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The book of Isaiah is one of the longest and strangest books of the Hebrew Bible, composed over several centuries and traversing the catastrophe that befell the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah in the 8th and 6th centuries BCE. Francis Landy's book tells the story of the poetic response to catastrophe, and the hope for a new and perfect world on the other side. The study traces two parallel developments: the displacement of the Davidic promise onto the Persian Empire, Israel, and the prophet himself; and the transition from exclusively male images of the deity to the matching of male and female prototypes, whereby YHWH takes the place of the warrior goddess. Utopia, Catastrophe, and Poetry in the Book of Isaiah consists of close readings of individual passages in Isaiah, commencing with Chapter One and the problems of beginning, and ending with Deutero-Isaiah, composed subsequent to the Babylonian exile. The volume is arranged thematically as well as sequentially: the first chapter following the introduction concerns gender, the second death, the third the Oracles about the Nations. At the centre there is what Landy calls 'the constitutive enigma', Isaiah's commission in his vision to speak so that people will not understand. This renders the entire book potentially incomprehensible; the more we try to understand it, the greater the difficulty. For Landy, this creates a model of reading and writing, the challenge and the risk of going up blind alleys, of trying to make sense of a disastrous world. Isaiah's commission pervades the book. Throughout there is a promise of an age of clarity as well as social and political transformation, which is always deferred beyond the horizon. Hence it is a book without an ending, or with multiple endings. In the final chapters, the author turns to the central Chapter Thirty-Three, a mise-en-abyme of the book and a prayer for deliverance, and the issues of exile and the possibility of return. Like every poetic work, particularly in an era of cultural collapse, it is a critique of the past and a hope for a new humanity.
"Offers a deep reading of the book of Isaiah by considering the response of poetry to catastrophe. Contributes to the growing body of feminist and gender-based interpretations of the Bible. Focuses on poetry and poets, to counter the conventional emphasis on scribes and scribal communities in biblical studies."--Publisher's website.
A unique work of Fundamental Theology, Revelation and the Word of God explores key issues of divine revelation as open questions. They include: Why is revelation so elusive? Existential and philosophical problems of revelation in the context of apologetics. The self-revelation of God in mystery. What does it mean to say, as the Bible does, that God 'speaks' and 'acts'? How does revelation relate to the Bible, history, religious experience and the church? The relational and personalist dimensions of revelation. What the biblical Wisdom tradition contributes to our understanding of revelation. The threefold form of the Word of God: Jesus Christ – the incarnate Word (Logos) and Wisdom (Sophia) of God; the Scriptures that witness to him; and the church's proclamation (kerygma) in preaching, sacraments and other ways. The role of hermeneutics, cultural constraints and imagination in the reception of revelation. Critique (including Feminist Theology) of claimed 'revelation'. Is there revelation today? How do developments in doctrine and practice relate to divine revelation? The liturgy as a vehicle of the Word of God. The Word in pastoral practice. Jesus Christ as the crown and criterion of divine revelation according to the Fourth Gospel.
The word rûaḥ (commonly translated as breath, wind, spirit, or Spirit) occurs in the Old Testament 378 times--more frequently than torah, shalom, or Sabbath. In this volume, a popular Old Testament scholar, whose previous books have received wide acclaim, cracks open the challenging and provocative world of the Spirit in the Old Testament, offering readers cogent yet comprehensive insights. Grounded in scholarship yet accessible and inviting, this book unlocks the world of the Spirit, plunging readers into an imaginative realm of fresh senses, sounds, and skills. The book gives readers the opportunity to recapture Israel's tenacious sense of the Spirit's energy as it was expressed by a series of vibrant verbs: blowing, breathing, coming, resting, passing, pouring, filling, cleansing, standing, and guiding. Readers will encounter in these pages all of the Old Testament expressions of the Spirit--passages that will challenge the conventional, confront the commonplace, and transport them to a world of wisdom, work, and wonder.
