The study identifies social justice themes in the prophecy of Amos and investigates how these themes fit into social justice in the wider Biblical context and the context of the ancient Near Eastern societies. Following from this, the research examines how the principles in Amos' call for 'justice and righteousness' can be applied to issues of contemporary social justice in the Ghanaian Church. The question guiding the research is: To what extent are the social justice values in Amos and the Hebrew Bible in general relevant to the promotion of social justice by the church in Ghana? In searching for the answer, the study investigates: the relationship between justice and righteousness (social justice principles) in Amos and those elsewhere in biblical and ancient Near Eastern texts; contemporary views on social justice and the relevance of social justice in the prophecy of Amos to the Ghanaian church in its quest to promote social justice. The main method of the study is active transpositional hermeneutics which helps to interpret the social actions of the church in Ghana in the light of the social justice principle in Amos and the Hebrew Bible. It also employs literary and comparative analysis of the biblical and the ancient Near Eastern text. The study analysis the selected social justice themes in Amos and how the Ghanaian translations of the Bible present them. Empirical data from policy documents of ecumenical Christian bodies in Ghana and also from interviews with key figures in selected churches is analysed in the light of the principle of social justice in Amos to ascertain how the church in Ghana is achieving its quest to eliminate social injustice. The study aims to find out whether or not the social action programmes of the church in Ghana are motivated by the biblical principles of justice and righteousness and that the execution of these social action programmes are beneficial to the poor, needy and vulnerable members of the Ghanaian society.

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Reading the Old Testament confronts interpreters with the hermeneutical interrelationship between theological traditions that have contributed to the production and growth of the canonical text and interpretative traditions that seek to understand it within a contemporary context. In the present study, Jeremiah’s temple sermon constitutes an illuminating case study in the ways that hermeneutical frameworks influence the interpretation of biblical literature, as well as an opportunity to explore the possible resources that contemporary theological traditions might offer for understanding texts that have been shaped by ancient theological traditions. The purpose of this thesis is to provide a theologically-oriented reading of the two accounts of the temple sermon in Jeremiah 7:1–15 and 26:1–24 from the perspective of the Christian tradition. I argue that both texts may be understood to communicate a conditional message of judgment aimed at provoking the repentance of its audience, and that the hermeneutical relationship between the two texts reinforces this interpretation. The first two chapters provide an orientation to the subject matter and approach of the thesis, as well as an extended critique of two existing frameworks that have influenced the modern understanding of the temple sermon. The third chapter then proposes a reframing of the discussion, by focusing upon the nature of tradition in philosophical and theological perspectives. Chapters four and five offer extended theological readings of Jeremiah 7:1–15 and 26:1–24, respectively, seeking to demonstrate that contemporary theological discourse may provide potentially illuminating resources for biblical interpretation.

Biblical languages and time mix well. The former allow access to ancient times when our ancestors, we are told, spoke to God face–to–face. This interaction took place supposedly in the languages in which we receive the literary account of the interaction. This thesis aims to reconnect our modern languages to Targum Aramaic. With the use of two complementary linguistic methods, that of text–linguistics (Harald Weinrich) and the functional sentence perspective of the Prague school (FSP), it seeks to answer key questions about Aramaic syntax and word order. In Targum 1Samuel, the text examined here, connection with the reader is established through a flow of narrative, which represents the sequence of events as they happened, which is sometimes substituted with comment. This comment represents the narrator’s notes, clarifications, or it simply tells or re–tells the events in the form of a report rather than narrative. These authorial interventions accompany the narration. Weinrich described these two realities, and connected them with morphological tenses in modern languages, which use tenses like past simple our past perfect for narrative, but comment by employing present, present perfect, and future. Comment and narrative tenses are exhibited by the indirect speech of narrative genre in most modern languages. The Aramaic and the Biblical Hebrew underlying 1Samuel, being Semitic Languages, do not display that morphological diversity in terms of tense; consequently, modern readers have tended to read them simply as narrative, ignoring comment. This is evident in most translations and interpretations of these texts into modern languages. Where indirect speech occurs in either Aramaic or Hebrew, such translations and interpretations assume that the text merely narrates, and accordingly they restrict themselves to using past simple and continuous, and past perfect and continuous tenses, and their equivalents in modern languages. This thesis ascertains that comment in Targum 1Samuel is closely bound up with word order and the limited number of tenses in Aramaic. Interpreting these together gives us back our narrator and his notes, clarifications, or reports.

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Although there has been a recent increase in research of the exegesis of the Reformer, John Calvin, few analyses have come from scholars in Biblical Studies and none has focused on Calvin's commentary on Zechariah. This thesis undertakes an original study of Calvin's exegesis of Zechariah, with a particular interest in his christological exegesis. This subject connects with a wider and growing interest in the Christ-centred interpretation of Scripture and the developing biblico-theological approach to Old Testament exegesis. First, 1 consider Calvin’s exegetical methodology (chapters 2-4). After identifying Calvin's christotelic understanding of Old Testament prophecy, his christological approach to angels, and his interpretation of messianic metaphors, the thesis turns to what was a central method for Calvin's christological Old Testament exegesis: typology. This leads into a discussion of how the New Testament use of Old Testament prophecy affects Calvin's interpretation of the Old Testament. The second main section (chapters 5-6), focuses on comparative analysis of Calvin’s exegesis. It begins with a patristic commentator with whom Calvin is often compared, Theodore of Mopsuestia. It determines that while he and Calvin have much in common, Calvin's exegesis is by comparison much more christological. The comparative analysis concludes with a study of the Old Testament exegesis of Martin Luther. While the scholarly consensus is that Luther is more christological than Calvin, the evidence of his Zechariah commentary does not support this. In the third and final section (chapter 7), the thesis concludes by drawing together the clear outcomes and some of the significant implications from the research and by suggesting areas for future study.

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This redaction-critical study interprets the reasons for judgment in Amos 2.6-16 in the literary context of each of the redactional compositions which, I argue, underlie the Amos-text. It is proposed that the Amos-text is both a theological work and a tractate of social criticism. In the earlier redactional compositions the dominant reasons for judgment concern mistreatment of the weak. In the later redactional compositions these are overshadowed, in terms of length of text, by more theological reasons for judgment; however, these strengthen, rather than weaken, the force of the older reasons for judgment. After an introductory first chapter, Chapter 2 describes and defends the methodology employed, and establishes the terminology of “composition” and “redactional composition”. Chapter 3 makes proposals concerning the compositional history of the Amos-text, attributing each unit to one of four redactional compositions. This chapter builds on the significant works of Hans W Wolff and Jörg Jeremias, following one or both of them at many points. Chapter 4 then describes the structural, linguistic and thematic coherence of each redactional composition in order to confirm the likelihood of its existence, and to note perspectives or significant themes relevant to the interpretation of the whole composition, including 2.6-16. Chapter 5 addresses two issues pertinent to the interpretation of Amos 2.6-16. Firstly, the relationship of Amos 2.8 to verses in the so-called Book of the Covenant is explored in the light of current scholarly views concerning its dating; its relationship to verses in Deuteronomy 24 is also considered. Secondly, the question of whether 2.10-12 exhibits Deuteronomistic influence is examined. Chapter 6 then conducts an exegesis of Amos 2.6-16 in each of the redactional compositions underlying the Amos-text, with particular attention paid to the reasons for judgment. The final chapter summarises the argument, draws conclusions, and notes possible areas of future study.