No abstract available. / Systematic Theology & Theological Ethics / D. Th. (Systematic Theology)

In this Master's dissertation, I would like to explore a symbolic reading of John 11 (The raising of Lazarus) from the perspective of the church's mission to bring about the liberation of the poor. I believe that as one does so, one might discover that in the Gospel writer's original intention, the figure of Lazarus may never have been intended as a literal historical person, but rather as a symbolic representation of the poor, the marginalized and the oppressed. Such a reading of John 11 might throw new light on the Fourth Gospel's understanding of Jesus and his mission. In doing so, I believe that John 11 might become a foundational text to guide and motivate committed Christian mission in favour of the poor. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / M. Th. (Missiology)

Using a narrative-critical approach, this thesis argues that ‘Herod’ may be construed as a composite character in Luke-Acts. Composite characters appear in literary works as a conflation of two or more historic individuals into a single character in a narrative. Scholars have often noted that Luke-Acts evidences a more extensive interest in the Herodian rulers than do the gospels of Mark and Matthew and that each of these rulers are depicted similarly to the others in his work. However, no one has argued that those rulers named ‘Herod’ may be understood as a composite character. In Luke-Acts, three Herodian rulers stand behind the composite ‘Herod’. The thesis will show that when compared/contrasted with what is known about the Herodian rulers from historical evidence, two unique features of the depiction of the Herodian rulers named Herod in Luke-Acts emerge. First, at Luke 1:5 the author uses the title ‘King of Judaea’ which is unattested elsewhere for any Herodian ruler. Second, at Acts 12 the author uses the name ‘Herod’ for Agrippa I, a name that finds no external corroboration for this particular King. While other occurrences of the name ‘Herod’ refer to Herod Antipas (Luke 3—Acts 4), these two distinct features of the narrative may be understood as conflation of the other ‘Herods’ with Antipas. Following an interpretation of all the passages in which ‘Herod’ appears, it will be evident that ‘Herod’ is portrayed consistently and as a single character not only through repeated use of the name ‘Herod’, but as a recurring antagonist to the key protagonists of the narrative (John the Baptist, Jesus, and the apostles/early church). Finally, the thesis will consider as explanation of the depiction of ‘Herod’ how this composite character embodies Satanic opposition from the political realm toward those who proclaim the gospel in the Lukan narrative.

This study examines singular readings in the Gospel of Matthew across five of the earliest extant Greek copies of Matthew: Codex Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Ephraemi, Bezae, and Washingtonianus. In each of the selected MSS, it is determined where a spelling, word, clause, phrase, sentence, or group of sentences is different from other MSS. These “singular readings” are collected in order to shine light on what such idiosyncrasies can tell us about the MS or tendencies of the scribe who copied the MS. One of the more interesting finds is that some of our MSS add text more than they omit it, which is contrary to other studies. Apart from itacistic changes, alternate spellings are not always the most frequent type of singular reading in our MSS. The MSS have similar types of singular readings, but they often go about creating them in different ways. Conclusions are that our MSS either prefer Attic Greek to Koine (Washingtonianus) or vice versa (Sinaiticus), but two MSS (Vaticanus and Bezae) fluctuate between both grammatical standards. Our MSS typically have a high percentage of error due to parablepsis, but one MS seems to skip letters within words more often than entire words (Ephraemi). Ephraemi does not transpose words, but when the other MSS create transpositions, they all record instances where the genitive pronoun is placed prior to the word it modifies and verbs are moved forward in sentences. In addition, transpositions in Sinaiticus could have resulted from corrected leaps. Context often plays a part in the creation of singular readings, but context affects each MS differently. Nearby text seems to prompt changes in all of our MSS, but remote text such as a gospel parallel, does not often influence our scribes: Ephraemi contains the only harmonization seems to be intentional. In Sinaiticus and Washingtonianus, several readings exhibit possible interpretations of the text (but typically these do not appear to be theological changes) and they both contain readings that conflate textual variants. All of the singular readings record either a textual addition, omission, or substitution, but the MSS do not end up with the same amount of text: both Codex Vaticanus and Ephraemi add more words than they omit, whereas Codex Sinaiticus, Bezae, and Washingtonianus end up with more omissions. This final element adds a counterweight to other studies that contend MSS omit text more than they add. The examination yields few singular readings of dramatic theological import. Rather, the singular readings expose grammatical currents of the 4th-5/6th centuries, currents that are more prevalent than scribal attempts to re-present the text of Matthew.

Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard published fourteen discourses, across four collections, on Matthew 6:24-34. The repeated readings of the biblical text, whose themes include the choice between God and mammon, worry, what it means to consider the birds and lilies, and how to seek first the kingdom of God, converge with Kierkegaard's interest in anxiety, despair, worry, subjectivity, indirect communication, choice, the moment, and life before God. Accordingly, the discourses make connections with his larger works, elucidate frequently explored Kierkegaardian themes in recent scholarship, and contribute to his critique of nineteenth-century Copenhagen. Additionally, the collections present an interpretation of each verse and phrase of Matthew's text and, held up against modern Matthew scholarship, they correlate with and contribute to Sermon on the Mount and New Testament studies. Kierkegaard's reading of Matthew also holds implications for the practice of biblical interpretation as it promotes the importance of awareness of sin, interestedness, and appropriation as central to proper reading. His emphasis on Christ as the primary exemplar of Matthew's text adds an additional Christological element to his hermeneutic. Furthermore, the discourses serve as spiritual treatises which provide the reader with theological terminology to help confront the problem of worry and suffering. In light of a human being's distinctiveness as imago Dei, Kierkegaard elucidates ways an individual may respond artfully to the ongoing possibility of worry, a possibility which the discourses connect with Christian anthropology and external labels associated with possessions and status. The Matthew 6 discourses intimate Kierkegaard's sympathy with classic Christian spirituality and, in combination with the cultural-ecclesiastical critique, the creative exegesis, and the in-depth analysis of the cause of and cure for worry, his work emerges as an excellent example of spiritual theology.

Matthew 18:18-20 is an important section of the discourse of Matthew 18 and one of the most important passages for Matthew's theology. The near identical wording of Mt. 18:18 to Mt. 16:19b-c gives this section even further importance. Mt. 16:17-19 has long been a source of disagreement about the place of Peter or the structure of the church in early Christianity, so the connection of Mt. 18:18 to Mt. 16:19b-c closely ties one important passage of Matthew to another. This thesis proposes a new interpretation for Mt. 18:18-20 and also for Mt. 16:19b-c, though the primary aim of the thesis is directed to the new interpretation of Mt. 18:18-20. The entire section of Mt. 18:18-20 is an expression of a central and repeated emphasis of Matthew's theology, his emphasis on divine causation in human behavior. The heaven-first order of binding and loosing in Mt. 18:18 expresses the conviction that God causes a person to repent (which does not deny there also being human causation). When the sinner of Mt. 18:15 looses his sin from himself through repentance, and when disciples respond by treating him as if his sin were loosed, such loosing has already occurred in heaven because God caused the person to repent. When the sinner holds fast to his sin and thus is treated by disciples in kind as if his sin were indeed bound to him, this is so because of the absence of such divine influence to repentance or because of the withdrawal of such influence in cases where the sinner has resisted it. It is thus appropriate to say that what has been loosed or bound on earth has already been loosed or bound in heaven. This explains the periphrastic future perfect verbal forms of Mt. 16:19b-c and 18:18. Matthew moves from the focus primarily on sin in Mt. 18:18 to a focus on conflict in Mt. 18:19. When two persons reconcile and thus resolve conflict, such reconciliation will have been divinely caused. The apodosis of Mt. 18:19 gives information about the cause of the event of the protasis. Something similar happens in Mt. 18:20, where the presence of the exalted Jesus mediates the presence of God, who works together with the exalted Jesus to bring reconciliation for the name of Jesus. Such an interpretation is the basis for renaming the discourse. It is a repentance discourse. This proposal for Mt. 18:18-20 avoids problems that have plagued previous interpretations of these verses. It does justice to the periphrastic future verbal forms and respects the linguistic evidence of Mt. 18:18-20. It also allows the interpreter to find a triad of triads structure that aligns the repentance discourse with the structure of the preceding discourses and with Matthew's use of triads in non-discourse material. Further, though this proposal is defensible on its own, it is also in continuity with Matthew's emphases on reconciliation and divine causation prior to Mt. 18. The results of this study are significant for source and redaction critical assessment of Mt. 18, for understanding Matthew's theology, and for understanding his conception of righteousness.

