(2019) Review of A. Schule, Theology from the Beginning: Essays on the Primeval History and Its Canonical Context (original) (raw)

Biblical theology as Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy In: Református Szemle 103/1 (2010)

Book review of Walter Brueggemann: Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 2005. Walter Brueggemann has written an impressive Old Testament theology. His approach is provocative for the OT Theology and is quite different from the models of W. Eichrodt and G. von Rad, who had dominated the twentieth century. Entering into discussion he summarizes the study of the OT Theology from the Reformation, and in the same time he describes his perspective on the social and theological environment within which an Old Testament must be elaborated today. Brueggemann gives a critic of different approaches, starting from Luther and throw Wellhausen, Bart, Alt, Noth, Eichordt, von Rad he arrives to the " Contemporary Situation " (Childs, Barr, Clines, Alter, etc.) characterised by plurality. Brueggemann points out how recent trends in scholarship have led to a move away from the hegemonic classical critical approaches to the incorporation of contributions from sociological and rhetorical criticism. Any interpretation now takes place within a pluralistic context, a reality, which for him is both challenging and enriching. There is no " interest-free interpretation, no interpretation that is not in the service of some interest and some sense advocacy ". Brueggemann particularly champions what he calls the " efforts at the margins, " those works arising from within the struggles of feminist, liberationist, and black theologies. But in the same manner he is criticising what he calls the " Centrist Enterprises "-Childs, Levenson, Barr and Rendtorff-. In his view primary attention must be given to the rhetoric and the rhetorical character of faith in the OT. Rhetorical criticism focuses on the final form of the biblical

Review of Ward Blanton, Displacing Christian Origins: Philosophy, Se cularity and the New Testament

The Bible and Critical Theory, 2008

The standard history of New Testament research presumes a gradual progress toward the true representation of Christian origins. This progress takes place primarily as more objective scholars gradually correct other scholars' eisegesis, as is the case, for example, in the popular understanding of the point of Albert Schweitzer's Von Reimarus zu Wrede. Ward Blanton tells a strikingly different story in which eisegesis is the condition for the possibility of New Testament studies. Blanton's critics speak perfomatively about early Christianity, not representationally. Blanton's critics, that is, create modern academic identity through their research into early Christianity and by reading themselves back into the early Christian tableaux. Blanton's critics also work agonistically as they strive to become the authority on early Christian history. To this end, they often write their opponents into early Christianity in rather derogatory roles. Furthermore, their work is agonistic because it produces binaries-like ancient religion and modern secularity or faith and reason-important to modern academic identity. The creative conflict stamps criticism with the image of its adversary, so criticism itself has a religious aura. Blanton's acknowledged precursors for his story of New Testament research include Martin Heidegger, Niklas Luhman, Pierre Bourdieu, and Jacques Derrida. His narrative also crosses paths with recent philosophical attempts to recover Paul as a possible source for change vis-àvis global capitalism (e.g. Taubes; Agamben; and Badiou) because he describes his critics' selfperformance as a 'happening of truth' or an 'event' forming a new subjectivity. When New Testament research forgets its performative character, it becomes mythical (as Roland Barthes understands myth). It presents itself as natural or as the accepted order of things, rather than as a historical construct benefiting some. To be critical (Barthes would have said political), Blanton asserts that New Testament studies must become more historical and more critical of itself as religion's other. By the former, Blanton means a self-awareness of one's con-BOOK REVIEW

THE LITERARY SHAPES OF THE PRIMEVAL HISTORY: A CASE FOR CHIASM IN GENESIS 1-11

Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages , 2022

This article concerns the macro literary structures which encompass the Primeval History (Gen 1-11). One type of literary structure often proffered, with some variation, is the parallel or matching sequence; this device is surveyed and assessed, evaluating its strengths and weaknesses. It is argued that a simultaneous structuring device is present in the Primeval History: the chiasmus. Through insights from source- and redaction-critical methods as well as thematic, linguistic observations, a chiasm is constructed which accounts for the entirety of Gen 1-11. Reading/interpreting the Urgeschichte as a concentrically shaped overture to the HB, especially the Primary History (Gen 12-2Kgs 25), has a cyclical rhetorical effect; this is addressed and elaborated, which also indirectly validates the thesis.