In the last two decades, increasing numbers of texts have been suggested as coming from or edited during the Persian period, but these discussions do not always reflect extensively on the assumptions used in making these claims or the implications on a broader scale. Earlier generations of scholars found it sufficient to categorize material in the biblical books simply as "late" or "postexilic" without adequately trying to determine when, by whom, and why the material was incorporated into the text at a fixed point in the Persian period. By grappling with these questions, the essays in this volume evince a greater degree of precision vis-a-vis dating and historical context. The authors introduce the designations early Persian, middle Persian, and late Persian in their textual analysis, and collectively they take significant steps toward developing criteria for locating a biblical text within the Persian period. Contributors: Reinhard Achenbach, Richard J. Bautch, Joseph Blenkinsopp, David M. Carr, Georg Fischer SJ, Raik Heckl, Yigal Levin, Jill Middlemas, Dalit Rom-Shiloni, Konrad Schmid, Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer
Antagonistic imagery has a striking presence in apocalyptic writings of Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity. In these visionary accounts, the role of the divine warrior fighting against demonic forces is often taken by a human adept, who becomes exalted and glorified as a result of his encounter with otherworldly antagonists, serving as a prerequisite for his final apotheosis. Demons of Change examines the meaning of these interactions for the transformations of the hero and antihero of early Jewish and Christian apocalyptic accounts. Andrei A. Orlov traces the roots of this trope to ancient Near Eastern traditions, paying special attention to the significance of conflict in the adept's ascent and apotheosis and to the formative value of these developments for Jewish and Christian martyrological accounts. This antagonistic tension plays a critical role both for the exaltation of the protagonist and for the demotion of his opponent. Orlov treats the motif of the hero's apotheosis in the midst of conflict in its full historical and interpretive complexity using a broad variety of Jewish sources, from the creational narratives of the Hebrew Bible to later Jewish mystical testimonies.
Annotation A study of the phenomenon of prophecy as documented in ancient Near Eastern texts and the Hebrew Bible as well as Greek sources, from the twenty-first century BCE to the second century CE.
This book explores the prophetic characteristics of literature, particularly poetry, that seek to reimagine the world in which it is written. Using theological and philosophical insights it charts the relentless impulse of literature to propose alternative visions, practicable or utopian, and point toward possibilities of renewal and change. Drawing from each of the three main Abrahamic religions, as well as Greek and Latin classics, an international group of scholars utilise a diverse range of analytical and interpretive methods to draw out the prophetic voice in poetry. Looking at the writings of figures like T. S. Elliot, Blake, Wittgenstein and Isaiah, the theme of the prophetic is shown to be of timely importance given the current state of geo-political challenges and uncertainties and offers a much-needed critical discussion of these broad cultural questions. This collection of essays offers readers an insight into the constructive power of literature. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars working in Religion and the Arts, Religious Studies, Theology and Aesthetics.
An Invitation to Biblical Poetry is an introduction to the aesthetic dimensions of the ancient poetry of the Bible. It argues that, as art, biblical poems engage their readers in embodied encounters that accomplish intellectual work. It examines how this is achieved through the poems' various techniques of voicing and address, lines, formal patterns, figures such as metaphor, personification, and symbol, and the crucial but elusive dimensions of historical and readerly context. Its broad survey of biblical poetry and accessible style will benefit anyone interested in becoming a better reader of poetry.
Wisdom in Classical and Biblical Tradition begins with the recognition that modern culture emerged from a synthesis of the legacies of ancient Greek civilization and the theological perspectives of the Jewish and Christian scriptures. Part of what made this synthesis possible was a shared outlook: a common aspiration toward wholeness of understanding that refused to separate knowledge from goodness, virtue from happiness, cosmos from polis, and divine authority from human responsibility. This wholeness of understanding, or wisdom, featured prominently in both classical and biblical literatures as an ultimate good. Michael Legaspi has two central aims. The first is to explain in formal terms what wisdom is. Though wisdom involves matters of practical judgment affecting the life of the individual and the community, it has also been identified with an understanding of the world and of the ultimate realities that give meaning to human thought and action. In its traditional form, wisdom was understood to govern intellectual, social, and ethical endeavors. His second aim is to analyze figures and texts that have yielded and shaped the traditional understanding of wisdom. The book examines accounts of wisdom within foundational texts that range from the period of Homer to the destruction of the Second Temple. In doing so, it explains why the search for wisdom remains an important but problematic endeavor today.