A Prototype Approach to Hate and Anger in the Hebrew Bible

A Prototype Approach to Hate and Anger in the Hebrew Bible
Author: Deena E. Grant
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 113
Release: 2023-06-09
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1000931536

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This innovative book applies findings from the field of cognitive linguistics to the study of emotions in the Hebrew Bible. The book draws on the prototype approach to conceptual categories to help interpret emotion language in biblical passages. Contemporary scholarship has come to recognize that biblical emotion terms do not necessarily possess exact equivalents within our modern lexicons, even if some of these terms express (or appear to express) concepts similar to those conveyed by modern emotion language. In particular, the book focuses on sn’ and ḫrh, which are almost always equated in modern English with hate and anger. However, the ancient Hebrew roots evoke varied and robust emotion-scripts that are quite different than their English counterparts. We see how the prototype script model may help to expose the unique nuances of sn’ and ḫrh and put into profile elements of these emotions that may otherwise go unnoticed. Overall, the study demonstrates that even though modern emotion terms cannot fully capture the ancient emotional experience, our shared use of language to evoke meaning offers us entrée into the emotional world represented in the Hebrew Bible.

A Prototype Approach to Hate and Anger in the Hebrew Bible

A Prototype Approach to Hate and Anger in the Hebrew Bible
Author: Deena E. Grant
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2023
Genre: RELIGION
ISBN: 9781003348719

Download A Prototype Approach to Hate and Anger in the Hebrew Bible Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

This innovative book applies findings from the field of cognitive linguistics to the study of emotions in the Hebrew Bible. The book draws on the prototype approach to conceptual categories to help interpret emotion language in biblical passages. Contemporary scholarship has come to recognize that biblical emotion terms do not necessarily possess exact equivalents within our modern lexicons, even if some of these terms express (or appear to express) concepts similar to those conveyed by modern emotion language. In particular, the book focuses on sn' and rh, which are almost always equated in modern English with hate and anger. However, the ancient Hebrew roots evoke varied and robust emotion-scripts that are quite different than their English counterparts. We see how the prototype script model may help to expose the unique nuances of sn' and rh and put into profile elements of these emotions that may otherwise go unnoticed. Overall, the study demonstrates that even though modern emotion terms cannot fully capture the ancient emotional experience, our shared use of language to evoke meaning offers us entre into the emotional world represented in the Hebrew Bible.

From Fratricide to Forgiveness

From Fratricide to Forgiveness
Author: Matthew R. Schlimm
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2011-06-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1575066602

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In the first book of the Bible, every patriarch and many of the matriarchs become angry in significant ways. However, scholars have largely ignored how Genesis treats this emotion, particularly how Genesis functions as Torah by providing ethical instruction about handling this emotion’s perplexities. In this important work, Schlimm fills this gap in scholarship, describing (1) the language surrounding anger in the Hebrew Bible, (2) the moral guidance that Genesis offers for engaging anger, and (3) the function of anger as a literary motif in Genesis. Genesis evidences two bookends, which expose readers to the opposite extremes of anger and its effects. In Gen 4:1–16, anger takes center stage when Cain kills his brother, Abel, although he has done nothing wrong. Fratricide is at one extreme of the spectrum of anger’s results. In the final chapter of Genesis, readers encounter the opposite extreme, forgiveness. Here, Joseph and his brothers forgive one another after a long history of jealousy, anger, deception, and abuse. It is a moment of reconciliation offered just before the book closes, allowing readers to see Joseph as an anti-Cain—someone who has all the power and all the reasons to harm his brothers but instead turns away from anger and, despite the inherent difficulties, offers forgiveness. Although Genesis frames its post-Edenic narratives with two contrasting outcomes of anger—fratricide and forgiveness—it avoids simplistic moral platitudes, such as demanding that its readers respond to being angry with someone by forgiving the person. Genesis instead returns to the theme of anger on many occasions, presenting a multifaceted message about its ethical significance. The text is quite realistic about the difficulties that individuals face and the paradoxes presented by anger. Genesis presents this emotion as a force that naturally arises from one’s moral sensitivities in response to the perception of wrongdoing. At the same time, the text presents anger as a great threat to the moral life. Genesis thus warns readers about the dangers of anger, but it never suggests that one can lead a life free from this emotion. Instead, it portrays many characters who are forced to deal with anger, presenting them with dilemmas that defy easy resolution. Genesis invites readers to imagine ways of alleviating anger, but it is painfully realistic about how difficult, threatening, and short-lived attempts at reconciliation may be.

Divine Anger in the Hebrew Bible

Divine Anger in the Hebrew Bible
Author: Deena E. Grant
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2023-07-21
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1666787396

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In this book, we explore the aim, expressions and outcomes of God's anger in the Hebrew Bible. We consider divine anger against the backdrop of human anger in order to discern those aspects of it that are recognizably human from those facets of it that are distinctly divine. Furthermore, we examine passages from a range of literary contexts across major biblical collections in order to distinguish those features of divine anger that are elemental to its definition from those that are limited to individual collections. The sum of these conclusions forms our answer to the question: What does the Bible mean when it describes God as angry?

