Thesis advisor: David S. Vanderhooft / I contend that Ezekiel's portrait of the Glory represents an understanding of Yahweh's earthly presence that is markedly different from how the earthly divine presence is understood in Deuteronomistic Name theology. As formulated in Deuteronomy and maintained in the Deuteronomistic History, "Name theology" understands the divine earthly presence to be restricted to the "one place that Yahweh will choose," which is designated as the Jerusalem Temple. Contrary to traditional scholarly understanding, this does not divorce Yahweh from his Temple and place him in Heaven alone, and does not relegate the Temple to symbolic status only. Rather, Name theology not only affirms the divine presence in the Temple, but views it as the only legitimate location for that presence. From his position of exile, Ezekiel depicts the Glory with no exclusive connection to the Temple or the land; the Glory vacates the Temple to allow for its destruction and appears outside sanctified precincts in Babylonia, where God disputes the Jerusalemites' contention that the exiles are now far from him (Ezek 11:15-16). I maintain that Ezekiel's portrait of the Glory finds its inspiration in the Priestly account of the Exodus wanderings before the Tabernacle's existence; in Priestly tradition, this was the only time the Glory appeared outside sanctified precincts. These appearances occurred outside Israel, amidst dislocation, with no physical sanctuary - a situation homologous to Ezekiel's own. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

This dissertation investigates the use of biblical interpretation in the Book of Daniel. It demonstrates the spectrum in which Daniel uses older scriptural texts such as Genesis and Ezekiel in order to accomplish the theological concord with the earlier scriptural traditions of ancient Israel. Methodologically, the dissertation embraces the theory of literary allusion. The allusions in Daniel to Genesis 10-11 characterize Daniel as a literature of resistance to human imperialism. The motif of universal language, absolute dominion, symbolic construction for imperialism, collective power of human politics, and divine triumph over Babel, resurface to highlight the strong consonance between Genesis and Daniel. The allusions in Daniel to Ezekiel demonstrate that Ezekiel 1-3 is the greatest source of apocalyptic texts in Daniel 7 and 10-12. The anthropomorphic manifestation of God in Daniel’s apocalyptic vision harks back to that in Ezekiel’s prophetic vision. Both magnificent characters in Daniel 7 (the one like a son of man) and 10 (the heavenly revealer) are portrayed as liminal figures. The son of man figure alludes to the Glory of YHWH (Ezekiel 1), Israel (Daniel 7), the maskilim (Daniel 11-12), and Ezekiel (Ezekiel 1-3). The heavenly figure in Daniel 10 alludes to Ezekiel 1, evoking the Glory of YHWH (Ezekiel 1), the maskilim (Daniel 11-12), and the four cherubim (Ezekiel 1). The links between the maskilim and Prophet Ezekiel show how Daniel 10-12 reshapes Ezekiel 1-3 to portray the critical period under Antiochus IV Epiphanes.

O presente trabalho consiste em uma análise do conceito de kabod no livro de Ezequiel. Este termo também é utilizado em outras partes do Antigo Testamento. Assim a pesquisa também fará um breve levantamento deste uso. No primeiro capítulo será feito o exame do uso do termo em outras partes do Antigo Testamento, bem como uma conceituação geral. Na segunda parte será abordado aspectos do livro de Ezequiel ligados ao contexto da época, tais como a situação histórica, política, social e religiosa. Finalmente, na terceira parte o estudo estará totalmente voltado a algumas perícopes do livro. Este estudo acontecerá a partir da exegese das mesmas. A estrutura oferecerá uma descrição geral do contexto literário da perícope que será estudada detalhadamente, seguido do estudo detalhado de uma perícope do bloco destacado e uma reflexão sobre kabod na seção. / This essay is an analysis of the kabod concept in the book of Ezekiel. The same word is also used in other parts of the Old Testament. Therefore the research will also make a brief survey of this use. In the first chapter, an examination of the use of the word in other parts of the Old Testament will be made, as well as a general conceptualization. In the second chapter, aspects of the book of Ezekiel related to the time context, such as a historical, political, social and religious situation. Eventually, in the third chapter, the study will be completely on some book excerpts. This study will happen from their exegesis. The structure will offer a general description of the excerpt literary context, which will be studied in detail, followed by its detailed study, emphasizing a consideration about kabod in the section.

