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Reading Scripture: Developing Intimacy With God, The Church, And Community, Tammy Janiece Jacko

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

By addressing the biblical literacy that results from not reading Scripture, and lack of discipline, Christians will experience spiritual growth, maturity, and a Christian worldview as a result of applying proper exegesis and hermeneutics of Scripture. The purpose of this Doctor of Ministry thesis project is to help Christians read the Bible by engaging in proper biblical interpretation. According to Fee and Stuart, “a text cannot mean what it could never have meant for its original readers/hearers. The interpretation of the biblical text is what the original writer had first spoken or written,” directly from God; therefore, developing the skills …

The Case For Hyrcanus Ii As The “Wicked Priest” And A Pirate: Evidence From Neglected Roman Historical Sources, Kenneth Atkinson

Faculty Publications

Scholars have long debated the identity of the mysterious person denounced in the Dead Sea Scrolls by the sobriquet the Wicked Priest (הכוהן הרשע). Since the discovery of the Scrolls, researchers have identified nearly twenty persons as the Wicked Priest. Some view this vast number of proposals as indicative of a faulty method for understanding the history of the community behind these texts. This is because such efforts assume the Wicked Priest was an actual person. Consequently, scholars seeking to uncover his identity use material from Josephus, Philo, Pliny, and other writers to interpret the references to him in the …

Decolonizing And Indigenizing Liberation Theology, Allen Jorgenson

Luther Faculty Publications

This chapter considers how liberation theology might be informed by spiritualities and worldviews from the First Peoples of North America, sometimes called Turtle Island. In so doing, I reference teachings, treaties and ceremonies from the community nearest me, the Six Nations of the Grand River Nation, whose members are Haudenosaunee.

In what follows I first provide an apologia for this project before imagining how each verb of the liberation hermeneutic of “see, judge, act” might be informed, in turn, by the Haudenosaunee Dish With One Spoon Wampum, the Two Row Wampum, and the Condolence Ceremony. In so doing, I will …

Historical And Contemporary Explorations In Neurotheology, Kate Harper

Consensus

This paper explores the field of Neurotheology. Neurotheology is a discipline that was developed in the 1980s and is thriving today; studies on the brain and meditation and/or spiritual practices are on the rise (Newberg, 2018). This paper provides a cursory look at the field and considers some of the historical foundations that played an indirect role in its development.

Knife-Edge And Saddleback: Augustine & William James On The Psychology Of The Specious Present, Sean Hannan

Consensus

No abstract provided.

The Theory Of Disasters In The Letter Of Mara Bar Serapion: Competition Within Philosophical And Religious Doctrines Of Disaster, Ilaria Ramelli

Journal of Religious Competition in Antiquity

This essay investigates an aspect of religious competition in antiquity: theories of disasters, individual and collective, elaborated by religious and philosophical movements. This investigation intends to contribute to enlightening popular philosophical and religious theories of disasters in Roman imperial times through the case study of a Stoicizing document of (apparently) a Syrian Hellenized author of the Roman imperial times: the Letter of Mara Bar Serapion (or Sarapion) to his son, from the Roman imperial period. This will be examined in a systematic comparison with Stoic theories of disasters and within the larger issue of the Stoicizing ideas that this Letter …

The Swine Suicides: On The Appearance And Disappearance Of Pork-Related Jewish Martyrdom In Antiquity, Jordan D. Rosenblum

Journal of Religious Competition in Antiquity

The willingness for Jews to martyr themselves rather than consume pork was well known in the ancient Mediterranean. Both Jewish and non-Jewish texts attest to this predilection, some viewing it as an inspired testimony to one’s faith and others as a baffling and peculiar act. In Late Antiquity, new depictions of pork-related Jewish martyrdom disappear (though the occasional reference to centuries-old actions do appear). This paper offers an explanation for the disappearance of accounts of pork-related Jewish martyrdom. In doing so, it advances an argument for the rhetorical role played by pork-related Jewish martyrdom. Once we understand the role that …

