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Displaying (1 - 8 of 8)
- Title
- Incorporating syntax into theories of textual transmission : preliminary studies in the Judaean desert Isaiah scrolls and fragments
- Contributor
- James Tucker (author), Martin Abegg (thesis supervisor), Dirk Büchner (second reader), Trinity Western University SGS (Degree granting institution)
- Discipline/Stream
- Biblical Studies
- Abstract
- Prior to the discovery of the Qumran and Judaean Desert scrolls and fragments, text-critical scholars conducted their investigation of textual variation by means of manuscript stemma, among which ! and its associated scribal school was the golden rule. With nearly seventy years of research now complete, scholars have emended their methodological framework to account for variation by means of the scribal practices of the Second Temple era. To analyze textual variation vis-à-vis scribal practices and approaches has required that scholars incorporate historical linguistics into existing philological methods. The linguistic categories of orthography, phonology, and morphology have received a significant amount attention, mostly in Emanuel Tov's Non-Aligned theory. However, syntax has received little attention. To test the hypothesis that syntax should likewise be incorporated into transmission theory methodology, several case studies from the Judaean Desert Isaiah corpus are presented. The conclusion of the present study affirms that syntax offers a viable method to account for the extant readings witnessed in the Judaean Desert Isaiah corpus.
- Publication Year
- 2014
- Title
- Memories of Balaam: Translatability of a Religious Specialist in Ancient Israel
- Contributor
- Ryan D. Schroeder (author), Craig Broyles (thesis supervisor), Dirk Büchner (second reader), Trinity Western University SGS (Degree granting institution)
- Discipline/Stream
- Biblical Studies
- Abstract
- Scholars have employed the biblical Balaam traditions both in the defense of and in opposition to Jan Assmann’s assertion that early Israel rejected cross-cultural religious translatability. The Hebrew Bible’s diverse portrayals of Balaam have long stimulated scholarly, literary-critical analysis. Also, the Deir ʿAlla inscription provides an intriguing extra-biblical glimpse of this enigmatic character. In this study, I discern how these early depictions of Balaam reflect socially shaped and shared memories of Balaam as a foreign religious specialist who participated in Israel’s past. I argue that early memories of Balaam suggest his warm reception among Yhwh worshipping Israelites in spite of his foreign status. However, later guardians of Israel’s written traditions came to remember and write about Balaam as a diviner whose role in Israel’s past primarily served to demonstrate the dangers of non-Israelites and their abominable religious practices.
- Publication Year
- 2015
- Title
- No faithful oaths : a comparison of Esau’s speech in Jubilees 37:18-23 with Achilles’ speech in Iliad 22.260-272
- Contributor
- James Hamrick (author), James Scott (thesis supervisor), Dirk Büchner (second reader), Trinity Western University SGS (Degree granting institution)
- Discipline/Stream
- Biblical Studies
- Abstract
- Since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the mid-twentieth century scholars have made significant progress in understanding the Book of Jubilees, yet very little work has been done exploring this composition within its broader non-Jewish Hellenistic literary and cultural context. The handful of studies that have addressed this issue show that Jubilees was conversant with Greek intellectual traditions, demonstrating the potential fruitfulness of this area of research and the need to explore it further. This thesis attempts a modest contribution to this task by examining Esau's speech to Jacob in Jubilees 37:18-23 in light of Achilles' speech to Hector in Iliad 22:260-272. This comparison reveals that Esau’s speech exhibits notable similarities to Achilles’ speech in literary setting, rhetorical purpose, rhetorical mechanism, use of imagery, syntax, vocabulary, and characterization. These similarities are best explained as the result of the author of Jubilees intentionally adopting and adapting elements of the Iliad for his own purposes.
- Publication Year
- 2014
- Title
- Northern Psalms in Southern Contexts: Defining a Historical Setting for the Psalms of Asaph
- Contributor
- Spencer J Elliott (author), Craig C Broyles (thesis supervisor), Dirk Büchner (second reader), Trinity Western University SGS (Degree granting institution)
- Discipline/Stream
- Biblical Studies
- Abstract
- The psalms of Asaph (50, 73-83) present an intriguing problem for their interpreters. Though these psalms show every sign of being used in the temple at Jerusalem, they contain a ponderous amount of traditions, geographic references, and names that would be more appropriate in Israel’s northern kingdom. The haphazard geographic and tradition-history provenance of these psalms is best reconciled by assuming a fundamental mixture between northern and southern material in the growing and cosmopolitan city of pre-exilic Jerusalem, beginning in the time of Hezekiah. As northern psalmists moved to Jerusalem after the conquests of the Assyrian empire in the late 8th c. BCE, they brought their traditions of worship and assimilated these traditions within the liturgies of Jerusalem’s temple. These psalms illumine how northern Israelites accommodated to their new Jerusalemite setting after 722 BCE, and how their psalms reflect their experience of forced displacement.
