Parabolic Figures or Narrative Fictions?

Parabolic Figures or Narrative Fictions? PDF Author: Charles W. Hedrick
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1498224865
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
Hedrick contends that parables do not teach moral and religious lessons; they are not, in whole or part, theological figures for the church. Rather, parables are realistic narrative fictions that like all effective fiction literature are designed to draw readers into story worlds where they make discoveries about themselves by finding their ideas challenged and subverted--or affirmed. The parables have endings but not final resolutions, because the endings raise new complications for careful readers, which require further resolution. The narrative contexts and interpretations supplied by the evangelists constitute an attempt by the early church to bring the secular narratives of Jesus under the control of the church's later religious perspectives. Each narrative represents a fragment of Jesus's secular vision of reality. Finding himself outside the mainstream of parables scholarship, both ecclesiastical and critical, Hedrick explored a literary approach to the parables in a series of essays that, among other things, set out the basic rationale for a literary approach to the parables of Jesus. These early essays form the central section of the book. They are published here in edited form along with unpublished critiques of a thoroughgoing literary approach and his response.

Parabolic Figures or Narrative Fictions?

Parabolic Figures or Narrative Fictions? PDF Author: Charles W. Hedrick
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1498224865
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
Hedrick contends that parables do not teach moral and religious lessons; they are not, in whole or part, theological figures for the church. Rather, parables are realistic narrative fictions that like all effective fiction literature are designed to draw readers into story worlds where they make discoveries about themselves by finding their ideas challenged and subverted--or affirmed. The parables have endings but not final resolutions, because the endings raise new complications for careful readers, which require further resolution. The narrative contexts and interpretations supplied by the evangelists constitute an attempt by the early church to bring the secular narratives of Jesus under the control of the church's later religious perspectives. Each narrative represents a fragment of Jesus's secular vision of reality. Finding himself outside the mainstream of parables scholarship, both ecclesiastical and critical, Hedrick explored a literary approach to the parables in a series of essays that, among other things, set out the basic rationale for a literary approach to the parables of Jesus. These early essays form the central section of the book. They are published here in edited form along with unpublished critiques of a thoroughgoing literary approach and his response.

Stories with Intent

Stories with Intent PDF Author: Klyne R. Snodgrass
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 1467449636
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 917

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Book Description
Winner of the 2009 Christianity Today Award for Biblical Studies, Stories with Intent offers pastors and students a comprehensive and accessible guide to Jesus' parables. Klyne Snodgrass explores in vivid detail the historical context in which these stories were told, the part they played in Jesus' overall message, and the ways in which they have been interpreted in the church and the academy. Snodgrass begins by surveying the primary issues in parables interpretation and providing an overview of other parables—often neglected in the discussion—from the Old Testament, Jewish writings, and the Greco-Roman world. He then groups the more important parables of Jesus thematically and offers a comprehensive treatment of each, exploring both background and significance for today. This tenth anniversary edition includes a substantial new chapter that surveys developments in the interpretation of parables since the book's original 2008 publication.

Unmasking Biblical Faiths

Unmasking Biblical Faiths PDF Author: Charles W. Hedrick
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532613024
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
Unmasking Biblical Faiths aims to address many of the challenges to traditional Christian faith in the modern world. Since the eighteenth-century Age of Enlightenment, human reason, formerly tethered by the constraints of organized religion, has been set free to explore the universe relatively unchallenged. The influence of the Bible, on the other hand, weakened due to the successes of modern historical criticism, is found to be inadequate for the task of enabling the faith “once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3), in that it cannot adequately respond to the many questions about religious faith that human reasoning raises for modern human beings. In a series of short but tightly reasoned essays, Charles Hedrick explores the confrontation between traditional Christian faith and aggressive human reason, a conflict that is facilitated by Western secular education.

Matthew’s Parable of the Royal Wedding Feast

Matthew’s Parable of the Royal Wedding Feast PDF Author: Ruth Christa Mathieson
Publisher: SBL Press
ISBN: 1628373318
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 427

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Book Description
Ruth Christa Mathieson’s unique reading of Matthew’s parable of the royal wedding feast (Matt 22:1–14), which concludes with the king’s demand that one of the guests be bound and cast out into the outer darkness, focuses on the means of the underdressed guest’s expulsion. Using sociorhetorical interpretation, Mathieson draws the parable into conversation with early Jewish narratives of the angel Raphael binding hands and feet (1 Enoch; Tobit) and the protocol for expelling individuals from the community in Matt 18. She asserts that readers are invited to consider if the person who is bound and cast out is a danger to the little ones of the community of faith unless removed and restrained.

