This dissertation focuses primarily on three areas. It provides detailed examinations of SDQ and MIȘPAT as they are used in the Old Testament. To this end, extra-Biblical material from the Ancient Near East is also examined, thus yielding the background meanings of these concepts. SDQ and MIȘPAT are investigated with a view to demonstrating "relationship" as their overall functional locus, and all occurrences of these concepts in the Old Testament are studied. The occurrences of SDQ and MIȘPAT indicate that whether these concepts have to do with aspects such as "justice in the gate", "Yahweh's ordinances", "salvation", "deliverance" or even secular matters such as "weights and measures" and "trading", the fundamental element that unites all of them is "relationship" and the sustaining of it. The thesis argues that SDQ and MIȘPAT as terms of "relationship", are the basis for the social critique of the Eighth Century Prophets. In this regard, the different subjects of the prophets' social critique are examined. The discussion concludes that corruption in the economic, social and religious aspects of life is directly correlated to the absence of SDQ and MIȘPAT. In the Eighth Century prophets SDQ is seen to be the bond which is integral for the covenant relationship between Yahweh and his people, while MIȘPAT is the element necessary for a right relationship amongst individuals. The absence of both SDQ and MIȘPAT as is the case in the Eighth Century, suggests clearly that the Prophets' critique concerns not only the relationship between individuals, but even more fundamentally, the people's relationship with Yahweh.

It has long been noted that the book of Lamentations shares, at least in part, a theological outlook with the prophetic literature that the destruction of Jerusalem was the result of Yahweh’s decisive action against the sins of the nation. Too often, however, this relationship has simply been presupposed, or assumed to be a relationship of shared perspective. To date there has been no systematic exploration of how it is that Lamentations accepts and/or modifies the theological outlook of the prophetic literature. In addition, when the theology of the prophets has been discussed in relation to Lamentations, there has been a tendency to group all the prophetic books together as if they existed as a homogeneous whole, and shared amongst themselves a singular outlook. This tendency to simplify the theological complexity of the prophetic literature coincides with a similar tendency to reduce the theology of Lamentations to simple, monolithic assertions. Drawing on the literary insights of Mikhail Bakhtin, this study aims to explore in detail the nature of the relationship between Lamentations and the pre-exilic/exilic prophetic literature. Drawing on notions of dialogism, Polyphony and double voicing, the study argues that Lamentations enters i8nto a dialogic relationship with the prophetic literature, a relationship that both affirms and subverts that literature. Central to the acknowledgement of the dialogic interaction between Lamentations and the prophetic literature is the recognition of Lamentations as a multivalent, polyphonic text in which unmerged viewpoints exist in a tension filled relationship.

Thesis--Brigham Young University. / "74-3890" Bibliography: leaves 292-297.

Thesis--Brigham Young University. / "74-3890" Electronic thesis. Bibliography: leaves 292-297. Also available in print ed.

Thèse--Faculté des lettres de Paris, 1879.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--McMaster University, 2005. / Advisor: Stephen Westerholm. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 320-344). Also available via World Wide Web.

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In Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, Margaret Atwood examines different forms of debt and their various interrelations. Her work invites, but does not provide, an account or philosophy of debt or its deep implication in Christian beliefs such as sin, satisfaction, and atonement. This paper aims to bring to light insights into the link between debt and some aspects of Christian belief, especially the ideas of sin and satisfaction. It draws upon another unlikely source-the Ethics and political treatises of Spinoza. Spinoza’s view at least implies that the idea that sin (understood as the voluntary actions of a free agent) creates a ‘debt’ that is ‘paid’ by punishment is a potentially dangerous ‘fiction.' Spinoza intuits that the subsumption of the idea of debt into notions of retribution, vengeance, satisfaction, or atonement, are driven by ‘superstition,' envy, and hatred, and through imitating others’ hateful ideas of oneself. The idea of ‘debt’ is an artefact of civil authority that can only assume affective, normative purchase through internalizing fear of the implicit threat of punishment inherent in law. I will seek, finally, to suggest an implicit critique in Spinoza of the imaginative subsumption of debt into the space of religio.

From the perspective of the Hebrew Bible the Egyptians represented the quintessential 'other' to the Israelites - lascivious, idolatrous, tyrannical, hostile and murderous. The biblical characterization of the Egyptians may be explained by the historical context in which early Israel emerged, a context in which Egypt represented a political, military and cultural threat to Israel's survival and distinctiveness, and in which the Israelites came to regard themselves as a covenanted people, in a unique and exclusive relationship with their God. This biblical perspective was inherited to some extent by the early Christian community, which according to the apostle Paul has been grafted into Israel's salvation history, and thus continued to associate the Egyptians with idolatry and base morality. The Islamic assessment of the ancient Egyptians, as presented particularly by the Qur'an, extra-canonical works and commentaries, and how it compares to biblical and extra-biblical views, is the subject of this study. Drawing on distinctions of covenanted and missionary identities as described in Anthony Smith's Chosen Peoples (2003), this thesis hypothesizes that the Qur'an and Islamic tradition with their pronounced missionary thrust present a rather different image of the 'other', particularly the Egyptians, given the historical context in which Islam emerged. This study presents a unique examination of the Egyptians in the Qur'an and extra-canonical texts as related through their encounters with the prophets Ibrahim, Yusuf, Musa and 'Isa. It combines a detailed exegetical and intertextual study of revelant Qur'anic verses with an analysis of extra-canonical texts such as the qisas al-anbiya' and traditions such as are found in al-Tabari's al-Ta'rikh al-rusul wa'l-muluk. Moreover, this thesis addresses historical, Egyptological and archaeological issues, and how the Qur'anic portrayals of the Egyptians in particular reflect the concerns and values of the early ummah, a community of believers which not only struggled to survive the hostilities of the Quraysh, but which sought to bring them and others to faith in the God of Ibrahim.

Thesis (MA (Theol.)-University of Pretoria, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.