations of Jesus’ teaching on violence in the Sermon on the Mount, showing that from Augustine onwards and for a wide variety of reasons Christians have taken the view that the teaching and example of Christ about violence cannot be squared with the necessity of being violent in the context in which they find themselves. Against this position, the article makes the modest proposal that the church will decide best about the ethics of violence when it recognizes that the teaching and example of Jesus Christ are relevant to the question.