By John F. Kutsko
With the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple and the exile of participants of the Israelite neighborhood to the land of its enemies, whose gods have been represented as divine statues, the prophet Ezekiel confronted a problem: the right way to reply to the enemies' name callings that Israel's God was once absent, while the foreigners' gods self-evidently have been current. therefore, to invite the query, "Where is God" was once to stand a number of complicated and tangled difficulties. How is God to be represented? How is Yahweh to be differentiated from different deities? what's Yahweh's dating to Israel in exile?
Kutsko units out to respond to those questions in the subject of divine presence and lack, relatively because it pertains to the kabod theology in Ezekiel. He exhibits that God's absence turns into, for Ezekiel, a controversy for his presence and gear, whereas the presence of idols indicated their absence and impotence. Ezekiel extends this proposition right into a corollary: God's presence isn't consigned to sanctuary, for God is a sanctuary. during this regard, absence from the Temple is a message of judgment and the precursor to a message of recovery. If God can develop into a sanctuary, his presence in exile turns into a message of victory even over imperial powers. This conceptualization of Yahweh, then, finally ends up defining the ability and place of Israel's God in distinctively common phrases. during this contribution, the booklet of Ezekiel performs a valuable and formerly unappreciated function within the improvement of Israelite theology, and monotheism particularly.
Read Online or Download Between Heaven and Earth: Divine Presence and Absence in the Book of Ezekiel PDF
Best sacred writings books
Shadow on the Steps: Time Measurement in Ancient Israel
How did the traditional Israelites view and degree time? The Hebrew Bible, the manager resource of data for Israelite time-reckoning through the monarchic interval (ca. one thousand 586 B. C. E. ), comprises chronological information from many alternative assets. This fabric has formerly been handled as though it have been derived from a unmarried resource and mirrored yet one approach of time size.
Buddhist Sutras: Origin, Development, Transmission
This ebook bargains an engrossing account either one of the starting place and improvement of the sutras and of the clergymen who braved perilous trips and mastered unexpected languages so as to hold the sutras to new lands.
Rhetorical Criticism: Context, Method, and the Book of Jonah
Introduces a manner of interpreting and analyzing biblical literature
Passing Through the Gateless Barrier: Kōan Practice for Real Life
The vintage thirteenth-century choice of Zen koans with essentially the most obtainable commentaries thus far, from a chinese language Zen instructor. Gateways to awakening encompass us at each second of our lives. the total objective of kōan (gong’an, in chinese language) perform is to maintain us from lacking those myriad possibilities by way of prime us to convinced gates that experience often been potent for individuals to entry that very good awakening.
- "Peering Through the Lattices": Mystical, Magical, and Pietistic Dimensions in the Tosafist Period
- Studies in the Hebrew Bible, Qumran, and the Septuagint: Essays Presented to Eugene Ulrich on the Occasion of His Sixty-Fifth Birthday
Additional info for Between Heaven and Earth: Divine Presence and Absence in the Book of Ezekiel
Sample text
23 includes vv. 1–27. However, some verses are cited as additions (4b, 7b, 8, 9b, 10b, 12–14a, 18, 21, 23abb, 25b, 26); the result produces a passage with metric features that W. Zimmerli displays and describes as “an exalted narrative style, which sometimes approximates closely a firm metric rhythm, but then slips back again into a freer movement” (Ezekiel 1 [trans. R. E. Clements; Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979] 481). He analyzes the unit 23:28–49 as follows: vv. 28–30 are a weak summary of previous material; vv.
Porter, like Machinist, considers also the means by which royal inscriptions reached contemporary audiences, especially building inscriptions, which were buried in the foundation of municipal buildings. She offers some suggestions. Perhaps the content of texts composed by scribes would circulate among the administrative elite. Furthermore, there is evidence that copies of 74. B. N. Porter, Images, Power, and Politics: Figurative Aspects of Esarhaddon’s Babylonian Policy (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1993).
First, it is plain that the destruction of Judah posed the urgent question: Why? Four times Ezekiel quotes the people’s charge that God’s way was not just (18:25, 29; 33:17, 20). ” Second, the prophet’s setting raised another question: Where is God? The deity’s city and sanctuary were facing, or already had experienced, destruction. Had he abandoned them for good? Could Yahweh be worshiped on foreign soil? ” (Ps 137:4). Indeed, Ezekiel must have taken this question quite personally, when he, a priest, was deprived of the tools of his trade.