Jesus and the Gospels, Third Edition

Jesus and the Gospels, Third Edition PDF Author: Craig L. Blomberg
Publisher: B&H Publishing Group
ISBN: 1087753155
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 584

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Book Description
All of Scripture testifies to the person of Jesus, yet the Gospels offer a face-to-face encounter. This newly revised third edition of Jesus and the Gospels prepares readers for an in-depth exploration of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Esteemed New Testament scholar Craig Blomberg considers the Gospels’ historical context while examining fresh scholarship, critical methods, and contemporary applications for today. Along with updated introductions, maps, and diagrams, Blomberg’s linguistic, historical, and theological approach delivers a deep investigation into the Gospels for professors, students, and pastors alike.

The Matthean Parables

The Matthean Parables PDF Author: Ivor H. Jones
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004267263
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 615

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Book Description
The Matthean Parables offers a fresh approach to the origin of Matthew's Gospel. It builds on current historical, literary, rhetorical and sociological studies of Matthew's Gospel to show how the Matthean parables illuminate the structure, purpose and theology of that gospel. The first part of the book establishes the need for a new attempt to define the genre of Matthew's Gospel, examines what is meant by a parable, and summarises the contribution made by the parables to that new attempt. The second part is a thorough exegetical, historical critical and literary study of all the Matthean parables in the context of the whole gospel and in the light of all the Matthean figurative material. An appendix illustrates the use of syntactical material in defining the character and style of a biblical text.

Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash

Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash PDF Author: Daniel Boyarin
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253114617
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
Proceeding by means of intensive readings of passages from the early midrash on Exodus The Mekilta, Boyarin proposes a new theory of midrash that rests in part on an understanding of the heterogeneity of the biblical text and the constraining force of rabbinic ideology on the production of midrash. In a forceful combination of theory and reading, Boyarin raises profound questions concerning the interplay between history, ideology, and interpretation.

Textual Strategies

Textual Strategies PDF Author: Josue V. Harari
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501743422
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 486

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Book Description
A stellar cast of fifteen contributors seeks to show the direction in which continental and continentally oriented American literary criticism has evolved in recent years. Nine of the essays are published here for the first time; five of the remaining six were translated, by the editor, from the French; only one has previously appeared in English. The essays make available some of the most important and most representative work that has been done in the wake of structuralism. Among the topics treated are the relationships between semiology and literature, anthropology and literature, and psychoanalysis and literature; modern American poetics; algebraic models as epistemological operators; the modes of production of a poem; Flaubert's view of history; and poetic language. Professor Harari has arranged the essays to move from the general to the particular and from the abstract to the concrete. In an informative and ambitious introduction, he discusses each essay in relation to the whole and explains the interrelationships among the various theories and strategies that are represented in the anthology. A book meant for the specialist as well as the novice, for the teacher of literature and criticism as well as the student, Textual Strategies is a brilliant introduction to post-structuralist critical theories and practices.

Narrative Perspective in Fiction

Narrative Perspective in Fiction PDF Author: Daniel Frank Chamberlain
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Daniel Chamberlain examines the nature of narrative perspective in a manner that does not presuppose a passive definition of perception. Rather, he considers perspective as a medium through which the potential meanings of texts are disclosed and through which to share the vital experience of narrative from today's familiar and culturally distant worlds. The book is divided into two parts. The first part address narrative perspective within a theoretical framework. Chamberlain uses this in order to consider narrative perspective as an integral part of the more general process of perception that mediates language and the experience of texts. Perception is here understood as an active recreation of the world at every moment; as an opening through which one's self-awareness and awareness of the world are correlated. By considering narrative perspective in terms of perception, equal importance is given to its temporal and spatial aspects. The dialectic of time and space inevitably comes to bear on narrative perspective through the techniques, strategies, and medium of a text's transmission. Part one concludes with an examination of contemporary definitions of narrative perspective and with the presentation of an alternative approach to its study. The second part offers a reading of two texts, each of which clearly presents the major issues facing this inquiry. The narrative perspective of each is considered as occupying a degree of similarity and difference within the dialectic of time and space. Each perspective is, in turn, correlated to the prevalent medium of discourse within its cultural milieu.

Narrative, Imagination and Concepts of Fiction in Late Antique Hagiography

Narrative, Imagination and Concepts of Fiction in Late Antique Hagiography PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004685758
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
This volume explores concepts of fiction in late antique hagiographical narrative in different cultural and literary traditions. It includes Greek, Latin, Syriac, Armenian, Persian and Arabic material. Whereas scholarship in these texts has traditionally focussed on historical questions, this book approaches imaginative narrative as an inherent element of the genre of hagiography that deserves to be studied in its own right. The chapters explore narrative complexities related to fiction, such as invention, authentication, intertextuality, imagination and fictionality. Together, they represent an innovative exploration of how these concepts relate to hagiographical discourses of truth and the religious notion of belief, while paying due attention to the various factors and contexts that impact readers’ responses.