O presente trabalho consiste em uma análise sobre o assunto Espaço divino no discurso de Ezequiel nos capítulos 8 a 11 e 43 a 48. A pesquisa fará um levantamento deste assunto a partir da proposta semiótica de Greimas, com o objetivo de uma melhor compreensão do texto e a busca de algumas possibilidades de significação para o espaço neste discurso. No primeiro capítulo será feita uma verificação de conceitos sobre a questão espaço, tanto em âmbitos bíblicos como de outros pensadores não ligados à área teológica, após uma breve exposição de questões básicas do método utilizado. O objetivo principal deste primeiro capítulo será verificar algumas abordagens de espaço relacionadas à questão do sagrado e do profano. Neste capítulo também serão descritos os conceitos sobre espaço a partir do termo bíblico hebraico e de alguns autores da área teológica e das Ciências da Religião, bem como a observação do espaço considerado sagrado para o povo hebreu. Na sequência serão trabalhados dois grupos de textos do livro do profeta Ezequiel, a partir da semiótica. Nestes textos, alguns aspectos essenciais na leitura sêmio-discursiva serão considerados, como, por exemplo, a ênfase no objeto de valor, o percurso narrativo do texto e o quadrado semiótico. Será destacada a análise do plano de expressão ou do nível discursivo, que ajudará na verificação da segmentação e estruturação do espaço, papel dos sujeitos e outros. Ainda será verificada, na análise do plano de expressão, a interdiscursividade e a intertextualidade do texto. Na análise do plano de conteúdo serão verificados os percursos temáticos, figurativos e a estrutura narrativa e fundamental. O alvo é chegar a um possível significado para o sentido de espaço nos grupos de textos selecionados do livro de Ezequiel. Este estudo também considerará pontos da análise exegética de um texto, para melhor descrição do contexto dos textos estudados. / The current research consists in an analysis on the subject "Divine space in the speech of Ezekiel in the chapters 8 to 11 and 43 to 48". The research will make an examination of the matter from the semiotic proposal of Greimas, with the objective of understanding better the text and the search for some possibilities of significance for the space in this speech. The first chapter will make a verification of concepts about this matter, in both biblical areas and other thinkers not related to the theological area, but to the Science of Religion. The analysis of the chapters will be presented after a brief exposition of basic questions related to the method which was used. The objective of this first chapter is to verify some approaches of space on the question of holy and profane. In this work, theres also a description of concepts about space, starting from the Hebrew biblical word, as the observation of the space considered sacred to the Jewish people. After, using semiotics, two groups of text in the book of the prophet Ezekiel will be analyzed. Also, in the texts, essential aspects will be considered in the semio-discursive reading, for example, the emphasis on the object of value, narrative path of the text and the semiotic square. The analysis of the plan of expression or discursive level will be highlighted, which will verify the segmentation and the structure of the space, the function of the subject and others. In the analysis of the plan of expression internal texts and intertextuality will be verified. In the analysis of the plan of content, the figurative theme path will be checked and the fundamental speech structure. The aim is a verification and the arrival at a meaning of a space sense in the selected texts in the book of Ezekiel, as well as how the space is characterized in those groups. This study will also consider points of the exegetics analysis of a text, to describe better the texts studied.

