Psalmody and Poetry in Old Testament Ethics

Description

Questions arise from scholarly debate in Hebrew Bible ethics such as: what is Old Testament ethics?, what is the object of study?, what are the methods involved and how normative are Old Testament ethics for modern contexts? These questions advance crucial issues in the quest for understanding ethics of the ancient Hebrew mind and the problem of how to contextualize them in modern contexts. This book begins by exploring the relationship between the Old Testament and Ethics, as well as a philosophical discussion on meta-ethical presuppositions on divinity and morality in the Psalter. The main part of the book reflects analyses of specific psalms (Pss 16; 34; 50; 72; 104; and 133). The core of this section reflects an illustration of psalm texts with the thematic focus on Hebrew ethical thinking. Included are a few contextual contributions discussing relevant ethical issues in Africa from an African perspective. In the final section two exemplary poetic texts from the Pentateuch (Deut 32) and the Prophets (Jer 5) reverberate ethical thinking from other parts of the Hebrew canon.

Professor Dirk J. Human is Head of Biblical and Religious Studies at the University of Pretoria, South Africa.

Psalmody and Poetry in Old Testament Ethics is the result of a 2008 Project Psalms seminar at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, an international interdisciplinary working group bringing together psalms and poetic texts scholars. Per the title, the theme around which this volume's contributions cluster is ethics. Attentive to the historical and sociologically formed worlds behind the text and aware of the place of the reader, this volume seeks to further the scholarly understanding of an ethics of the ancient Hebrew mind as well as contextualize contemporary African ethical issues. -- Seth B. Tarrer, Insituto Teologico San Andres, Buenos Aires, Argentina * Reviews in Religion and Theology * This volume represents the proceedings of an international seminar at the University of Pretoria in August 2008 ... There is much of interest in this collection. -- Walter J. Houston, University of Manchester, UK * Journal of Theological Studies (Vol. 64.2) *