The Theocratic Ideology of the Chronicler PDF Download

Author: Jonathan ok Dyck
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004493360
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
This volume is a study of the ideology of the Chronicler in the context of the emerging theocratic community of Judah in the Persian period. This study breaks new ground in treating the 'purpose' of Chronicles from an explicitly social-theoretical perspective. The first two chapters examine the relationship between biblical interpretation and ideological criticism, moving from the historical critical concept of 'purpose' to the hermeneutical issues of understanding, ideological distortion and critique. Subsequent chapters are devoted to three ideological critical readings of Chronicles focusing in succession on the identity of Israel, the legitimacy of Jerusalem and the construction of hierarchy. Care is taken throughout to define concepts clearly and to highlight the interpretive perspectives employed making this volume particularly useful for those engaged in methodological discussion.

Author: P.C. Beentjes
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047443616
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
This monograph contributes to a better understanding of the Book of Chronicles. The past forty years have seen a complete transformation in the study of the Book of Chronicles. The former domination of Chronicles by parallel texts in the Books of Samuel and Kings made way for studying the historical, sociological, literary, theological, and ideological aspects of Chronicles in their own right. This book/document is now increasingly recognized as being of major interest to the Second Temple Period. Reading the book of Chronicles, it appears that the Chronicler is constantly transforming Israel's tradition(s) into a new theological and ideological system. In this study, attention is, therefore, paid both to specific texts, such as 1 Chronicles 17; 21; 2 Chronicles 20; 26, and to particular central themes, such as the special function of Jerusalem, and the peculiar way of how the Chronicler presents prophets, war narratives, and genealogies.

Author: Frauke Uhlenbruch
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 056766404X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
The idea of Utopia was first made current and popular by Sir Thomas More with the publication of his book by the same name in 1516. The 'no-place' that was created has had a fantastic reception history, which makes its application to the biblical books of Nehemiah, Ezra and Chronicles as vibrant as the current scholarship which is ongoing into the Renaissance term and its implications. The essays in this collection take different approaches to the question: are there proto-utopian elements in the three books from the Hebrew Bible? Methodological considerations are to be found, but each essay also moves beyond the methodological constraint to raise the hypothetical question of 'what if?' in different ways. The essays evaluate the potential, and pitfalls, of reading Biblical books as (proto-)utopian. Topics include how utopia construct intricate counter-realities, and how to tell whether a proposal diagnosed as 'utopian' from a modern point of view is meant to motivate its audience to political action. Case studies which read aspects of Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah as potential utopian traits include the restoration project of Ezra-Nehemiah and the rejection of foreign wives, utopian concerns in Chronicles, as well as the empire's role in writing a putative utopia, and King Solomon as a utopian fantasy-king.

Author: August H. Konkel
Publisher: MennoMedia, Inc.
ISBN: 1513800477
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description
Purity, worship, obedience, and hope: 1 & 2 Chronicles called the early Hebrew people to faithful practice of these things, and they issue the same call to readers today. As August H. Konkel writes in the 30th commentary in the Believers Church Bible Commentary series, the Chronicler provided a unifying vision of the community’s rich traditions in an era of despondency and apathy. Exile had robbed the people of Israel of their wealth, and their return to the land of Judah had created resentment with the surrounding peoples. Struggling to maintain their faith amid intense social pressures, the Hebrew people needed to look to their past for lessons for the present. As two of the most overlooked books in the Christian canon, 1 & 2 Chronicles are exemplary resources for those who seek to be the people of God today. 1 & 2 Chronicles is the thirtieth volume in The Believers Church Bible Commentary Series. Accessible to lay readers, useful in preaching and pastoral care, helpful for Bible study groups and Sunday school teachers, and academically sound, the commentary foregrounds an Anabaptist reading of Scripture. Relying on a unique format that includes sections on The Text in Biblical Context and The Text in the Life of the Church, the commentary series is a cooperative project of Brethren in Christ Church, Brethren Church, Church of the Brethren, Mennonite Brethren Church, Mennonite Church Canada, and Mennonite Church USA. Published for all who seek more fully to understand the original message of Scripture and its meaning for today, the series is based on the conviction that God is still speaking to all who will listen, and that the Holy Spirit makes the Word a living and authoritative guide for all who want to know and do God's will.

Author: Yeong Seon Kim
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1666787361
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
The author explored sections on gatekeepers, treasures and tax collectors from the book of Chronicles in order to examine whether the selected passages can be used as a source to reconstruct the temple administration in the post-exilic period. The author concludes that the Chronicler's description of the temple administration, especially his incorporation of non-priestly cultic personnel among the Levites, must be considered to comprise an argument of an ideal temple administration. The Chronicler's ideal was grounded in his creative exegetical approaches to Pentateuchal traditions and his responses to the contemporary debate about the legitimate priesthood among different priestly circles.

