Biblical Exegesis without Authorial Intention?


Book Description

In Biblical Exegesis without Authorial Intention? Interdisciplinary Approaches to Authorship and Meaning, Clarissa Breu offers contributions with a wide range of approaches to the question of the author in biblical interpretation. The volume is an invitation to revisit this question.




Luke Was Not A Christian: Reading the Third Gospel and Acts within Judaism


Book Description

In this volume Joshua Paul Smith challenges the long-held assumption that Luke and Acts were written by a gentile, arguing instead that the author of these texts was educated and enculturated within a Second-Temple Jewish context. Advancing from a consciously interdisciplinary perspective, Smith considers the question of Lukan authorship from multiple fronts, including reception history and social memory theory, literary criticism, and the emerging discipline of cognitive sociolinguistics. The result is an alternative portrait of Luke the Evangelist, one who sees the mission to the gentiles not as a supersession of Jewish law and tradition, but rather as a fulfillment and expansion of Israel’s own salvation history.




Hermeneutics, Linguistics, and the Bible


Book Description

The volume presents Stanley E. Porter's considered thoughts and reflections on key questions of meaning and context, addressing the problems of biblical interpretation and how a close collaboration between hermeneutics and linguistics can help to solve them. The chapters display Porter's work in both fields, examining how hermeneutics functions as a field in modern biblical studies, and how the quest for meaning in biblical texts is underpinned by the study of linguistics. The volume focuses on context for understanding the meanings of biblical texts. Porter suggests that linguists can learn more from the philosophical questions around meaning that hermeneutics apply in their study of biblical texts, and that there is more fruitful work to be done in the field of hermeneutics using insights from linguistics.







The Ministry of Women in the New Testament


Book Description

Respected scholar Dorothy Lee considers evidence from the New Testament and early church to show that women's ministry is confirmed by the biblical witness. Her comprehensive examination explores the roles women played in the Gospels and the Pauline corpus, with a particular focus on passages that have been used in the past to limit women's ministry. She argues that women in the New Testament were not only valued as disciples but also given leadership roles, which has implications for the contemporary church.




BIBLICAL EXEGESIS


Book Description

"BIBLICAL EXEGESIS: Biblical Criticism on Trial," seeks to firmly establish and defend a conservative approach to biblical exegesis while meticulously exposing and critiquing the fallacies and biases prevalent in modern biblical criticism. The central thesis posits that liberal-moderate biblical criticism, incorporating literary criticism, rhetorical criticism, narrative criticism, form criticism, tradition criticism, redaction criticism, structuralism, poststructuralism, canonical criticism, and historical criticism, are fundamentally flawed and speculative. It highlights that these methods, often presented as objective and scientific, are indeed reflective of broader ideological systems such as secular humanism, the Enlightenment, and German idealism, which have significantly swayed Western academia and thought over the past four centuries. The book argues that these critical methodologies constitute an ongoing assault on the Bible, reinforcing scholar biases and distancing biblical interpretation from truth. The ultimate goal is to equip readers with a clear understanding of conservative exegetical principles and methods, demonstrating how these approaches are grounded in an unswerving commitment to the authority and inerrancy of Scripture, thereby offering an antidote to the subjective and ideologically skewed practices of modern biblical criticism. It is also a warning: Biblical criticism has opened the gates to a flood of pseudo-scholarly works whose influence has been to undermine people’s confidence in the Bible.




Religious Experience and the Creation of Scripture


Book Description

This volume examines the reasons that prompted the New Testament writers to create the texts which would become the formation of the Christian religion, exploring the possibility that certain religious experiences were understood as revelatory, and consequently inspired the writing of texts which were seen as special from their inception. Mark Wreford uses Luke-Acts and Galatians as test-cases within the New Testament, reflecting both on the stated importance of religious experiences – whether the author's own or others' – to the development of these texts, and the status the texts claim for themselves. Wreford suggests that Luke-Acts offers a helpful example of the relationship between religious experience and the creation of Scripture, as an extensive narrative which reflects on early Christian claims to Spirit-inspired witness and which begins with an explicit authorial statement of purpose. Similarly, in Galatians, Paul's autobiographical account of God's revelation of Christ to him is the foundation of a letter that is intended to play an authoritative role in shaping its addressees' own faith and practice. Wreford argues that religious experiences are presented as the driving force behind the creation of the texts, examining how such religious experience links with notions of scripture and canonicity. He then asserts that both Luke and Paul understood themselves to be creating new scriptural writings on the basis of their relationship to new religious experiences, citing the experience and speech at Pentecost, the inclusion of gentiles in the experience, and Paul's own conversion experience as key elements behind the self-understanding of these New Testament authors.







Is There a Meaning in this Text?


Book Description

Written by a brilliant young author, this book develops an evangelical theological hermeneutic that sees meaning in the text of Scripture.




Summary of Robert L. Plummer's 40 Questions about Interpreting the Bible


Book Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 To sum up the question, what is the difference between the Bible and other sacred texts. The answer is: The Bible is the Word of God. If you know that, you are halfway to understanding why Jesus said, He who does not listen to me [God] cannot have eternal life (John 5:24). The Old Testament prophets spoke God’s Word to the people of Israel. God used a series of human authors to write down His Word. The author of the Old Testament books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel all lived around the same time. So, there is a fairly close connection between their books and the life, ministry, and teachings of Jesus Christ. The New Testament reflects the life and ministry of Jesus Christ himself. It was written by many different authors over a period of about thirty years. The books were also assembled into a final form around 100 AD. So, there is no single author or editor who can be identified as being behind every book that appears in the New Testament. So, when we look at the Bible, we see that it is the work of many human authors and editors who were each inspired by the Holy Spirit to write what they wrote. #2 The Bible is the Word of God. It was written by many different authors and editors who were each inspired by the Holy Spirit to write what they wrote. The Bible itself is a collection of sixty-six smaller books, or literary works, which claim the Holy Spirit as the ultimate authority and safeguard behind their writing. #3 The Bible is the Word of God. It was written by many different authors and editors who were each inspired by the Holy Spirit to write what they wrote. The Bible itself is a collection of sixty-six smaller books, or literary works, which claim the Holy Spirit as the ultimate authority and safeguard behind their writing. #4 The Bible is the Word of God. It was written by many different authors and editors who were each inspired by the Holy Spirit to write what they wrote. The Bible itself is a collection of sixty-six smaller books, or literary works, which claim the Holy Spirit as the ultimate authority and safeguard behind their writing.