No description available.

The last 100 years have seen biblical studies practically dominated by diachronic/historical methodologies, Amos studies have a long tradition of being read within a diachronic framework. The result of this has been an unfortunate fragmentation of the text. Within the last 40 years or so there has been a resurgence of literary studies that treat the text wholistically. Nevertheless, in research that has been done in literary studies a divergence with regard to the structure of the book as well as the function and meaning of some of its units still exists. For this reason it is necessary to approach the problem from a fresh perspective. The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate the literary unity of Amos 3-6. In my work I show not only the legitimacy, but also the superiority of a synchronic reading of Amos 3-6 when reading the text as a whole. The book of Amos enjoys perhaps the most scholarly interest among all of the twelve prophets, which has resulted in a large body of secondary literature. Within the book of Amos, chapters 3-6 provide a closed unit which contains the major message of the book. For this reason, these four chapters afford a suitable text to apply my reading as well as a platform on which to dialogue with secondary sources. The methodology used in this thesis is a close reading of the present form of the Masoretic Text. A major part of the work is structural analysis. Through the analysis I was able to identify meaningful units that I used for my reading of the text. In this reading I looked at keywords and semantic fields, themes, repetition, parallelism, imagery, speakers and addressees, rhetorical techniques and the overall flow of the text. In my study I have shown how Amos 3-6 should be divided into three independent yet closely related units: Amos 3:1-15; 4:1-13 and 5:1-6:14. Recognition of the structure and craftsmanship of the text draws out the singular message of Amos 3-6; that Israel could no longer avoid Yahweh’s judgment for their oppression of the poor. Even if my main conclusion is similar both to scholars who work in diachronic as well as synchronic studies, my conclusion treats the entirety of Amos 3-6 and concludes that all units within it are vital to the whole and contribute to this message of judgment. My thesis offers a solution to the fragmentary text resultant from diachronic methods as well as a corrective to synchronic readings that inadequately structure the book, resulting in an unsatisfactory overall picture of the structure and meaning of Amos 3-6.

The Problem statement which was examined in this study is the following: Throughout the history the accuracy and historical value of the Psalm headings were questioned. Translations of the Psalm headings that later on developed for example the Septuagint, the Vulgate and the Peshitta is generally more extended than the Hebrew text. The use of the Grammatical–Historical method shows that the Psalm headings are authorative and that they are part of the Canonical text of the Hebrew Bible. Thorough word study by the method of Verhoef (1973), Hayes & Holladay (2007) and Kaiser (2007) of certain terms was important to note in the naming of the Psalter. This word study was approached through the Grammatical–Historical method. It was further necessary to study the importance of Psalm 145 in the whole of the Psalter, because Psalm 145 is the only Psalm with the heading: תְּהִלָּה . Other Psalm headings were studied and historical information was compared with other parts of Scripture. This study was approached Revelation–Historical. Further on it was necessary to do a comparative study between the Psalm headings of the Masoretic text, the Septuagint and the writings of Qumran to determine the authority of the Psalm headings. A study of contents about the element of praise was also necessary as Van Rooy (2008) explained, because the Psalter shows a development from lament to praise. It is also connected with the title that was originally been given to the Psalter by the Jews. / Thesis (M.Th. (Old Testament))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.

The Problem statement which was examined in this study is the following: Throughout the history the accuracy and historical value of the Psalm headings were questioned. Translations of the Psalm headings that later on developed for example the Septuagint, the Vulgate and the Peshitta is generally more extended than the Hebrew text. The use of the Grammatical–Historical method shows that the Psalm headings are authorative and that they are part of the Canonical text of the Hebrew Bible. Thorough word study by the method of Verhoef (1973), Hayes & Holladay (2007) and Kaiser (2007) of certain terms was important to note in the naming of the Psalter. This word study was approached through the Grammatical–Historical method. It was further necessary to study the importance of Psalm 145 in the whole of the Psalter, because Psalm 145 is the only Psalm with the heading: תְּהִלָּה . Other Psalm headings were studied and historical information was compared with other parts of Scripture. This study was approached Revelation–Historical. Further on it was necessary to do a comparative study between the Psalm headings of the Masoretic text, the Septuagint and the writings of Qumran to determine the authority of the Psalm headings. A study of contents about the element of praise was also necessary as Van Rooy (2008) explained, because the Psalter shows a development from lament to praise. It is also connected with the title that was originally been given to the Psalter by the Jews. / Thesis (M.Th. (Old Testament))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.

This thesis aims to make a significant contribution to our understanding of the history of biblical criticism in the seventeenth century. Its central objective is to put forward a new interpretation of the work of the Oratorian scholar Richard Simon. It does so by placing Simon's work, above all his Histoire critique du Vieux Testament (1678), in the context of the great increase in critical study of the text of the Bible that occurred after 1620. The problems and questions that confronted European scholars at this time were profound, as new manuscript discoveries combined with existing learned and polemical debates in such a way that scholars were forced reconsider their opinions on the history and text of the Old Testament. Rather than study these works solely in the discrete tradition of the history of scholarship, however, this thesis shows why they have to be considered in the context of the print culture that made their production possible, the confessional divisions that shaped and deepened the significance of their philological arguments, and the intellectual cooperation, exchange, and disagreement that determined how contemporaries understood them. The results of this research contribute to existing scholarship in several significant ways, of which four stand out for special emphasis. First, through extensive archival research it markedly revises our current understanding of the work of Jean Morin, Louis Cappel, Johannes Buxtorf II, and Richard Simon. Second, it shows that the history of biblical criticism must consider the work of Catholic scholars in the same level of detail as Protestant scholars. Third, it breaks the link between innovative philological and historical work and radical theological or political thought. Fourth, it calls into doubt the current consensus that seventeenth-century scholarly life is best understood through the concept of the international and inter-confessional 'Republic of Letters'.

There is no consensus regarding the interpretation of the "Spirit like a dove" comparison in Jesus' baptism (Mk 1:10). Although scholars have proposed at least fifty different interpretations of the dove comparison, no study appears to have considered Isaiah's three dove texts as the background for the Markan dove (cf. Is 38:14; 59:11; 60:8). This neglect is surprising considering the abundance of Isaianic allusions in Mark's Prologue (Mk 1:1-15), and the growing awareness that Isaiah is the hermeneutical key for both the Markan Prologue and Jesus' baptism within it. Indeed, Mark connects the dove image inseparably to the Spirit's "descent" from heaven, which alludes to Yahweh's descent in a New Exodus deliverance in Isaiah 63:19 [MT]. Furthermore, each Isaianic dove text uses the same simile, "like a dove" or "like doves," which appears in Mark 1:10, and shares the theme of lament and restoration which fits the context of Mark's baptism account. This study therefore argues that the dove image in Mark 1:10 is a symbol which evokes metonymically Isaiah's three dove texts. So the Spirit is "like a dove" not because any quality of the Spirit resembles that of a dove, but because the dove recalls the Isaianic theme of lament and restoration associated with doves in this Scriptural tradition. After discussing the Markan dove in terms of simile, symbol, and metonymy, the study examines the Isaianic dove texts in the MT and LXX and argues that they form a single motif. Next, later Jewish references to the Isaianic dove texts are considered, while an Appendix examines further dove references in Jewish and Greco-Roman literature. Finally, the study argues that the Markan dove coheres in function with the Isaianic dove motif and symbolizes the Spirit's effect upon and through Jesus by evoking metonymically the Isaianic dove texts.