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This thesis sets out to describe the development in Judaism and Christianity of apocalyptic ideas - in particular that of the Millennium, the temporary kingdom supervised, on God's behalf, by his earthly representative, the Messiah. Early Christian apocalyptic differed from Jewish only in that it set up Christ as the Messiah and expected his imminent return to institute the Millennium. Despite official disapproval, this sense of chiliastic immediacy never disappeared and, at the end of the eleventh century, it was able to exercise an important influence on the First Crusade. Although Urban II did not preach the Crusade as an apocalyptic movement, it became one in the writings of the chroniclers and in the actions of the participants. In certain parts of Europe, social and economic conditions and a decade of disasters and signs identical to the traditional Messianic Woes had created a sense of anxiety and disorientation among the poor which could only be resolved by participation in an apocalyptic movement. In the north, it was Peter the Hermit who articulated this process, while, on the official Crusade, Peter Bartholomew, finder of the Holy Lance, focussed the sense of election of the poor upon Raymond of Toulouse, whom he tried unsuccessfully to force into a messianic role. The Crusade was seen in the light of the conviction that the world was about to end, as the fulfillment of apocalyptic prophecy, as led and helped by God, as having apocalyptic attributes of egalitarianism and as leading the participants to the boundaries of life and death, to a millenarian kingdom centering on the New Jerusalem. The role of Antichrist was projected on to the Moslems and the Crusaders saw themselves as God's elect, marked by the sign of the Cross, for whom the Crusade was divine litmus-test of their fitness for salvation.

In the story of King Ahab (I Kgs 16.29-22.40), Ahab is declared to be the worst person in the Hebrew Bible(I Kgs 21.25)seemingly because he repeats the infamous crimes of King Saul, King David and King Solomon. Because of the similarities in the behaviour of Ahab with his three predecessors, however, the story is a story about these three kings as well. As a result of the associations, Ahab's evil status is challenged. Views of the character Ahab in other literary traditions lend credence to the suggestion that Ahab does not live up to his bad name, and a close reading of the text of the story supports the suggestion. Such a reading leads to seeing King Ahab as a character who is a composite of Saul, David and Solomon at their worst. These correspondences between the four kings lead to several results. Without saying that Ahab is not wicked, the correspondences (relatively) normalise the moral character of Ahab (in that Saul, David and Solomon may be considered 'normal'), while they diminish the moral character of the three kings by their association with Ahab. As a result, Ahab is viewed in a different and better light than what he is declared to be, while Saul, David and Solomon are viewed in a lesser light. The diminishing after-effect also leads to rereading the stories of Saul, David and Solomon in the light of the story of Ahab. Read from such a perspective, their stories become stained by the stigma of being associated with Ahab.

Biblical studies and theology have been impacted by the “turn to the reader” in literary theory, and scholars are now more aware of the significance of the reader in the activity of Bible reading (Davies, 2013). However, most of the research exploring Bible readers has concentrated on active members of faith communities (Village, 2007; Rogers, 2009; Strhan, 2013) and University staff (Clines, 1995; Hull, 2001; Pyper, 2006). In Britain, those outside of the church and the academy are missing from this research, that is, the majority of the population. This thesis considers how people who are not regular Bible readers might read five biblical texts. In particular I focus on men, as the cohort of British society least likely to read the Bible (Field, 2014). Ten months of fieldwork was undertaken at a Chemical Industrial Plant in North West England, where 20 men read through five biblical texts. Using annotation, questionnaires and interviews I examined how the texts were read. The data which emerged shows that the men’s relationships with the five biblical texts shaped their readings of those texts. By “relationship” I am principally referring to the associations evoked in a reader as they come to a text. I argue for this relational reading practice in three ways. First, using Louise Rosenblatt’s transactional theory of reading (1995 [1938]; 1994 [1978]; 2005) I suggest that these readers and texts are not unconnected entities but exist within the same dynamic system. A reader brings all that they are to a text, and the aspects of each reader considered most salient to the anticipated reading assume an influential role in the reading transaction. Second, under the headings: “experience,” “identity,” “attitude’” and “belief,” I provide examples from my case study to illustrate this practice. These explore the various ways in which the men shaped their readings, indeed typically dominated them, as reading the texts reaffirmed their relationship with them. Third, however I also note a few occasions when the texts stimulated the reader into an atypical reading. This challenged the readers’ prior relationship with the texts and further demonstrates the relational nature of these readings, one involving both parties.

