Search Results (622)

Jewish thinkers and artists have used Midrash as a framework for exploring the entanglement of cultural inheritance and social justice projects. Marian D. Moore’s (1956–) poetry collection Louisiana Midrash (2019) exemplifies this dynamic. It blends Moore’s cultural landscape, Shreveport and New Orleans, Louisiana, African History and the Biblical and Midrashic literary traditions. Moore’s unique poetic voice, in the context of twenty-first century Midrash grounded in Jewish tradition, explores the intersection of African American history and Jewishness. Moore’s Midrashic poetry integrates African American and Jewish traditional biblical interpretation with the cultural reality of post—Katrina Louisiana. This article will discuss several of Moore’s poems in the context of her Black poetic Midrashic framework. The analysis illustrates how Louisiana Midrash shows the flexibility of Midrash as a creative genre and literary form, as it grows beyond a normative Jewish framework and becomes open to a multitude of voices and perspectives. Full article

This paper examines migration from Africa as a response to shifting identities and the resurgence of nationalism, bringing biblical traditions into dialogue with contemporary realities. In many African contexts, contested identities, ethno-religious nationalism, and exclusionary state policies intensify conditions of displacement alongside poverty, conflict, and terrorism. As a result, migration becomes both a survival strategy and a negotiation of identity in an increasingly fragmented world. Biblical narratives of forced migration provide an interpretive framework for understanding these movements. The Hebrew Bible recounts exilic experiences, such as the Babylonian deportation, that reshaped Israel’s communal memory, identity, and theology. Similarly, the New Testament highlights dispersions caused by persecution, showing how migration functioned as a catalyst for the expansion of faith communities and the reconstruction of belonging. These texts illuminate how forced migration is not only a consequence of crisis but also a transformative process that redefines identity and community. By employing sociological and theological methods, this study demonstrates how African migration in the context of nationalism parallels biblical paradigms of exile and dispersion. It argues that African migrants’ narratives of identity, marked by struggle, hope, and resilience, echo biblical testimonies of displacement and offer theological resources for interpreting migration today. In doing so, this paper contributes to interdisciplinary debates on migration by showing how biblical exilic traditions can inform responses to Africa’s ongoing challenges of nationalism, identity, and forced movement. Full article

The 19th century Protestant missionary James Legge is acknowledged for his voluminous and Christianity-inflected translations of Chinese classics of “Three Teachings”, yet his rendition of Buddhist texts remains under-examined. This study analyzes whether a value of Western theology exists in his portrayal of the Chinese monk Fâ-hien in A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms, where the pilgrim should emerge as a devout Buddhist, a pioneering explorer, and a morally sensitive figure. Legge foregrounded these facets through paratexts such as illustrations and footnotes, but also repeatedly framed Fâ-hien within a biblical interpretation by frequently drawing parallels between Christianity and Buddhism. At the textual level, he shifted the original first-person narrative to a third-person perspective, which weakened the emotional and spiritual sense of Fâ-hien’s journey. Legge’s scholarly competence in Chinese learning and his role as Oxford’s first Professor of Chinese determined his precise representation of the rich connotations of Fâ-hien’s image, balancing academic rigor with an orientation toward Great Britain’s colonial education and imperial interests. His Christo-Buddhist intervention in the paratexts, associating the primary text with Christian culture, reveals his underlying missionary purpose to evangelize China. To this end, this study reveals how religious translation served both missionary and scholarly ends, contributing to Western perceptions of Chinese religion while illustrating the broader power dynamics of Christian engagement with modern China. Full article

This article discusses the rise of archaeology in Asia Minor and the related development of heritage tourism in Turkey. It focuses particularly on the branch termed archaeobiblical tourism. It first discusses the demographics of its clientele and then looks at publications related to biblical archaeology that have created interest in these sites. The article next discusses five areas of interest to archaeobiblical tourists: two are related to the Old Testament and three to the New Testament. Since sites related to Paul number the most in Asia Minor, special attention is given to visiting them by land and sea. A list of archaeological realia that archaeobiblical tourists encounter at various sites is presented. The article closes with an extended discussion of how archaeobiblical tourism developed and how it is currently marketed globally. It concludes that Christian visitors are motivated primarily to see the cities where biblical events took place and where the apostles ministered. Along the way they learn about archaeology and Greco-Roman history and culture, and therefore begin to integrate this new knowledge with the biblical texts they are reading. Full article

Casta Meretrix articulates the Church’s paradoxical identity as simultaneously holy and sinful, a motif profoundly reconfigured by Hans Urs von Balthasar. Drawing on biblical typology, patristic interpretation, and historical allegory—from Rahab and Hosea to Tamar and the Shulamite—Balthasar constructs a nuanced ecclesiology that honors divine grace while acknowledging human frailty. This essay examines his method, showing how Casta Meretrix offers a critical framework for engaging ecclesial sin, historical failings, and the Church’s redemptive vocation, emphasizing vigilance, penitential self-awareness, and the transformative power of divine love within a flawed yet elect community. Full article