No description available.

This thesis deals with the question of the concept of freedom in the Gospel of John and the relationship between freedom and truth. The first part of this thesis is focused on the research of concepts of freedom and truth from the Old Testament to the New Testament, it is a description of historical background in which both terms were formed and transformed. This thesis also includes a detailed exegesis of the text of J 8.31-36, which served as the starting point. Due the fact that notion of freedom is most often found in the New Testament in the Gospel of John and Paul's Epistles, I insert a chapter charting the occurrence and use of the concept of freedom in Paul's epistles. In the main part of the thesis I compare the use of the concept of freedom in the Gospel of John and in Paul's letters.

A presente dissertação tem como objetivo analisar o processo de elaboração da personagem Jesus de O Evangelho Segundo Jesus Cristo, de José Saramago, a partir da consideração do cânone literário que tem como propósito reler a história estabelecida pelos evangelhos escritos nos primórdios do Cristianismo. Isto é feito primeiro pela seleção de alguns exemplos do referido cânone e depois pela análise da personagem saramaguiana procurando mostrar como ela se relaciona com essas outras versões de Cristo / This dissertation has as objective analyzes the process of the elaboration character Jesus of José Saramago\'s O Evangelho Segundo Jesus Cristo, starting from the consideration of the literary canon that has as purpose to read again the established history for the Gospel written in the origins of the Christianity. That is done first by the selection of some examples of the referred canon and later for the analysis of the Saramago\'s character trying to show like it relations with those other versions of Christ.

The messiahship of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark has figured prominently in modern New Testament scholarship. With the increasing awareness of the Jewish context from which the gospel traditions emerged, scholars have also paid close attention to the way Mark portrays Jesus in relation to the temple. Within these discussions, it is not uncommon to find claims that the Markan Jesus regards the Jerusalem institution as completely obsolete, some maintaining that the message of the kingdom of God in Mark is fundamentally opposed to the ancient Levitical system. Yet, there is not a single full-length monograph grappling with the question of how Mark presents Jesus as royal messiah on the one hand, and his interaction with the Jerusalem priests on the other. Such a project is now imperative, not least given the recent advancement in our understanding both of messianic expectations in the late Second Temple period and of the role of the high priesthood in Jewish polity at the turn of the Christian era. In this thesis, I argue that Jewish messianism from the mid-second century BCE to the late first-century CE anticipated the culmination of the Jerusalem priestly institution under the rule of the royal messiah. In portraying Jesus as the end-time king, Mark in turn assumes a similar expectation. However, contrary to the majority scholarly view, the earliest Gospel does not repudiate the Israelite worship as such. Rather, Mark depicts Jesus’s stance towards the priests in terms of a call to allegiance and warning of judgement. And it is in the light of its cumulative narrative context that Jesus’s criticism of the Jerusalem shrine should be read. To Mark, that is, the temple will be destroyed because the priests have rejected Israel’s end-time king, placing themselves outside the messianic kingdom. Nevertheless, Jesus will be vindicated over against his enemies as God’s messianic son. Chapter one examines important passages from the Dead Sea Scrolls, and chapter two focuses on texts from the Pseudepigrapha. In chapter three, I argue, against recent critics, that the Markan Jesus is indeed a royal figure. Then, chapter four looks at the relevant passages in Mark 1–10 in which the Jerusalem priests are in view. Finally, chapter five investigates the climactic clash between Jesus and the temple rulers in Mark 11–16 in comparison to my findings in the previous chapters.