Foreignization In Ancient Competition, Debra Ballentine

Journal of Religious Competition in Antiquity

Much of the literary data we study from ancient West Asian and ancient Mediterranean authors features social, political, ritual, and/or theological competition. These sorts of competition are frequently intertwined. Or rather, we scholars distinguish such categories as we aim to appreciate the threads of our data. This essay focuses on one rhetorical tool frequently utilized within competitive discourse: the label “foreign.” For example, some biblical authors utilize the label “foreign” to categorize phenomena that they reject. Nonetheless, passages feature Judeans doing “foreign” practices as genuinely Judean activities. While critical scholarship has effectively recognized this tension within primary sources, some interpreters …

Service-Learning Research For Development: An Option For The Poor In Practice Through Social Analysis And Community Engagement, Thomas M. Kelly, Kate L. Nolt

Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal

A group of faculty, staff and students from Creighton University conducted a research project using a strengths-based approach to create a community health needs assessment (CNHA) in the fall of 2017. The instruments, including a survey to determine health status, a focus group questionnaire, an environmental scan and an individual interview instrument, were developed to help shift the paradigm from which many international medical missions are conducted with Creighton’s community partner in the Dominican Republic, the Centro de Educación para la Salud Integral (CESI). In the process of creating, developing, implementing, assessing and reformulating this strength-based CHNA, researchers encountered both …

The Language Of Repentance In The Book Of Mormon, Noel B. Reynolds

Faculty Publications

Efforts to understand the doctrine of repentance in the Book of Mormon have long been hampered by linguistic considerations—and especially the traditional translation provided in the King James Version of the Bible. Twentieth century studies provide a needed correction to this situation and open a wealth of potential new understandings of Book of Mormon discourse on repentance. Further, the discovery that the Book of Mormon uses the common biblical figure of speech of hendiadys repeatedly to expand and enrich the concept of repentance beyond biblical usage helps readers appreciate the ways in which repentance can be seen as the most …

Faith And Faithfulness In The Book Of Mormon, Noel B. Reynolds

Faculty Publications

The concept of covenantal faithfulness toward Yahweh that Old Testament scholars have recognized and defined over the last century turns out to be a far better account of the Book of Mormon understanding of faith in the Lord, in Jesus Christ, than are any of the competing concepts of faith that have grown out of the Christian tradition over the last two millennia. For the Nephite prophets, faith was an active concept, better understood as faithfulness—as diligent obedience to the commandments the Lord has given to those who have accepted the gospel covenant through repentance and baptism. The divine …

Covenant Language In Biblical Religions And The Book Of Mormon, Noel B. Reynolds

Faculty Publications

In this essay I have tried to provide a broad survey of the concept of covenant for Latter-day Saint students of the Bible and the Book of Mormon. I began with a sketch of the history of covenant theology in the Christian tradition showing how the early New Testament idea of a baptismal covenant was soon replaced by the Christian institution of sacraments. Although the covenant idea played little role in the historical developments of Christian theology, it did resurge in the Reformation, but without widespread theological impact.

In contrast, over the last century, the role of the covenant idea …

Calvin Theological Journal (Vol 54 No 2 - November 2019), Calvin Theological Seminary

Calvin Theological Journal

From the Editor: Karin Maag - 265 / Articles: The Story of God’s Covenants: A Biblical-Theological Investigation with Systematic Consequences by J. M. Burger - 267 / “I Have Sought to Move All to Pray … to This Good Father, by the Lord Jesus, in the Power of the Holy Spirit”: Farel, Caroli, Calvin, and Farel’s Trinitarian Prayers by Theodore G.Van Raalte - 301 / The Remonstrant Perspective and the Synod of Dordt by  Keith Stanglin - 325 / The World as Whodunit: Jan Woltjer and His Logo-Centric Philosophy in the Early Years of the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam by Rob …

Post-Soviet Transformation For Evangelicals, 1991-2018: Deepening Causes For Discord, Walter Sawatsky