There is no consensus on why Ezekiel 20 differs so strongly from the other historical traditions and texts known from the Torah. Are the authors simply purposefully selective in their reuse of earlier ‘historical' material, or do they offer a synopsis of all the material available to them, inadvertently preserving a particular stage in the development of the pentateuchal material? Or, more likely, is the answer somewhere in between? It is these questions that the present study begins to answer. Part One offers an analysis of the general linguistic influences of the priestly, Holiness, and deuteronomic corpora on Ezekiel 20, demonstrating that the impact of all three has been overstated. Part Two, the core of the study, examines in detail four texts of the Torah which share a statistically significant number and type of locutions with Ezekiel 20: Numbers 13-14; Exodus 6.2-8; Exodus 31.12-17; and Leviticus 26. Across these texts, both unilateral and bilateral literary reuse of or by Ezekiel 20 is established, and the ramifications for the composition and rhetoric of both the Torah texts and Ezekiel 20 is explored in detail. Part Three synthesises these findings, confirming that, and describing how, Ezekiel 20 compositionally interacts with the priestly and Holiness writings, offering insight into the extent and nature of a stratified, likely independent P. Three prevailing models of the composition of the Torah are then examined for points of continuity and discontinuity with this picture, with the result that none of them are able to account for all of the data collected herein. In sum, it is no longer sufficient to consider the literary dependencies between Ezekiel 20 and the priestly or Holiness material, let alone Ezekiel and the Torah, as mono-directional.

The rapid changes in society today have caused many a leader in different environments to admit that they feel overwhelmed by, and inadequate to face the reality that this brings along. Our society is, according to many, in a transition, or as Roxburgh (2010) calls it, in an “in-between time”. This “in-between time” can be labelled as post-modern, post-colonial, post-democratic, or whatever language seems fitting; the fact of the matter is that studies are starting to show that leaders are struggling to lead in this changing landscape. This has also become particularly true in church leadership. This issue has been visited by many practical theologians of late. What has not been done yet was to visit this problem from an Old Testament perspective and to see if the Old Testament can contribute to this issue. In this study the Old Testament prophetic book of Ezekiel is taken as case study to see if it can shed any light on the matter. Ezekiel as prophet needs to speak to an audience that is also in rapidly changing circumstances. The lives of most Judeans changed with the first Babylonian exile of 597 BCE and got worse with the final exile in 586 BCE that also included the fall of Jerusalem. Suddenly the “known” became “unknown” and the familiar surroundings and lifestyle of Judea were substituted by the unfamiliar surroundings of Babylon and life as exiles. In these times people look to their prophets and their leaders to make sense of the reality and to offer some hope for the future. Ezekiel responds to this with communication. His communication criticises and energises. His communication seems vivid and metaphorically loaded and in the end stirs up imagination. This imagination gives clarity and hope for the future. What this study therefore attempts to do is to look for the process of this communication. It tries to find the different stages that Ezekiel goes through in his communication process. Out of these stages or steps it then builds a process of communication that is suggested as a possible Old Testament perspective on a modern-day problem. In this endeavour it proposes to build a bridge between practical issues of church life, leadership in the church and Biblical Studies. / Old Testament & Ancient Near Eastern Studies / D. Litt. et Phil. (Biblical Studies)

Thesis (DLitt (English))--University of Stellenbosch, 2005. / The introductory chapter of this thesis – in which I place Mphahlele's works within the Afrocentric, postcolonial theoretical context within which he wrote – consists of three sections that explain the three different ways in which I contextualise my investigation of the ways in which Mphahlele represents his concept of African humanism in his narrative writings. In section 1.1 I detail the historical background and context within which Mphahlele's philosophy of African humanism will be shown to have evolved, alongside my analysis of a selected few of his poems and all of his narrative writings, articulated in the main body of the thesis. I approach this introductory sketching of the historical context by tracing the development over time of antecedent concepts articulated by other writers, followed by a chronological tracing of the progressive, successive articulations of the idea of African humanism in Mphahlele’s own discursive writing . This is followed in section 1.2 by an outline of the theoretical notions or concepts from various sources by means of which the analysis is executed, some of which are Edward Said's notion of "the integrated vision", Fanon's idea of "national culture" and Bhabha's metonymic notion of "mimicry". Section 1.3 dwells on a description of the conceptual approach I use throughout the thesis – that of viewing literature as anchored in the empirical milieu constituting the referential framework of its subject matter. In this section I also highlight the analytical method of scrutinising Mphahlele's works from the sociolinguistic point of view that links dialogue and the symbols yielded by fiction to the local cultural orientation of the people for whom artefacts were composed. The organisation of the later chapters of this thesis according to literary genre is also explained and rationalised in section 1.3.