This research aims at examining biblical hermeneutics in Bembaland, Zambia. Home to 4.8 million people, 50%-75% of whom are nominally Christian and 44% Catholic, with literacy levels at 61.4%, this thesis explores the interplay of orality and scribality in the Bembaland experiences of biblical hermeneutics. The terminus a quo of this thesis is that the shift in preferred medium from orality to scribablity in Bembaland affected not only hermeneutical understandings of the Bible, but also the broader social praxis. This can be identified in changed ways both of thinking and the derivation of meaning, both in terms of heteroglossal interpretation and the patterning and understanding of authority. The terminus ad quem of the thesis is that rather than hold orality and textuality in an antithetical binarism, it is more fruitful to pursue a negotiated and hybrid approach which holds oral and textual poetics in constructive symbiosis. In making this argument, rather than calling in the hermeneutical bulldozer of one single method, our approach is to unlock the Bemba experiences using a bricolage of analytical tools which have included contextual fieldwork, postcolonial critique, communication theory, spatial theory and linguistic analysis. In particular, the argumentation is alert first to the deconstruction of textual interpretations authored by the dominant and literate elite; secondly, the silencing of colonized 'others' as subjects of their own history; thirdly, the emancipation of misued biblical passages through hermeneutics of suspicion, retrieval, restoration and transformation. As a worked example, I have proposed a negotiated, oral-textual and hybrid hermeneutics of Rom 13:1-7. The outcomes of the 'oral-scribal' analysis undertaken partially echo McLuhan's famous phrase, 'The medium is the message.' The evidence suggests that there has been a tectonic shift in the biblical hermeneutics of Bembaland. Succinctly, this may be characterised principally by the move from oral/aural to chirographical/typographical media management in which communication and space were utilised as a means of exerting power and control. In the particular Bemba context of << Ubufumu e busosa >> - 'Royalty is constituted by speech' the effect is seismic since tribal authority has hitherto been constituted by the spoken rather than the written word. Thus informed, the research proposes a rebalancing of this destabilizing shift using two metaphors. Firstly, hearing/reading the word under an African tree as << Teleela Mulumbe >> ['Hear the news'} has the potential to open up what James Maxey has referred to as the oral ethos of the Bible in a context that is still characterised by residual orality; secondly, hearing/reading the word in Terra Nullius, ['unclaimed land'] where both oral/textual media hybridity and community hybridity are the catchwords. In like manner, this allows for border-crossing or 'transgressive hermeneutics' that is meta-gendered and trans-ethnic in its redemptive power.

The aim of this thesis is to demonstrate the value of proper attention to ‘story structure’ in the study of Acts. The thesis works towards this aim in three stages. First, in chapters 1 and 2, the thesis develops the methodological framework of story structure which is proposed to consist of two interacting components: (top down) macro-structure which places an individual episode within the governing context of the story layers to which it contributes, and (bottom up) the way the meaning of an individual episode is shaped from and by its narrative clauses. Second, chapters 3-5 use the methodology of chapters 1-2 to support and guide a close reading of the narrative arc of the twelve apostles as Luke narrates their evolving story in Acts 1–12. This reading is focused by a question, appropriate to the narrative properties of Luke-Acts, about the goals of the Twelve (disclosed primarily in Luke 22:14-30 and Acts 1:1-12) and the steps taken by the Twelve to actualise those goals. Attention to the story structure of Acts 1–12 reveals that the narrative arc of the Twelve complies with Aristotle’s preferred ‘tragic’ shape, pivoting from initial rising success to ultimate failure around the turning point of 6:1-7, which discloses that the downfall of the Twelve is caused by their over-emphasis of the mission to Jerusalem and their ‘tragic flaw’ of hubris. Third, chapter 6 considers the implications of the methodology and application stages of chapters 1-5 for the contested debate over the restoration of the kingdom to Israel (Acts 1:6) and concludes against those like Jervell who see a completed restoration of Israel in Acts. The thesis then ends by considering implications of the research for wider exegetical issues such as the genre, plot and purpose of Acts.