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

During the great transformation between 1989 and 1991, the majority of American journalists were completely surprised by the transformations of 1989 in Eastern Europe and the collapse of the USSR in 1991, since it contradicted their stereotypes so profoundly. Several developments within the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe turned out to be signposts for those with the eyes to see. Literary figures and philosophers circulating their thinking in samizdat form, or through the emergence of dissenting movements, pointed to the disillusionment with the grand socialist promises. Solzhenitsyn had already drawn attention in his Nobel speech to the power of truth …

Eurasian And Eastern European Evangelicals: Tested Over Two Centuries, Walter Sawatsky

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The oppression of evangelicals has been a persistent legacy, but it has not applied to all of them. Therefore, we must begin by defining evangelicals and oppression. A further query to pursue is: what intensity of oppression has permitted creative survival?

The Amish Symposium, Megan Bogden, Steven Reschly, Benjamin Zeller, Tom Coletti

Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies

The Amish is a 500-some page university press-sized handbook that touches on a variety of topical areas. The book is the culmination of two and a half decades each of Kraybill’s, Johnson-Weiner’s, and Nolt’s work about the Amish. Karen Johnson-Weiner published a series of linguistic studies through the 1990s, and from these spring-board works later explored more fully schools and New York settlements. Donald Kraybill’s first Amish-focused publication was a Durkheimian study of the Amish and suicide in 1986. From then on he has maintained this functionalist orientation in comparative studies of plain Anabaptists and Amish responses to cultural, economic, …

Giftive Dialogue: An Analysis Of The Use Of The Giftive Metaphor In The Pluralist Context Of The Lutheran University Of Brazil, Maximiliano Silva

Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation

Silva, Maximiliano Wolfgramm. “Giftive Dialogue: An Analysis of the Use of the Giftive Metaphor in the Pluralist Context of the Lutheran University of Brazil.” Ph. D. diss., Concordia Seminary, 2019. 189 pp.

Modernity’s secularization project and specific characteristics of Brazilian history have promoted pluralism to the status of a moral demand, especially in the academic context. Such a situation posits challenges and opportunities for ULBRA’s campus pastors. That is so because ULBRA’s chaplains’ pastoral ministry is the most visible and symbolic expression of ULBRA’s confessional identity. Because of the claims made by Christianity, that identity has exclusivist traits. Therefore, it …

Recycling A Colonial Puritan Sermon: A Case Study, David M. Powers

Sermon Studies

Notes which the teenager John Pynchon took in the 1640s as he listened to the Rev. George Moxon’s sermons in frontier Springfield, MA, have become the inspiration and the ingredients for sermon performances in 21st century New England. The project began with a word-for-word transcription of a symbol-for-symbol manuscript based on a code invented by Pynchon. Then a very few words which the notetaker skipped, in his rush to record just what he heard, were added to provide essential clarification. So, too, was introductory material to frame the experience by encouraging the listening congregation to “stretch” a bit to appreciate …

The Gendering Of Voice In Medieval Hindu Literature, Nancy M. Martin

Religious Studies Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"To fully grasp the implications of the gendering of voice in this literature, we must first understand the religious context that generates these voices and the life stories of the saintly figures in whose names these voices continue to be spoken. Accordingly, we will trace the origins and nature of devotional Hinduism. Theologically gender inclusive and embracing a feminine spiritual identity, the stories and songs of its saints will nevertheless reveal an ongoing bias against women and upholding of patriarchal norms that is continually challenged, particularly by women saints whose life stories follow very different trajectories than their male counterparts, …

“I Will Heal Their Land”: The Meaning And Significance Of Healing (רפא) In 2 Chronicles 7:13–16, Lian Mung

Spiritus: ORU Journal of Theology

This article explores the meaning and significance of Yahweh’s promise to heal the land of his people in 2 Chr 7:13–16 within its immediate context and also within the book of 2 Chronicles by exploring how the text is connected linguistically and thematically with other related texts. It argues that the meaning of healing in 2 Chr 7:13–16 extends far beyond the physical healing of the land that results in agricultural blessings, and the theme of healing plays a significant role in the Chronicler’s theology of retribution, repentance, and restoration.