This study examines the possible points of connection between crime and reading on the basis of genre-typical roles and motifs in detective fiction. I aim to identify characteristic reading methods, strategies, locations, events, and professions with regard to the detective, the perpetrator and the victim. Following a general introduction with a focus on genre theory and thematic concerns, I proceed with an analysis of P. D. James’s crime novel Original Sin. This novel not only offers the posing and solving of a criminal puzzle, but also reflects powerfully on moral questions about sin, original sin and violent death. In my analysis, I follow the method of close reading, and as part of this approach, I also explore traces of biblical intertextuality. As a result of theoretical reflection and interpretation, I draw two important conclusions: (1) For investigators, reading texts constitutes an effective and indispensable instrument for reconstructing the past, thus uncovering the truth and revealing the perpetrator. (2) The reading events depicted in the novel refer to experiences and conceptual connections that justify discussing a kind of theology of reading: reading appears in the story as an intellectual activity that forms part of certain religious practices (penance, prayer, confession). Full article

This study evaluates whether a multimodal retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipeline originally developed for early modern woodcuts can be effectively transferred to the domain of medieval manuscript illumination. Using a dataset of Wenzelsbibel miniatures annotated with Iconclass, the pipeline combined page-level image input, LLM description generation, vector retrieval, and hierarchical reasoning. Although overall scores were lower than in the earlier woodcut study, the best-performing configuration still substantially surpassed both image-similarity and keyword-based search, confirming the advantages of structured multimodal retrieval for medieval material. Truncation analysis further revealed that many errors occurred only at the deepest Iconclass levels: removing levels raised precision to 0.64 and 0.73, with average remaining depths of 5.49 and 4.49 levels, respectively. These results indicate that the model’s broader hierarchical placement is often correct even when fine-grained specificity breaks down. Taken together, the findings demonstrate that a woodcut-oriented RAG pipeline can be meaningfully adapted to manuscript illumination and that its strengths lie in contextual reasoning and structured classification. Future improvements should incorporate available textual metadata, explore graph-based retrieval, and refine Iconclass-driven pathways. Full article

This paper examines the relationship between the Book of Kings and the Book of Chronicles through a focused case study: the depiction of the altar(s) in Solomon’s temple. While scholarly models vary—some positing a shared source, others viewing Chronicles as a revision of Kings—this analysis supports the view, associated with Wellhausen, that Chronicles reinterprets the Deuteronomistic History in line with the Pentateuch, particularly its Priestly layer. In Kings, Solomon’s two altars function within a hierarchical system that distinguishes between the royal and communal spheres. Chronicles, by contrast, aligns the temple’s cultic architecture with the Tabernacle model, presenting a single sacrificial altar alongside a golden altar with a different function. The Chronicler’s account reveals its secondary nature through both expansion and abbreviation of the Kings narrative, shaped by a theological agenda to harmonize Israel’s cultic past with the normative framework of priestly law. Full article

There are many stories in the Hebrew Bible that depict prominent Jews in the epicentre of a foreign imperia, and biblical scholarship essentially classifies every such narrative as court tales in terms of genre. Notwithstanding nuances and sub-categorisations (e.g., court contest and court conflict, wisdom court legend, success story of the wise courtier), to have one catch-all genre designation is imprudent and amorphous. This paper argues, using Formkritik and Gattungskritik, for three subgenres whereby foreign royal stories may be distinguished. One type of tale involves a foreign king who is either sleepless (Dan 6, Esth 6) or dreams (Gen 41, Dan 2 and 4); in the former, a king intervenes favourably for Jews in distress, while in the latter, the king’s dreams are interpreted by a wise Jewish courtier. Another type of tale is the imperial banquet, where an intoxicated gentile king orders the death of a high official (Dan 5, Esth 1, 5/7); this is wrought by a woman who exploits the king’s wine-induced disposition to effect lethal action with disastrous repercussions for the kingdom. Still another type of tale is the court tale proper; these episodes, however, are restricted to the courtly etiquette and decorum of courtiers who sagaciously advise the king, alongside its tensions with monotheism (Dan 3; Esth 3). As a result of this preliminary investigation, the typical setting of the political centre of the foreign imperium in Hebrew Bible narratives comprises three subgenres: court tales, banquet tales, and bedchamber tales. Since genres are determined by the common story forms, each distinct genre is scientifically determined by corresponding distinct narrative structures, vocabulary, and outcomes. Thus, what is proposed is a more illuminating distinction to the wide array and nebulous conglomeration of biblical stories involving Jews in prominent spaces within the foreign king’s court. Furthermore, the implications of the contended three subgenres involve calcifying religious practices, which become vital expressions of Judaism in the Second Temple period. Full article