Human-Divine Interactions in the Hebrew Scriptures

Human-Divine Interactions in the Hebrew Scriptures
Author: Berel Dov Lerner
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2023-09-22
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1000958892

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This book addresses central theological issues and biblical narratives in terms of a bold thesis regarding relations between God and humans: that the actions of God and the actions of humans are informed by independently valid moral viewpoints which do not entirely overlap. The author suggests that God’s plans and actions refl ect the interests and obligations appropriate to His goal of creating a worthy world, but not necessarily our world. In contrast, humans must attend to special obligations grounded in their dependence on their existing created world and in their particular places in the human family. However, in acts of grace, God voluntarily takes on special obligations toward the created world by entering covenants with its inhabitants. When the covenant involves reciprocal obligations, as in the case of God’s covenant with Israel, it also recruits human beings to play conscious roles in God’s larger plans. These covenants frame the moral parameters of human-divine interaction and cooperation in which each party strains to negotiate confl icts between its original duties and the new obligations generated by covenants. The interpretive discussions in this book involve close readings of the Hebrew text and are also informed by rabbinic tradition and Western philosophy. They address major issues that are of relevance to scholars of the bible, theology, and philosophy of religion, including the relationship between divine commands and morality, God’s responsibility for human suff ering, God’s role in history and the intersection between politics and religion.

Luke and the Jewish Other

Luke and the Jewish Other
Author: David Andrew Smith
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2023-09-29
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1000957950

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Luke and the Jewish Other takes up the debated question of the orientation of Luke towards the Jewish people. Building on recent studies in the social history of early Jewish-Christian relations, it offers an analysis of Luke’s portrayal of Jewish and Christian identities that challenges the common assumption that the construction of religious identity in antiquity necessarily depended upon antagonistic relations with others. Taking account of the deep and often divisive difference that belief in Jesus made in Luke’s community, the author argues that Luke hoped to bring about both a rapprochement with and the conversion of contemporary Jews. Through this account of identity and alterity in the Gospel of Luke, the book cuts across boundaries of biblical studies, history, theology, and social theory, proposing a way forward for the study of Luke’s relation to Judaism and of the "parting of the ways" between Jews and Christians in the early Common Era.

Playing with Scripture

Playing with Scripture
Author: Andrew Judd
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2024-01-22
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1003831451

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This book puts a creative new reading of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics and literary genre theory to work on the problem of Scripture. Reading texts as Scripture brings two hermeneutical assumptions into tension: that the text will continually say something new and relevant to the present situation, and that the text has stability and authority over readers. Given how contested the Bible’s meaning is, how is it possible to ‘read Scripture’ as authoritative and relevant? Rather than anchor meaning in author, text or reader, Gadamer’s phenomenological model of hermeneutical experience as Spiel (‘play’) offers a dynamic, intersubjective account of how understanding happens, avoiding the dead end of the subjective–objective dichotomy. Modern genre theory addresses some of the criticisms of Gadamer, accounting for the different roles played by readers in different genres using the new term Lesespiel (‘reading game’). This is tested in three case studies of contested texts: the recontextualization of psalms in the book of Acts, the use of Hagar’s story (Genesis 16) in nineteenth-century debates over slavery and the troubling reception history of the rape and murder in Gibeah (Judges 19). In each study, the application of ancient text to contemporary situation is neither arbitrary, nor slavishly bound to tradition, but playful.

Metaphor, Ritual, and Order in John 12-13

Metaphor, Ritual, and Order in John 12-13
Author: Todd E. Klutz
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 77
Release: 2023-06-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1000931641

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This book offers new interpretative insight into the Gospel of John, applying a combination of critical discourse analysis, conceptual metaphor theory, and anthropological theories of ritual. Specifically it explores the meaning of the statement “Now the ruler of this world will be driven out” in John 12:31 and defends a widely overlooked alternative reading. The author proposes a prophecy-fulfilment scheme whereby this predictive utterance by Jesus’ is subsequently implied as fulfilled in the departure of the satanically-possessed Judas’ from the circle of Jesus’ disciples at the Last Supper in John 13:30. Addressing several major strands relating to purity, exorcism, and group identity, the analysis provides an important entry-point for a fresh examination of the Fourth Gospel as a whole. The book represents a significant contribution to Johannine scholarship and to New Testament studies and will be of interest to scholars of religion, theology and biblical studies.

Grasping Emotions

Grasping Emotions
Author: Ute E. Eisen
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2024-01-29
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3111185575

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Emotions have increasingly attracted the attention of the sciences and academia. The topic is all the more timely since we have witnessed a global trend towards highly emotionalized discourses across societies and religions. Discourses are less guided by rational arguments and “facts”. Instead, narratives, sometimes manipulative, influence the thoughts and activi-ties of our societies. In this context, the authoritative texts of the monotheistic religions are experiencing a renaissance. Tanach, Bible and Qur’an do not only “emotionalize”, they also offer ancient concepts of emotions which affect the present. This book brings the interdependencies of antiquity and (post)modernity into an interdisci-plinary discussion. How should we understand feelings at all? This book explores the ap-proaches to emotions as portrayed and understood in various sources and disciplines. The contributors share their perspectives on methodological questions concerning research on the emotions. Scholars in religious studies and theology from different traditions—Jewish, Christian, Islamic—enter into dialogue with other disciplines, such as psychology, literary studies, sociology, cultural studies, philosophy, and historiography.