Irony and Meaning in the Hebrew Bible

Irony and Meaning in the Hebrew Bible PDF Author: Carolyn J. Sharp
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 025300344X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
Was God being ironic in commanding Eve not to eat fruit from the tree of wisdom? Carolyn J. Sharp suggests that many stories in the Hebrew Scriptures may be ironically intended. Deftly interweaving literary theory and exegesis, Sharp illumines the power of the unspoken in a wide variety of texts from the Pentateuch, the Prophets, and the Writings. She argues that reading with irony in mind creates a charged and open rhetorical space in the texts that allows character, narration, and authorial voice to develop in unexpected ways. Main themes explored here include the ironizing of foreign rulers, the prostitute as icon of the ironic gaze, indeterminacy and dramatic irony in prophetic performance, and irony in ancient Israel's wisdom traditions. Sharp devotes special attention to how irony destabilizes dominant ways in which the Bible is read today, especially when it touches on questions of conflict, gender, and the Other.

Irony and Meaning in the Hebrew Bible

Irony and Meaning in the Hebrew Bible PDF Author: Carolyn J. Sharp
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 025300344X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 377

Get Book Here

Book Description
Was God being ironic in commanding Eve not to eat fruit from the tree of wisdom? Carolyn J. Sharp suggests that many stories in the Hebrew Scriptures may be ironically intended. Deftly interweaving literary theory and exegesis, Sharp illumines the power of the unspoken in a wide variety of texts from the Pentateuch, the Prophets, and the Writings. She argues that reading with irony in mind creates a charged and open rhetorical space in the texts that allows character, narration, and authorial voice to develop in unexpected ways. Main themes explored here include the ironizing of foreign rulers, the prostitute as icon of the ironic gaze, indeterminacy and dramatic irony in prophetic performance, and irony in ancient Israel's wisdom traditions. Sharp devotes special attention to how irony destabilizes dominant ways in which the Bible is read today, especially when it touches on questions of conflict, gender, and the Other.

Irony and Meaning in the Hebrew Bible

Irony and Meaning in the Hebrew Bible PDF Author: Carolyn J. Sharp
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
Was God being ironic in commanding Eve not to eat fruit from the tree of wisdom? Carolyn J. Sharp suggests that many stories in the Hebrew Scriptures may be ironically intended. Deftly interweaving literary theory and exegesis, Sharp illumines the power of the unspoken in a wide variety of texts from the Pentateuch, the Prophets, and the Writings. She argues that reading with irony in mind creates a charged and open rhetorical space in the texts that allows character, narration, and authorial voice to develop in unexpected ways. Main themes explored here include the ironizing of foreign rulers, the prostitute as icon of the ironic gaze, indeterminacy and dramatic irony in prophetic performance, and irony in ancient Israel's wisdom traditions. Sharp devotes special attention to how irony destabilizes dominant ways in which the Bible is read today, especially when it touches on questions of conflict, gender, and the Other.

Interludes and Irony in the Ancestral Narrative

Interludes and Irony in the Ancestral Narrative PDF Author: Jonathan A. Kruschwitz
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1725260778
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
The stories of Hagar, Dinah, and Tamar stand out as strangers in the ancestral narrative. They deviate from the main plot and draw attention to the interests and fates of characters who are not a part of the ancestral family. Readers have traditionally domesticated these strange stories. They have made them “familiar”—all about the ancestral family. Thus Hagar’s story becomes a drama of deselection, Shechem and the Hivites become emblematic for ancestral conflict with the people of the land, and Tamar becomes a lens by which to read providence in the story of Joseph. This study resurrects the question of these stories’ strangeness. Rather than allow the ancestral narrative to determine their significance, it attends to each interlude’s particularity and detects ironic gestures made toward the ancestral narrative. These stories contain within them the potential to defamiliarize key themes of ancestral identity: the ancestral-divine relationship, ancestral relations to the land and its inhabitants, and ancestral self-identity. Perhaps the ancestral family are not the only privileged partners of God, the only heirs to the land, or the only bloodline fit to bear the next generation.

The Violence of Scripture

The Violence of Scripture PDF Author: Eric A. Seibert
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1451424329
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
No one can read far in the Old Testament without encountering numerous acts of violence that are sanctioned in the text and attributed to both God and humans. Over the years, these texts have been used to justify all sorts of violence: from colonizing people and justifying warfare, to sanctioning violence against women and children. Eric Seibert confrons the problem of "virtuous" violence and urges people to engage in an ethically responsible reading of these troublesome texts. He offers a variety of reading strategies designed to critique textually sanctioned violence, while still finding ways to use even the most difficult texts constructively, thus providing a desperately needed approach to the violence of Scripture that can help us live more peaceably in a world plagued by religious violence. --from publisher description

Irony in the Bible

Irony in the Bible PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004536337
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
It is generally agreed that there is significant irony in the Bible. However, to date no work has been published in biblical scholarship that on the one hand includes interpretations of both Hebrew Bible and New Testament writings under the perspective of irony, and on the other hand offers a panorama of the approaches to the different types and functions of irony in biblical texts. The following volume: (1) reevaluates scholarly definitions of irony and the use of the term in biblical research; (2) builds on existing methods of interpretation of ironic texts; (3) offers judicious analyses of methodological approaches to irony in the Bible; and (4) develops fresh insights into biblical passages.

