Final Conference of the Oxford Seminar in Advanced Jewish Studies: Philosophy in Scripture: Jewish Philosophical Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in the Late Medieval Period (original) (raw)
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Is there philosophy in the Hebrew Bible? Some recent affirmative perspectives
This article discusses a selection of the most recent examples from both biblical scholarship and Jewish philosophy of the construction of the Hebrew Bible as a philosophical resource. By way of a descriptive overview of the relevant ideas in the writings of exemplars such as Davies, Hazony, Gericke, Glouberman and Sekine, the study reveals a neglected albeit radical trend in the contemporary attempted return of philosophy to Hebrew Bible interpretation and vice-versa. These new developments are labelled "philosophical maximalism", involving as they do the classification of the entire corpus of the Hebrew Bible as philosophical literature, in one sense or another.
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.
The Hebrew Bible and Philosophy of Religion
2012
This study pioneers the use of philosophy of religion in the study of the Hebrew Bible. After identifying the need for a legitimate philosophical approach to Israelite religion, the volume traces the history of interdisciplinary relations and shows how descriptive varieties of philosophy of religion can aid the clarification of the Hebrew Bible’s own metaphysical, epistemological, and moral assumptions. Two new interpretative methodologies are developed and subsequently applied through an introduction to what the biblical texts took for granted about the nature of religious language, the concept of deity, the properties of Yhwh, the existence of gods, religious epistemology, and the relation between religion and morality.
Towards a philosophical theology of the Old Testament
There is currently no philosophical theology of the Old Testament. Biblical scholars appear reluctant to offer philosophical accounts of YHWH and it is popularly believed that philosophical concerns are without fail distortive of the non-philosophical god-talk in the biblical texts. In this paper, however, the author argues that "philosophical analysis" (conceptual clarification) can be purely historical and descriptive and may provide new insights into ancient Israel's own metaphysical assumptions. Other foci of the interest include the anachronism of "perfect-being theology," Aristotelian category theory, the metaphysics of properties and the modelling of theological pluralism with the philosophy of identity over time and across possible worlds.
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.