Faceless Divine Energies in the Old Testament? A Conversation with Erhard Gerstenberger (original) (raw)
Related papers
Ch. Goodblatt - H. Kreisel (eds.), "Reading the Bible in the Pre-Modern World: Interpretation, Performance and Image" (Beer Sheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2021), pp. 379-409.
It is evident, and acknowledged by a vast critical tradition, that the literary image of God in the Hebrew Scriptures is loaded with inner contradictions and ambiguities that are often left unsolved. The most relevant tension of this kind is possibly the one between the divine qualities of wrath and mercy. How did post-biblical Judaism, in its various forms and traditions of knowledge, try to make sense of this ambiguity within God himself both as a literary character and a religious concept? Answers can be found in early Rabbinic homiletic-exegetical tradition (targum and midrash) about such Biblical narratives as the destruction of Sodom and the punishment for the worshippers of the golden calf. Here, the aim of conveying a consistent, reassuring image of God to the masses is pursued by stressing only one aspect of his literary personality, usually his mercy, though sometimes also his severity is exhalted and preached. A deeper awareness of God’s ambiguities is seen in early Rabbinic mysticism as attested in some passages of the Talmud. Later, an articulate doctrine of divine wrath is formulated in the Zohar, where the idea of an “other side” of God – an idea that could easily generate dualistic theologies – finds mediation and solution in the representation of the Godhead as an organism, and is ultimately credited with a positive role. Early Qabbalah conceives of God’s inner tension as a polarity or a dialectic between different energies—a conception that is most productively investigated by resorting to the categories of Jungian analytical psychology, such as those of syzygy and integration.
Biblical Interpretation, 2014
Pp. xi-^ 379. Jaco Gericke and Yoram Hazony attempt a major interdisciplinary feat, arguing, with different methodologies, that philosophy (and especially the philosophy of religion) and Hebrew Bible studies mutually inform each other. Both authors believe that such cross-pollination is possible and desirable. Both authors recognize that others have attempted this before, often with poor results, and show good awareness that they understand the magnitude of their task. Gericke creates two methodologies in the hopes that he can create a relatively neutral perspective from which both believer and skeptic can read the ancient text. Hazony, on the other hand, believes that tbe study of the Hebrew Bible has suffered greatly from what he calls the "reason-revelation dichotomy" of Christianity, and that tbe metaphor, analogy, and typology of the Hebrew Bible are ultimately an exercise in reason, not revelation (which he believes destroys the text). The problem, according to Hazony, is tbe continued dependence of both fideists and heretics on this reason-revelation dichotomy. Since the texts appeared at least five centuries before Christianity, Hazony believes that the idea of revelation in the Hebrew Bible ends up undermining much the texts attempted to say. His thesis is that one can-and should-read the Hebrew Scriptures as works of philosophy. Language that is inaccessible to contemporary readers contributes to the problem, according to Hazony. "Thus says the Lord ..." is likely to lead someone to believe that the Hebrew Scriptures are nonsense, or downright unscrupulous. Ironically, Hazony pinpoints this as a propaganda line used by French philosophes and German professors in an attempt to discredit the church and move it out of European politics. While accurate in regard to the philosophes and many German professors, it does not seem to support his assertion of a reason-revelation dichotomy as applied to all Christianity. Christian interpretation suffered, according to Hazony, from an overdependence on the idea that the ability to conduct pbilosophical inquiry was contingent or reliant on revelation from God. Contemporary interpreters address this bias either by ignoring it entirely or by not drawing any weighty conclusions from it. Hazony then traces this line to his major foil for the text: early Christian doctrine that taught that reason comes from the Greeks and revelation comes from the Jews. While intriguing, it is not certain that this applies to Christianity in general.
The aim of this contribution is to show why prophetic divine visions are so rare in the Hebrew Bible. How can that which cannot be represented – which it is forbidden even to represent – be spoken? We must thus confront the prohibition of divine representation, which develops the first commandment found in the decalogue (Ex 20:2‑6; Dt 5:6‑10), and analyze it within its broader historical and literary context. The conclusions of this study will enable us to refine our understanding of this prohibition and to grasp the biblical via negativa of divine representation from a historical and also social and cultural point of view.
The Hebrew Bible and Philosophy of Religion - An updated on recent related research (2012-2022)
JRAT - Bible and Philosophy, 2024
The complex relations between Hebrew Bible interpretation and the discipline of the Philosophy of Religion were last discussed in detail a decade ago (Gericke 2012). In the years that followed, the associated literature was seen as samples of a recent return to philosophy of religion as auxiliary discourse, albeit one that had yet to obtain a clear research profile (Schmid 2019). Shortly thereafter, evidence of a variety of philosophical approaches to the HB/OT as a distinct emergent current was provided (Keefer 2022). The original contribution of this article and its objective is to supplement and complement the related research by way of an update on the relations between the Bible and Philosophy with special attention to Philosophy of Religion.
Theopathic or Anthropopathic? A Suggested Approach to Imagery of Divine Emotion in the Hebrew Bible
Perspectives in Religious Studies, 2015
Many theologians treat biblical language that ascribes emotion to God as anthropopathic. That is, instances of divine emotion in the Hebrew Bible, especially anatomical imagery, are often interpreted as merely accommodative attributions of human pathos to God. This essay addresses three prominent rationales for treating depictions of divine emotion in the Hebrew Bible as anthropopathic and asks whether such rationales provide adequate support for excluding divine pathos in the interpretation of such imagery in the Hebrew Bible. In doing so, this essay critically examines the view that figurative anatomical expressions of divine emotion should be excluded as non-descriptive of God and suggests an alternative approach that intentionally avoids subjugating the text to theological presuppositions. An anthropomorphism (anthropos + morphos) is the attribution of human form (or behavior) to a non-human entity. Anthropopathisms (anthropos + pathos) more specifically ascribe human pathos (emotions) to non-human entities who do not possess such traits. In the realm of theology, such monikers are often applied to particular biblical language in order to convey the notion that such phraseology should not be taken to depict God accurately, i.e., that such language attributes to God human characteristics that do not actually correspond to him?