Author: Julie Kelso
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317490738
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
According to Kelso, the Book of Chronicles silences women in specific ways, most radically through their association with maternity. Drawing on the work of two feminist philosophers, Luce Irigaray and Michelle Boulous Walker, she argues that we may discern two principal strategies of silencing women in Chronicles: disavowal and repression of the maternal body. In its simplest form, the silencing of women takes place through both an explicit and implicit strategy of excluding them from the central action. Largely banished from the central action, they are hardly able to contribute to the production of Israel s past. On a more complex level, however, women are most effectively silenced through their association with maternity, because the maternal body is both disavowed and repressed in Chronicles. The association of women with maternity, along with the disavowal and repression of the maternal body as origin of the masculine subject, effects and guarantees the silence of the feminine, enabling man to imagine himself as sole producer of his world. These strategies of silencing the feminine need to be understood in relation to the relative absence of women from the narrative world of Chronicles. Kelso argues that Chronicles depends on the absence and silence of women for its imaginary coherence. This argument is enabled by Irigarayan theory. But more importantly, Kelso suggests that Irigaray also offers us a viable mode (not method) of reading, writing, listening, and speaking as woman (whatever that might mean), in relation to the so-called origins of western culture, specifically the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament. She argues that Irigaray enables a not only rigorous, feminist critique of patriarchy and its many texts, but also, somewhat more charitably, a mode of reading that enables women to read the past differently, seeking out what remains to be discovered, especially the forgotten future in the past.

Author: Lester L. Grabbe
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567672689
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 593

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Book Description
These critical readings explore the history of ancient Israel, from the Late Bronze Age to the Persian period, as it relates to the Bible. Selected by one of the world's leading scholars of biblical history, the texts are drawn from a range of highly respected international scholars, and from a variety of historical and religious perspectives, presenting the key voices of the debate in one convenient volume. Divided into five sections - each featuring an introduction by Lester Grabbe - the volume first covers general methodological principles, before following the chronology of Israel's earliest history; including two sections on specific cases studies (the reforms of Josiah and the wall of Nehemiah). A final chapter summarizes many of the historical principles that emerge in the course of studying Israelite history, and an annotated bibliography points researchers towards further readings and engagements with these key themes.

Author: Jon L. Berquist
Publisher: Society of Biblical Lit
ISBN: 1589831454
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
The long-held view that the Persian period in Israel (known as Yehud) was a historically derivative era that engendered little theological or literary innovation has been replaced in recent decades by an appreciation for the importance of the Persian period for understanding Israel's literature, religion, and sense of identity. A new image of Yehud is emerging that has shifted the focus from viewing the postexilic period as a staging ground for early Judaism or Christianity to dealing with Yehud on its own terms, as a Persian colony with a diverse population. Taken together, the thirteen chapters in this volume represent a range of studies that touch on a variety of textual and historical problems to advance the conversation about the significance of the Persian period and especially its formative influence on biblical literature. --From publisher's description.

Author: Ehud Ben Zvi
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317491440
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
History, Literature and Theology in the Book of Chronicles presents a new way of approaching this key biblical text, arguing that the Book employs both multiple viewpoints and the knowledge of the past held by its intended readership to reshape social memory and reinforce the authority of God. The Book of Chronicles communicates to its intended readership a theological worldview built around multiple, partial perspectives which inform and balance each other. This is a worldview which emphasizes the limitations of all human knowledge, even of theologically "proper" knowledge. When Chronicles presents the past as explainable it also affirms that those who inhabited it could not predict the future. And, despite expanding an "explainable" past, the Book deliberately frames some of YHWH's actions - crucial events in Israel's social memory - as unexplainable in human terms. The Book serves to rationalise divinely ordained, prescriptive behaviour through its emphasis on the impossibility of adequate human understanding of a past, present and future governed by YHWH.

Author: Kevin Burrell
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004418768
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 403

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Book Description
Cushites in the Hebrew Bible offers a reassessment of Cushite ethnographic representations in the biblical literature as a counterpoint to misconceptions about Africa and people of African descent which are largely a feature of the modern age. Whereas current interpretations have tended to emphasize unfavourable portraits of the people biblical writers called Cushites, Kevin Burrell illuminates the biblical perspective through a comparative assessment of ancient and modern forms of identity construction. Past and present modes of defining difference betray both similarities and differences to ethnic representations in the Hebrew Bible, providing important contexts for understanding the biblical view. This book contributes to a clearer understanding of the theological, historical, and ethnic dynamics underpinning representations of Cushites in the Hebrew Bible.