Moses God And The Dynamics Of Intercessory Prayer

Revised thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Durham, 2003.

At the heart of this study is a biblical-theological approach to central passages on intercessory prayers in the OT. After examining these largely prophetic prayer dialogues, Widmer argues that they provide an important key to biblical theology and spirituality. Furthermore, a close reading of prayers by Abraham, Moses, Samuel, David, Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Joel, and Amos reveals fascinating insights into the portrayals of these characters and confirms strong conceptual associations with Moses, Israel’s archetypal mediator. Widmer reads these prayers in both their immediate literary and wider canonical contexts. The ultimate aim of this study is to gain a deeper understanding of the God whom the church worships and confesses to be the Father of Jesus Christ. Particularly pertinent is the finding that many OT prayers interact with God’s nature as revealed to Moses in Exod 34:6–7. Yhwh’s fullest revelation is also given in the context of an intercessory prayer. Widmer argues that intercessory prayer and theology have a hermeneutical-spiral relationship, mutually informing and correcting each other. It is in engaging with a loving and holy God that the phenomenon of divine mutability must be understood. Overall, Standing in the Breach suggests that fundamental biblical themes such as God’s mercy and judgment, divine retribution and forgiveness, covenant mediation, substitutionary suffering and atonement, and eventually the dynamics of the cross are all intrinsically related to and illuminated by prophetic OT intercessory prayers.

The Spirit Says offers a stunning collection of articles by an influential assemblage of scholars, all of whom lend considerable insight to the relationship between inspiration and interpretation. They address this otherwise intractable question with deft and occasionally daring readings of a variety of texts from the ancient world, including—but not limited to—the scriptures of early Judaism and Christianity. The thrust of this book can be summed up not so much in one question as in four: o What is the role of revelation in the interpretation of Scripture? o What might it look like for an author to be inspired? o What motivates a claim to the inspired interpretation of Scripture? o Who is inspired to interpret Scripture? More often than not, these questions are submerged in this volume under the tame rubrics of exegesis and hermeneutics, but they rise in swells and surges too to the surface, not just occasionally but often. Combining an assortment of prominent voices, this book does not merely offer signposts along the way. It charts a pioneering path toward a model of interpretation that is at once intellectually robust and unmistakably inspired.

A leading biblical scholar, Hans Heinrich Schmid, believes that righteousness, or the right order of the world, is 'the fundamental problem of our human existence'. It is a key theme in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament's theology of creation and salvation, along with associated themes such as justice, steadfast love/loyalty, truth/ fidelity, compassion/mercy, sin and disorder/chaos. A number of studies of righteousness have been undertaken but most have tended to focus on Israel's call to be righteous, as voiced in particular in the Prophetic Books and the Psalter. In contrast, this book focuses on divine righteousness as the basis for all other notions of righteousness, as this is outlined in the foundational teaching or revelation of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament- namely, the Torah or Pentateuch. It then undertakes a study of how righteousness in the Prophetic Books, the Psalter and the Book of Job relates to this foundational teaching.

This book investigates the narrative function of the Old Testament characters in the Gospel of John. The fascinating thesis is that the Hebrew characters in John's narrative uniformly function as a witness for the messianic identity of Jesus. The Jewish scriptural traditions (Hebrew and intertestamental ones) are compared to shed light on John's indebtedness for its formation of his Christology. A compelling argument ensues, which informs our understanding, not only of the Gospel itself, but also of Jesus Christ revealed in the Gospel. COMMENDATION "Dr Ahn's thorough and careful study represents a solid contribution, from which many will benefit. All serious interpreters of the Johannine witness will want to refer to this work." - Mark A. Seifrid, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, USA

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?

Encountering an ancient text not only as a historical source but also as a literary artifact entails an important paradigm shift, which in recent years has taken place in classical and Oriental philology. Biblical scholars, Egyptologists, and classical philologists have been pioneers in supplementing traditional historical-critical exegesis with more-literary approaches. This has led to a wealth of new insights. While the methodological consequences of this shift have been discussed within each discipline, until recently there has not been an attempt to discuss its validity and methodology on an interdisciplinary level. In 2006, the Faculty of Bible and Biblical Interpretation at the Hochschule für Jüdische Studien, Heidelberg, and the Faculty of Theology at the University of Heidelberg invited scholars from the U.S., Canada, the Netherlands, Israel, and Germany to examine these issues. Under the title “Literary Fiction and the Construction of Identity in Ancient Literatures: Options and Limits of Modern Literary Approaches in the Exegesis of Ancient Texts,” experts in Egyptology, classical philology, ancient Near Eastern studies, biblical studies, Jewish studies, literary studies, and comparative religion came together to present current research and debate open questions. At this conference, each representative (from a total of 23 different disciplines) dealt with literary theory in regard to his or her area of research. The present volume organizes 17 of the resulting essays along 5 thematic lines that show how similar issues are dealt with in different disciplines: (1) Thinking of Ancient Texts as Literature, (2) The Identity of Authors and Readers, (3) Fiction and Fact, (4) Rereading Biblical Poetry, and (5) Modeling the Future by Reconstructing the Past.