The scientific activity and outputs of the neurosciences are fascinating and, for the most part, uncontroversial. However, there have been sustained claims that neuroscientific findings represent a powerful challenge to historic, orthodox Christian teaching concerning human ontology. While philosophers had long debated the “mind/brain” problem, the rise of “eliminative materialism” (in the specific form of “neurophilosophy”) in the last quarter of the 20th century evoked various responses to the proposition that a mature neuroscience would forever banish familiar “folk science” entities like beliefs and desires as well as immaterial souls or minds. These would all be shown to play no role in a thoroughly materialistic, mature, neuroscientific understanding of ourselves. One aspect of the response to such claims within Christian scholarship was a turn to non-reductive physicalism and theological monism prompting a reassessment of biblical teaching concerning human ontology, seeking a position that would be consistent both with neuroscience (or its alleged implications) and Christian teaching. The aim of this paper is to review neuroscientific, philosophical and theological developments in order to establish where theological anthropology currently stands. In part this requires an assessment of contemporary neuroscience (including the subfield of “consciousness studies”) because while the science continues to generate intriguing hypotheses and data, it has fallen some way short of the eliminative materialists’ hopes of forty years ago. Additionally, important methodological criticisms of the science have emerged concerning such issues as reproducibility and participant selection. This may have contributed to the twenty-first century resurgence of interest in the sort of dualism long a key component of theological orthodoxy, as well as highlighting the need for a reassertion of theological values, methods and perspectives. The apparent non-elimination of theology indicates a need to rebalance theological and neuroscientific perspectives in developing our understanding of the person. Full article

This article examines the purposes, origins, and authority of ‘secular education,’ or the seven liberal arts, in Cassiodorus’ Institutiones divinarum et saecularium litterarum. Whilst previous scholarship has argued that Cassiodorus traces the origins of the liberal arts to Holy Scripture and views their primary purpose as aiding biblical exegesis, closer analysis of Institutiones reveals a more complex picture. Some passages suggest that the liberal arts also derive, in part, from the order of the created universe, and that their principal purpose lies in the cultivation of virtues. These virtues, while grounded in the specific ends of the liberal arts, are ultimately directed toward the theoretical contemplation of God, echoing Aristotle’s hierarchy of sciences and virtues. Full article

In Mark 13:7–8, wars and natural disasters are depicted in apocalyptic themes, reflecting Jewish traditions that viewed cosmic upheaval as preludes to divine intervention. This article examines Mark 13 within its socio-historical context and in relation to Second Temple apocalyptic literature such as the Sibylline Oracles and 4 Ezra. Using a historical–critical approach, it argues that Mark’s portrayal of tribulations was not intended to foster fatalism but to cultivate vigilance, faith, and resilience. Building on this, the article explores how apocalyptic motifs can be brought into dialogue with contemporary crises, particularly ecological devastation, global conflicts, and pandemics. To enrich this dialogue, insights from African indigenous theologies—especially their communal understandings of endurance and hope—are introduced as contextual perspectives that resonate with Mark’s eschatological vision. By bridging ancient apocalyptic discourse, ecological theology, and contextual reflection, the study contends that Mark 13 offers a constructive vision of hope and ethical responsibility amid contemporary turmoil. Full article

Reception history explores how the Bible has been translated, interpreted, reinvented, and deployed by exegetes, artists, politicians, and others. Given the Bible’s historical and global significance, reception history must also include evaluating how scholars themselves have “read” the biblical literature. This article examines the work of two influential scholars of Hebrew Bible, Howard Eilberg-Schwartz and Theodore Jennings. Eilberg-Schwartz’s groundbreaking God’s Phallus: And Other Problems for Men and Monotheism (1994) and Jennings’ Jacob’s Wound: Homoerotic Narrative in the Literature of Ancient Israel (2005) both treated an underexplored subject: divine masculinity. In their monographs, Eilberg-Schwartz and Jennings present biblical homoeroticism—divine as well as mortal—as a valuable path for establishing intimacy among men and for “transing” the men of the Hebrew Bible. Both works, however, partake in two long-standing exegetical traditions: mitigating, ameliorating, and even attempting to redeem the Bible’s often violent deity, and reinscribing binary premises that biblical narratives typically feature. The article concludes that scholars must resist the tendency to rehabilitate a violent deity, as well as challenge the Hebrew Bible’s (and scholars’ own) binary premises. Full article

While divine justice is central to Christian faith, theologians disagree about its nature and dimensions. This study examines Christian belief in a just world (CBJW) as a psychological belief system through which Christian believers construe justice in the world by referring to God’s Justice. Drawing on the psychological concept of belief in a just world, which emphasizes deservedness, we develop and validate a measure of CBJW. In the pilot study, 34 items were selected from biblical texts with the help of an expert review. In Study 1, exploratory factor analysis supported a four-factor solution—God’s Punishment, Reward, Sovereignty, and Forgiveness—yielding a 27-item scale. A confirmatory factor analysis indicated good fit, and internal consistency was strong. These results suggest that CBJW functionally overlaps with secular BJW in its emphasis on reward and punishment while adding theologically distinctive dimensions of sovereignty and forgiveness. Moreover, in Christian belief, justice is construed as distinct from divine love and is oriented toward an eschatological horizon, thereby differentiating CBJW from secular conceptions of justice. Full article