Thesis with title The Vision of Merkabah and its Reflexion in Rabbinical Judaism deals with jewish's mysticism. The work has point evidence, that jewish's mysticism starts yet in early medieval times. During centuries extends further and its line achieves until today's time. It compares most old mysticism texts with their occurrence at a later literature. It focus on mystical groups and theirs incidence. The work attends to difference mystic of jewish in different geographical regions in course of time. Keywords Ezekiel, prophets, mysticism, kabbalah, merkabah, sefirot, God

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The Old Testament book of Ezekiel presents (in chapters 40 to 48) a landscape restoration plan after the destruction of Jerusalem. Objects, spatial elements, units, buildings, structures and landscapes are described and measured in the 'visions of God'. The hypothesis of my study is that spatial planning plays an important role in influencing landscape structures in a way that cities are made less vulnerable and more resilient to multi-hazard threats. In order to explore new ways of conceptualising this envisioned plan, I combine the methods of landscape architecture with a study of Hebrew literature. First, the concept of a 'Pattern Language', developed by the widely influential architect and design theorist Christopher Alexander, is used to re-categorize the spatial patterns evident in Ezekiel's vision. Patterns believed to be 'archetypal', deeply rooted in the nature of things and a part of human nature, are recognised. Secondly, in order to know which patterns are more significant, and how they are arranged, textual observation is conducted by choosing two words - 'behold' and 'measure' - as the indicators of the sequence of experience in the landscape. The result displays a thematic chiasm and a parallel structure. Landscape patterns including ENCIRCLING/ROUND ABOUT STRUCTURES, FOURFOLD MEASUREMENT, SQUARED SPACES and WATER FROM UNDERNEATH, play out scenes of awe and measurement in the landscape. With regard to the historical context of the landscape of Ezekiel 40-48, this thesis explores historical landscapes in the ancient Near East, and concludes that Ezekiel 40-48 demonstrates archetypal patterns that are shared with other cultures. However, archetypal patterns based on the nature of things and human nature should not be viewed as evidence of imitation or borrowing. Moreover, it is very likely that the ancient Israelite Iron Age town planning strategies serve as the basic concept of Ezekiel 40-48. Inspired by the Hebrew literary art that naturally forms corresponding themes, my research further argues that Ezekiel 40-48 can be understood as an ancient resilient landscape plan that encompasses rigidity and ductility, and two processes: resistance and recovery. Given the ancient hazards described in Ezekiel (the sword, famine, evil creatures, and pestilence), the mechanism of landscape resilience in Ezekiel 40-48 is similar to modern time ecosystem resilience, as well as disaster risk reduction, and epidemiology/public health of war and defence policy. Ezekiel 40-48 plans a self-sufficient city that is resistant to wars with its capacity to ensure food and water security. The riparian ecosystem provides medicinal resources with a life-giving river running through the land to strengthen the ability to recover. The thesis supports Greenberg's view that Ezekiel 40-48 fulfils the divine promises of 'the covenant of wellbeing' in Ezekiel 37.24b-28. In conclusion, this thesis develops a new theological way of reading Ezekiel 40-48 which prioritizes landscape. An understanding of the ancient planning in Ezekiel 40- 48 may shed light on our reading of the text and our way of viewing the visions, as well as our planning of the environment.