Innovation in Search of Reorientation: New Testament Studies Rediscovering Its Subject Matter

HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies

2016

This article considers intersections between cultural studies and New Testament studies. It ponders and focuses on possible approaches to the bearing of the ‘cultural turn’ on biblical studies. Following a brief consideration of cultural studies and its potential value for New Testament studies, four promising developments in cultural studies approaches to the New Testament are noted.Keywords: Cultural Studies; Postcolonial; Gender; Ideology; Autobiography

Section: Cultural Studies: How? Looking Into the Cultural Crystal Ballmentioning

confidence: 99%

A cultural turn in New Testament studies?

HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies

2016

“…However much the concepts may have been changing, the dichotomy, enshrined in standard studies and reference works in the field, still carries the connotations of Christian "universalism" and transcendent spirituality versus (a divinely rejected) Jewish particularism and legalism. Numerous recent studies have demonstrated that key aspects of these pretentious, all-encompassing constructs have no basis in Pauline and other literature, including the Book of Acts, which is of questionable validity as a historical source (Horsley 1995(Horsley :1153.…”

Section: Paul Amid Early First-century Ce Identitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Paul, Hermeneutics and Character: Implications for Scripture and Identity

2013

Scriptura

The Bible as foundational document and as important source of identity in the Christian tradition and its religious communities, and its contribution to the formation of the identity of certain forms of culture and literature, is considered from the perspective of "enscripturalised identity". The point of departure is the Pauline perspective on identity, which is introduced against the broader context of notions of identity in the first century CE. From Paul's insistence on the new identity of the followers of Christ, the focus is turned to how his insistence upon a new hermeneutic characterised by freedom correlates with the new identity in Christ, resulting in an embodied hermeneutic and a self-understanding developed from Scripture. In a second part of the study, enscripturalised identity is considered with regard to contemporary, multicultural South Africa, amidst the attempt to forge a sense of common vision and character. Affirming the close links between religion and notions of identity, the particular value of the relationship between Scripture and identity in Africa is considered. It is concluded that notions of identity advocated by Paul should be understood in reciprocal relationship to his foundational scriptures, and that enscripturalised identity will be ignored at peril when reflecting on the general character of the South African rainbow nation.

“…Rather than strengthening socio-political responsibility, the anti-corporeal Pauline traditional readings have worked in favour of a world-alienated(-ing) theological approach, energetically focussed on matters eschatological and devoid from corporeal and material exigencies which were relegated to the all-consuming, other-worldly salvation and its consequences. A focus on the embodied approach of Paul -notwithstanding certain Pauline corporeal sentiments and actions from which readers today would dissociate -allows for thinking about planetary engagements and contemporary deadly workings of power from a bodily perspective: "why and how it matters, interpersonally, personally, locally, nationally, 7 A whole range of publications can be listed here, but good summaries of interpretive trends in Pauline interpretation can be found in more comprehensive multi-and single-author volumes (e.g., Babcock 1990;Beker 1991;Elliott 1994;Harrill 2012;Horsley 1995). "Paul" is shorthand for the Pauline letters and at times for the traditions dependent upon and developing out of, or better, with reference to these letters.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Reassessing the Significance of Gendered Embodiment in Paul: Beyond Reception-Historical Impositions

2022

SCRIP

Planetary entanglement is often tangential to if not totally absent from the Pauline letters. Traditionally, the letters are interpreted as originating from an apostolic author with an eschatological and apocalyptically driven focus, resorting to a Platonic body-soul dichotomy and largely alienated from society and this world and its concerns. However, considering how Pauline rhetoric, especially when read in its socio-historical context, involves and at times even is based on embodiment and gender awareness, shows the Pauline letters in a different light, with strong, if at times covert and assumed, inter-personal, communal, and terrestrial entanglements or intersectionalities. Textual examples from Paul are provided for each of these three intersectionalities to show that reassessment of gendered embodiment in Paul holds promise for theological reflection from biblical perspectives in general and for socially engaged theology in relation to the Anthropocene, in particular. Keywords: Pauline rhetoric, Embodiment, Intersectionalities, Gender, Necropolitics