- Publication Year
- 2019
- Title
- Reading the Text With its Ancient Audience: The Amnon and Tamar Narrative as a Test Case
- Contributor
- Jonathon M. Riley (author), Craig C. Broyles (thesis supervisor), Dirk Büchner (second reader), Trinity Western University SGS (Degree granting institution)
- Discipline/Stream
- Biblical Studies
- Abstract
- This thesis seeks to demonstrate that the methods of narrative criticism can be employed in a modified way to address the problems with the intentional fallacy that are inherent in narrative criticism, and the tendency of narrative criticism to ignore historical-critical questions about the text. This modification will employ a new method to analyze the Amnon and Tamar narrative as follows: first use the historical-critical method to reconstruct JEDtrH, then use reception criticism to determine the ways in which the earliest audience of JEDtrH could have understood the text, then use narrative criticism to present one way in which one member of its earliest audience could have understood one pericope within the text. This analysis is preceded by a chapter explaining the interpretive styles associated with narrative criticism.
- Publication Year
- 2018
- Title
- A Sanctuary in Time: Exploring Genesis 1’s Memory of Creation
- Contributor
- Kyle R.L. Parsons (author), Craig C. Broyles (thesis supervisor), Dirk Büchner (second reader), Trinity Western University SGS (Degree granting institution)
- Discipline/Stream
- Biblical Studies
- Abstract
- Since the days of Wellhausen, pentateuchal scholarship has essentially agreed that Gen 1 and Gen 2 are from two distinct sources. Furthermore, they agree that Gen 1 was added in front of Gen 2 at a relatively late period during the Pentateuch's compositional history. Moving beyond these agreements, this thesis asks why Gen 1, and its cultural memory of creation, was added in front of Gen 2? In other words, what motivated a later group to come along and add Gen 1? As such, this thesis argues that Gen 1 was intentionally added in order to primarily elevate the Sabbath to a position and status equal to the Temple/Tabernacle. In mnemonic terms, then, Gen 1 is a countermemory that resulted in a shift away from sacred space toward sacred time. A mnemonic shift from the sanctuary in Jerusalem to a sanctuary in time.
- Publication Year
- 2016
- Title
- Tracking Changes: A Proposal for a Linguistically Sensitive Schema for Categorizing Textual Variation of Hebrew Bible Texts in Light of Variant Scribal Practices Among the Judean Desert Psalms Witnesses
- Contributor
- David Sigrist (author), Martin Abegg Jr. (thesis supervisor), Dirk Büchner (second reader), Trinity Western University SGS (Degree granting institution)
- Discipline/Stream
- Biblical Studies
- Abstract
- The Judaean Desert discoveries have revolutionized our understanding of the textual development and transmission of the Hebrew Bible. Accordingly, after almost seventy years of research, four theories of textual transmission have become predominant. Nevertheless, in recent years the need to incorporate Second Temple scribal practices and historical linguistics into current philological methods and text-critical approaches has come to the forefront. This thesis proposes a linguistically sensitive schema for categorizing variation of Hebrew Bible texts, which serves to incorporate historical linguistic insights alongside existing philological models. Using such a schema this thesis presents three case studies from the Psalms to test whether or not the identification of variant scribal practices, as discernible from computational linguistics, can sufficiently explain the variation found among Judaean Desert psalms witnesses. The conclusion affirms the validity and utility of such a schema and perspective for Hebrew Bible textual studies.
- Publication Year
- 2015
- Title
- YHWH as Gardener in the Old Testament with special reference to Psalm 104
- Contributor
- Jeehoon B. Kim (author), Craig Broyles (thesis supervisor), Dirk Büchner (second reader), Trinity Western University SGS (Degree granting institution)
- Discipline/Stream
- Biblical Studies
- Abstract
- The aim of the present study is to investigate Psalm 104 as a whole and to determine its biblical-theological contribution to Israelite thinking of creation. Its methods are comparative-historical, semantic, literary, and biblical theological. I argue that the psalmist uses not only images that are reminiscent of the sun-god and storm-god of the ancient Near East but also images that reflect an ancient garden or park. Thus, the thesis of this study is that Psalm 104 portrays creation as a garden and YHWH as the royal gardener who creates it and oversees its care. As ancient gardens were built and maintained in order to reflect creation with a diversity of plants and animals, the provision of water, and ecological order, the psalm portrays creation by using images that allude to an ancient garden.
- Publication Year
- 2013