The Triumph of Irony in the Book of Judges

The Triumph of Irony in the Book of Judges PDF Author: Lillian R. Klein
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0567414981
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
The Triumph of Irony in the Book of Judges focuses on the literary quality of the book of Judges. Klein extrapolates the theme of irony in the book of Judges, seeking to prove that it is the main structural element. She points out how this literary device adds to the overall meaning and tone of the book, and what it reveals about the culture of the time. Chronologically divided into sections, Klein explores the narrative and commentates on the literary properties throughout-plot, character development, and resolution, as well as the main theme of irony.

Theological Hermeneutics and the Book of Numbers as Christian Scripture

Theological Hermeneutics and the Book of Numbers as Christian Scripture PDF Author: Richard S. Briggs
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
ISBN: 0268103763
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
How should Christian readers of scripture hold appropriate and constructive tensions between exegetical, critical, hermeneutical, and theological concerns? This book seeks to develop the current lively discussion of theological hermeneutics by taking an extended test case, the book of Numbers, and seeing what it means in practice to hold all these concerns together. In the process the book attempts to reconceive the genre of "commentary" by combining focused attention to the details of the text with particular engagement with theological and hermeneutical concerns arising in and through the interpretive work. The book focuses on the main narrative elements of Numbers 11–25, although other passages are included (Numbers 5, 6, 33). With its mix of genres and its challenging theological perspectives, Numbers offers a range of difficult cases for traditional Christian hermeneutics. Briggs argues that the Christian practice of reading scripture requires engagement with broad theological concerns, and brings into his discussion Frei, Auerbach, Barth, Ricoeur, Volf, and many other biblical scholars. The book highlights several key formational theological questions to which Numbers provides illuminating answers: What is the significance and nature of trust in God? How does holiness (mediated in Numbers through the priesthood) challenge and redefine our sense of what is right, or "fair"? To what extent is it helpful to conceptualize life with God as a journey through a wilderness, of whatever sort? Finally, short of whatever promised land we may be, what is the context and role of blessing?

A King and a Fool?

A King and a Fool? PDF Author: Virginia Miller
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004411720
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
In A King and a Fool? The Succession Narrative as a Satire Virginia Miller argues that the genre of the Succession Narrative is a satire. Accordingly, this narrative is pejoratively critical of King David.

Cross-Textual Reading of Ecclesiastes with the Analects

Cross-Textual Reading of Ecclesiastes with the Analects PDF Author: Elaine Wei-Fun Goh
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532681496
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
Various cross-textual readings have been attempted between the Christian Bible and Chinese literature. Using cross-textual hermeneutics, this study centers on the political wisdom of Ecclesiastes and the Analects, and its goal is to demonstrate that both texts offer wisdom pointers for human survival amid uncertain sociopolitical realities. Chapter 1 introduces the vibrant interaction of biblical wisdom literature within the ancient Near East and highlights some of its political connections. The openness of wisdom literature is then proposed to support this present effort of cross-textual research. Chapter 2 offers readings of eight passages that communicate Qoheleth's political wisdom in Ecclesiastes. Chapter 3 centers on the Analects and on some notable passages that relate to Confucius' political ideas. Chapter 4 seeks to demonstrate the dialogical dynamics between the two works by exploring specific hermeneutical connections. In conclusion, readers will come to understand the distinctive and collective political insights of both wisdom texts. That is, this study suggests contextualized ideas for living wisely from within both a faith tradition and a native tradition.

The Dark Bible

The Dark Bible PDF Author: ALISON. KNIGHT
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192896326
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
The Dark Bible explores early modern England's interactions with difficult aspects of the Bible. For the early modern reader, although the Bible was understood to be perfect, sufficient, and transcendent (indeed, the Protestant Reformation required it), it was not always experienced as such.While traditional interpretive precepts, such as the claim that all dark passages could be read in the light of clear ones, were frequently recited by early modern commentators, their actual encounters with the darkness of the Bible suggest that writers, commentators, and translators were oftendeeply uncomfortable with the disjunction between what the Bible should be, and what it actually was.The Dark Bible investigates writers' and translators' attempts to explain, accommodate, circumvent, and repair problematic texts across a range of genres and contexts. It charts early modern English use of biblical scholarship in vernacular culture and investigates how vernacular writing in variousgenres could give voice to questioning and confused biblical interactions. The Dark Bible demonstrates that early modern writers and critics engaged extensively with the Bible's difficulties, attempting to circumvent and repair problematic texts, and otherwise reconcile the darkness of the Biblewith theories of the Bible's perfection and clarity.