Creation and Chaos in the Primeval Era and the Eschaton

Creation and Chaos in the Primeval Era and the Eschaton PDF Author: Hermann Gunkel
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 0802828043
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 485

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Book Description
Foreword by Peter Machinist Hermann Gunkel's groundbreaking Schöpfung und Chaos, originally published in German in 1895, is here translated in its entirety into English for the first time. Even though available only in German, this work by Gunkel has had a profound influence on modern biblical scholarship. Discovering a number of parallels between the biblical creation accounts and a Babylonian creation account, the Enuma Elish, Gunkel argues that ancient Babylonian traditions shaped the Hebrew people's perceptions both of God's creative activity at the beginning of time and of God's re-creative activity at the end of time. Including illuminating introductory pieces by eminent scholar Peter Machinist and by translator K. William Whitney, Gunkel's Creation and Chaos will appeal to serious students and scholars in the area of biblical studies.

Creation and Chaos in the Primeval Era and the Eschaton

Creation and Chaos in the Primeval Era and the Eschaton PDF Author: Hermann Gunkel
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 0802828043
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 485

Get Book

Book Description
Foreword by Peter Machinist Hermann Gunkel's groundbreaking Schöpfung und Chaos, originally published in German in 1895, is here translated in its entirety into English for the first time. Even though available only in German, this work by Gunkel has had a profound influence on modern biblical scholarship. Discovering a number of parallels between the biblical creation accounts and a Babylonian creation account, the Enuma Elish, Gunkel argues that ancient Babylonian traditions shaped the Hebrew people's perceptions both of God's creative activity at the beginning of time and of God's re-creative activity at the end of time. Including illuminating introductory pieces by eminent scholar Peter Machinist and by translator K. William Whitney, Gunkel's Creation and Chaos will appeal to serious students and scholars in the area of biblical studies.

Creation and Chaos

Creation and Chaos PDF Author: JoAnn Scurlock
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 1575068656
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
Hermann Gunkel was a scholar in the generation of the origins of Assyriology, the spectacular discovery by George Smith of fragments of the “Chaldean Genesis,” and the Babel-Bibel debate. Gunkel’s thesis, inspired by materials supplied to him by the Assyriologist Heinrich Zimmern, was to take the Chaoskampf motif of Revelation as an event that would not only occur at the end of the world but had already happened at the beginning, before Creation. In other words, in this theory, one imagines God in Genesis 1 as first having battled Rahab, Leviathan, and Yam (the forces of Chaos) in a grand battle, and only then beginning to create. The problem with Gunkel’s theory is that it did not simply identify common elements in the mythologies of the ancient Near East but imposed upon them a structure dictating the relationships between the elements, a structure that was based on inadequate knowledge and a forced interpretation of his sources. On the other hand, one is not entitled to insist that there was no cultural conversation among peoples who spent the better part of several millennia trading with, fighting, and conquering one another. Creation and Chaos attempts to address some of these issues. The contributions are organized into five sections that address various aspects of the issues raised by Gunekl’s theories.

The Legends of Genesis

The Legends of Genesis PDF Author: Hermann Gunkel
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1725200406
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
Every new archaeological discovery in the Middle East bears further witness to the stature of "one of the most remarkable Old Testament scholars of modern times," as Hurman Gunkel is characterized by W.F. Albright in the introduction to this book. Relying on a highly developed sense of religious and aesthetic values, and a broad knowledge of literary forms, Gunkel found in the Patriarchal legends accurate memories of past happenings. Gunkel recognized the influence of Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Canaanite elements and their transformation and integration into Hebrew thinking. He stood up against Wellhausen's widely influential treatment of Genesis as a collection of primitive, unhistorical myths. He prepared the way for contributions from cultural anthropology to the understanding of the Biblical period." The parallels between the life of Genesis and the activities mentioned in contemporary extra-biblical sources are very far-reaching indeed," Albright declares, as he reminds us that "Abraham turns out to have been a caravan leader, and the very name 'Hebrew' refers to donkey caravaneering."

Pentateuchal Traditions in the Late Second Temple Period

Pentateuchal Traditions in the Late Second Temple Period PDF Author: Akio Moriya
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004184538
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
This volume consists of collected essays, which was first read at the International Workshop on the Study of the Pentateuch with Special Emphasis on Textual Transmission History in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods held August 28-31, 2007 in Tokyo.

From Chaos to Cosmos

From Chaos to Cosmos PDF Author: Sidney Greidanus
Publisher: Crossway
ISBN: 143355500X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
"I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the LORD, who does all these things." Isaiah 45:7 When God created the world, he brought perfect order out of what was "without form and void." But with human rebellion against God leading to God's curse, disorder was introduced into creation—disorder that we still see all around us today. Tracing the chaos to cosmos theme from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22, pastor-scholar Sidney Greidanus reveals how God is restoring his creation through Jesus Christ, who has already begun to shine light into the darkness and will one day return to bring peace, order, and restoration once and for all. With discussion questions at the end of each chapter and a fourteen-session reading plan, this book is ideal for small groups as well as individual study.

Mark’s Argumentative Jesus

Mark’s Argumentative Jesus PDF Author: Caurie Beaver
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532646453
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Book Description
The author claims that the gospel of Mark is a speech or sermon. To prove this he shows how Mark used many of the elements of Aristotle's rhetoric. Literary critics noticed these rhetorical features in Mark, but remained with a literary critical model of that gospel instead of a rhetorical view that the evidence called for. They continued to translate the first word of Mark, arche, as "beginning" to provide Mark's story of Jesus with a chronological beginning. The author translates Mark's first word as "guiding principle" to provide Mark's persuasive speech or sermon with a logical starting point.

