Department of Old and New Testament

Permanent URI for this community

https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/1031

Browse

Browsing Department of Old and New Testament by browse.metadata.advisor "Lategan, B. C."

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Paul and freedom : implications for hermeneutics and theology
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 1999) Punt, Jeremy; Lategan, B. C.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Theology. Dept. of Old and New Testament.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Freedom plays an important role in the Pauline letters and has usually been explained with reference to three theological matters: freedom from the law, sin and death. Freedom, however, characterises Pauline hermeneutics and theology in a more comprehensive way. Sadly, these notions of freedom are not allowed to emerge and this is, to a large extent, due to the overwhelming presence of the traditional approach in understanding Paul. This approach to Paul is characterised by a spiritual and individualist reading of the apostle's letters, dating back to the sixteenth century and is continued, also in scholarly literature, to this day. Recent attempts to wrestle Paul free from this interpretive framework have been only mildly successful. Attention to Paul's use of the scriptures of Israel in his letters allows for his hermeneutics to emerge more clearly as embedded within the traditions of the first century, yet clearly having a ecclesiocentric goal. The study of Paul's use of Scripture makes it possible to show how theological and hermeneutical freedoms interact and mutually inform one another in his letters. Pauline hermeneutics, along with the interpretive practices present in the first century and early · church, have to be reevaluated today, for its potential to render new readings of Scripture. At the same time, the study of Pauline hermeneutics enables a reappropriation of the apostle's letters, encouraging renewed dialogue with these writings to the benefit of the contemporary global community.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Reading Romans 13 : aspects of the ethics of interpretation in a controversial text
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 1991-12) Botha, Jan; Lategan, B. C.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Theology. Dept. Old and New Testament.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study is an attempt to develop and illustrate an ethos of responsible interpretation for Romans 13: 1-7 within the broader context of an 'ethics of historical reading' and an 'ethics of public responsibility' in New Testament scholarship. It is argued that an ethos of responsible interpretation of the New Testament 'compels' the interpreter to take reading seriously. This implies that the implications of the liguisticality, literariness and rhetoricity of the text, as well as the social phenomena of the world created by the text, 'must' be honoured and studied with all possible methodological sophistication and rigour. This has to be done since it forms the means through which the 'otherness' of the text is manifested. Such a study has to precede any inferences about the possible relation between the literature of the New Testament and text-extrinsic matters such as God, society, history or the self.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Wisdom and foolishness in 1 Cor 1:18-2:5 : towards an interactional model of interpretation
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 1995-03) Van Rooyen, Reon; Lategan, B. C.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Theology. Dept. of Old and New Testament.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The study on wisdom and foolishness was done in the realization that our descriptions of language in terms of single decontextualized sentences could never hope to reveal the true essence of the structure and use of natural language. A sentence is not a purpose unto itself. Sentences occur in situations, they are embedded in discourse, they are surrounded by sentences and perhaps pictures or actions and gestures with which they must link. In order to understand why Paul has chosen to describe the cross event in seemingly mutually exclusive terms we must reckon with overall text strategies and with the links of the sentence with its textual, discoursal and situational environment. Once you are committed to describing language in terms of processes, a text becomes a communicative interaction between its producer and its consumer within relevant social contexts. The moment one canalizes a text as communicative interaction one is under an obligation to develop a proper apparatus or model which will take into consideration concepts such as strategies (a goal determined weighing of various alternatives) and tactics (the choice of words and sentence patterns). Hence the development of the interactional model. Working and analyzing wisdom and foolishness within this model I have found it to be two strategic phrases in Paul's strategy to achieve the double edged goal of defending his apostleship and provoking the Corinthian reinterpretation of their calling. Through the use of irony Paul attempts to implement a system of value that is itself ironic. As prospected by 1 Cor. 1:18-2:5, the world of God's calling takes to itself and transcends the appearances of the realities that occur within it. In that world foolishness expresses the value of wisdom and wisdom foolishness. Strength expresses the value of weakness and weakness expresses strength. Wisdom and foolishness become two important terms through which Paul would enable his reader to perceive the world's realities and their value in terms of their opposites. What Paul intends to achieve through the ironic use of wisdom and foolishness can best be understood by means of the different strategies he employed. His apologetic strategy is to concede his limitation of wisdom and strength, a limitation which has already engendered criticism of Paul or constitutes an accusation he anticipated. In establishing an ironic perspective in 1: 18-2:5 of the cross, Paul takes hold of the very categories of the controversy and gives them paradoxical values. When interpreted in the light of the cross Paul's apparent lack of wisdom and so called foolishness becomes ironic testimony on his behalf. It is these realities, he would claim, that demonstrate God's backing of his apostleship. Paul engages the Corintians not at the point of whether he lacks wisdom or whether he is foolish, but at their valuation of wisdom and foolishness. He engages his readers not over the evidence, but over the criteria, the system of values, which shapes their interpretation. Paul's epideictic strategy is to juxtapose and maximise the tension between what he considers to be the reality of the Corinthian calling and what he understands to be their perception of it. What is proven in the calling of the Corinthians is God's and Paul's ironic system of values, namely wisdom that is foolish and a foolishness that is full of wisdom.