Fatih Akin's Cinema And The New Sound Of Europe, Seda Öz

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Berna Gueneli's Fatih Akin's Cinema and the New Sound of Europe (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2019).

Do We Have Enough Bibles Yet? English Bible Translations And The Transitions Through Time, Allison C. Stephan

Selected Honors Theses

The Bible is read in a variety of contexts, but with the hundreds of translations in English and controversy over which is “most accurate” or “best,” this thesis examines a brief history of Bible translation, a few translation theories such as formal and functional equivalence, what to look for in a Bible translation, and some of the most common English Bible translations. A study was conducted with college students, focusing primarily on the purpose of each translation and the people who read a specified version. Finally, this thesis supports the usage of different translations in different contexts, according to the …

God As Patron And Proprietor: God The Father And The Gospel Of Matthew In An African Folk Islamic Context, Alan Howell, Robert Andrew Montgomery

Faculty Research and Publications

While Patron-Client dynamics may seem strange to Westerners, characteristics of that system are shared by the cultures of the New Testament and the Makua-Metto people of Mozambique. The way that the Gospel of Matthew presents God as Father points to the social realities of the time which highlighted God’s role as Patron. This line of thinking resonates with the Makua-Metto and provides a powerful way of communicating about God to a folk Islamic people.

Reading The Minor Prophets As Unified And Diverse, Garrett Kaiser

Biblical Studies Student Projects

The 12 Minor Prophets—Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi—are some of the smallest and most obscure books in the Bible. They each seem to deal with God’s relationship to Israel independently, describing various aspects of judgment and restoration; however, each work is actually assembled in the Hebrew canon as one collection called “The Book of the Twelve” and thus subject to much debate about whether or not these various writings were meant to be read as a unity. In light of the work’s literary qualities, connection to the broader canon of Scripture, and …

Your Sister In The Gospel: The Life Of Jane Manning James, A Nineteenth-Century Black Mormon, Carter Charles

BYU Studies

Biographer Quincy D. Newell admits that she approaches the story of Jane Manning James (1820–1908), one of the first black members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “for what it tells us about religion and race in nineteenth-century America” (4–5) and because it is a “history of Mormonism from below” (135). Such a story, she argues, “demonstrates how a focus on temple rituals and priesthood,” though always central to Latter-day Saints, “blinds us to the everyday lived religion of thousands of nineteenth-century Mormons” (135). Beyond participating in the project of recovering the ethnically diverse past of the …

The New Testament: A Translation For Latter-Day Saints: A Study Bible, Philip L. Barlow

BYU Studies

Thomas Wayment, classics professor at Brigham Young University, has earned a reputation as one of the most capable and reliable Latter-day Saint scholars of the New Testament and the ancient classical world in which Christianity arose. Educated at the Claremont Graduate School of Religion, Wayment generally addresses Latter-day Saint audiences, whose faith he shares. His writing includes credible work on New Testament manuscript traditions, Joseph Smith’s translation of the Bible, and the historical lives of Jesus and Paul. Wayment has now accomplished his most ambitious project to date: a fresh translation, based on the best available Greek manuscripts, of the …

Full Issue

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Geographical And Demographic Approaches To Leaving Religion, Lily Kong, Orlando Woods

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This chapter provides an overview of geographical and demographic approaches to leaving religion. Just as the study of leaving religion is associated with processes of religious conversion and change, geographical and demographic approaches seek to map such changes across space and the human lifecycle. More than that, the fact that “people enter, exit, and move within religion, just as they are born, will die, and migrate, in life” (Voas 2003: 94) reveals the importance of such approaches, not least because they seek to understand religious change within the frame of life events, such as schooling, work, marriage, migration, …

The Justification Clause Of Phil 3:12 : A Textual, Transcriptional, And Exegetical Analysis, Ryan Kristopher Giffin

ATS Dissertations

No abstract provided.