Chaos from the Ancient World to Early Modernity

Chaos from the Ancient World to Early Modernity PDF Author: Andreas Höfele
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110655004
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Chaos is a perennial source of fear and fascination. The original "formless void" (tohu-wa-bohu) mentioned in the book of Genesis, chaos precedes the created world: a state of anarchy before the establishment of cosmic order. But chaos has frequently also been conceived of as a force that persists in the cosmos and in society and threatens to undo them both. From the cultures of the ancient Near East and the Old Testament to early modernity, notions of the divine have included the power to check and contain as well as to unleash chaos as a sanction for the violation of social and ethical norms. Yet chaos has also been construed as a necessary supplement to order, a region of pure potentiality at the base of reality that provides the raw material of creation or even constitutes a kind of alternative order itself. As such, it generates its own peculiar 'formations of the formless'. Focusing on the connection between the cosmic and the political, this volume traces the continuities and re-conceptualizations of chaos from the ancient Near East to early modern Europe across a variety of cultures, discourses and texts. One of the questions it poses is how these pre-modern 'chaos theories' have survived into and reverberate in our own time.

Playing with Leviathan: Interpretation and Reception of Monsters from the Biblical World

Playing with Leviathan: Interpretation and Reception of Monsters from the Biblical World PDF Author: Koert van Bekkum
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004337962
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
Playing with Leviathan explores the theological meaning of Leviathan and other monsters from the biblical world by studying their ancient Near Eastern background and their attestation in biblical texts, early and rabbinic Judaism, Christian theology, Early Modern art and film.

Elijah, Yahweh, and Baal

Elijah, Yahweh, and Baal PDF Author: Hermann Gunkel
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1498201873
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 100

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Book Description
"Elijah, Yahweh, and Baal is a masterpiece presented with authority by a twentieth-century accomplished and unsurpassed exegete. It is now translated by a disciple, whose elegant rendition sounds as if Hermann Gunkel had originally written himself the book in English." --Andre LaCocque, The Chicago Theological Seminary, Chicago, IL "Written a century ago for a church audience eager to learn how the best scholarship of the day could illuminate one of the Bible's most absorbing stories, this little book shows Gunkel at the height of his powers of critical perspicuity, explanatory finesse, and reverent sensitivity, the ideal Bible study leader, at once learned, captivating, and devout. . . . Moreover, Gunkel encompasses his subject as few today could or would in such short scope, combining philological acumen, aesthetic appreciation, comparative perspective, and attention to communal folk tradition--his pioneer distinction--and constants of human religiosity. The translation includes astute notes by the editor and a helpful list of more recent resources." --Robert B. Coote, San Francisco Theological Seminary, San Francisco, CA "Hermann Gunkel, who died in 1932, is one of the greatest teachers and 'God-Fathers' of Old Testament study. He has taught us the most about the artistic, imaginative dimensions of the text. His interpretation of the Elijah narrative in this volume is a treasure that merits continuing attention. We may be grateful indeed to K. C. Hanson for bringing it to us in English, and to Wipf and Stock for its publication. Gunkel continues to be our teacher and 'God-Father' in wise shrewd reading of the text." --Walter Brueggemann, Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, GA

Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology

Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology PDF Author: John H. Walton
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 1575066548
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
The ancient Near Eastern mode of thought is not at all intuitive to us moderns, but our understanding of ancient perspectives can only approach accuracy when we begin to penetrate ancient texts on their own terms rather than imposing our own world view. In this task, we are aided by the ever-growing corpus of literature that is being recovered and analyzed. After an introduction that presents some of the history of comparative studies and how it has been applied to the study of ancient texts in general and cosmology in particular, Walton focuses in the first half of this book on the ancient Near Eastern texts that inform our understanding about ancient ways of thinking about cosmology. Of primary interest are the texts that can help us discern the parameters of ancient perspectives on cosmic ontology—that is, how the writers perceived origins. Texts from across the ancient Near East are presented, including primarily Egyptian, Sumerian, and Akkadian texts, but occasionally also Ugaritic and Hittite, as appropriate. Walton’s intention, first of all, is to understand the texts but also to demonstrate that a functional ontology pervaded the cognitive environment of the ancient Near East. This functional ontology involves more than just the idea that ordering the cosmos was the focus of the cosmological texts. He posits that, in the ancient world, bringing about order and functionality was the very essence of creative activity. He also pays close attention to the ancient ideology of temples to show the close connection between temples and the functioning cosmos. The second half of the book is devoted to a fresh analysis of Genesis 1:1–2:4. Walton offers studies of significant Hebrew terms and seeks to show that the Israelite texts evidence a functional ontology and a cosmology that is constructed with temple ideology in mind, as in the rest of the ancient Near East. He contends that Genesis 1 never was an account of material origins but that, as in the rest of the ancient world, the focus of “creation texts” was to order the cosmos by initiating functions for the components of the cosmos. He further contends that the cosmology of Genesis 1 is founded on the premise that the cosmos should be understood in temple terms. All of this is intended to demonstrate that, when we read Genesis 1 as the ancient document it is, rather than trying to read it in light of our own world view, the text comes to life in ways that help recover the energy it had in its original context. At the same time, it provides a new perspective on Genesis 1 in relation to what have long been controversial issues. Far from being a borrowed text, Genesis 1 offers a unique theology, even while it speaks from the platform of its contemporaneous cognitive environment.