Jesus

This is the final installment of my Advanced Workshop essay on the place of Joshua and the conquest narratives in a Christian faith.

Now, after completing the suspicion and the retrieval of Joshua, I offer some thoughts on the ethical dimension of Ricoeur's hermeneutic, before concluding the essay.

So now that you've got the essay in it's entirety, what do you make of this exercise with Joshua? Does this help in reading Joshua within a Christian faith? Do you think this is a valid reading? Do you have any other suggestions or reflections?

Please leave your comments. This is a very important issue and it would be good to keep some discussion going on the questions raised.

Here's the next installment of my Advanced Workshop essay on the place of Joshua and the conquest narratives in a Christian faith.

Today I conclude the retrieval process, and propose ways in which Joshua itself might actually be appropriated as Christian scripture.

I will be interested to see what you make of this retrieval, and whether anyone has any alternative suggestions for appropriating Joshua using Ricoeur's hermeneutics.

Today is another installment of my Advanced Workshop essay on the place of Joshua and the conquest narratives in a Christian faith.

So far we have looked through the suspicions of Joshua from the point of view offered by Ricoeur's hermeneutics of suspicion, examining the way symbolism is used in the text to offer us a world view. We've also critiqued the text by exposing the text as an instrument of power and domination, and taken to task the ideology that the text proposes.

Today we begin on the track of retrieval, using the full power of Ricoeur's hermeneutics to look at ways of progressing from the first naïvety through the suspicions and beyond into the possibilities of retrieving the text and discovering a second naïvety.

I hope you find this discussion helpful, stimulating and enjoyable. Ricoeur is crucial for any contemporary discussion of hermeneutics, for engaging with the Bible, and for thinking about how to retain faith even though everything one believes in is questionable.

Please leave your comments and reflections.

Today is the next episode of my essay on appropriating Joshua and the conquest narratives as Christian scripture.

This section completes the process of suspicion by drawing on socio-critical reflections and ideological criticisms of the text. In doing so, we examine more fully the difficulties with living with Joshua as a part of the Christian Scriptures.

Comments and thoughts are most welcome.

This is the third installment of my Advanced Workshop essay on the dichotomy between Joshua and Jesus, conquest of enemies and love for enemies.

Today's excerpt covers Ricoeur's hermeneutic of suspicion, examining the methodology and Ricouer's use of Freud, Nietzsche and Marx to examine not the history as event but history as narrated and decipher the world evoked by the work. I also look to apply this specifically to the text at hand, the conquest narratives of Joshua.

You may like to remind yourself of the title and introduction to this essay. Comments please!

Today is the first day of my Advanced Workshop essay on appropriating the conquest narratives of Joshua as Christian scripture. As with the essay on the question of the ecological bankruptcy of Christianity, I'm going to publish the essay in episodes, so today is the introduction to the essay.

The introduction sets out the challenge of reconciling Joshua with Jesus, and indicates the structure of the essay, so you should be able to see what will be published over the next few days.

As always, comments and reflections are very welcome.

Ok, after leaving the poll open for several days now it seems that the next essay should be the one on reading the Joshua conquest narratives as Christian scripture.

The more I've talked to friends about doing this essay, the more I've discovered that people find Joshua a real sticking point with Christianity. How can a God of love apparently order genocide? How is it possible to have a cosmic God who sends the rain on the 'good' and the 'bad' who simultaneously appears to discriminate on the basis of race? How is it possible to have your ultimate destiny determined by the accident of your birth?

Christianity is stuck with the conquest narratives in Joshua as part of their Holy Scripture. So, are there any ways to read Joshua as 'Christian scripture' in a way that doesn't do a disservice to the text, that recognises the violence in the narrative, but still maintains 'Christian' perspective (however that might be defined!)?

Well, I believe there are, though it's not easy, especially if, like me, you've been steeped in an Evangalical worldview for much of your life. There is much to question and many presumptions to examine and often get rid of in order to work with the narrative.

This Advanced Workshop essay required me to use specifically the hermeneutical tools of Paul Ricoeur, often referred to as the hermeneutics of suspicion and retrieval. The essay title is...

First installment of my essay tomorrow.

A recent series on Radio 4, 'In the Footsteps of Jesus', had as its final programme a review of the history and modern face of Christianity in India.

In the programme the presenter, Ed Stourton, went to an Ashram community in India, which began life as a psuedo-benedictine monastery. In the monastery almost all the images of Jesus are as a guru sitting in the lotus position. One of the monks described how he related to Jesus as a guru, a teacher, the greatest teacher of all. For their morning mass they also use Hindu-infused liturgy which depicts the whole of the Earth, the cosmos, also worshipping God. In the Eucharist they celebrate not only with bread and wine, but with flowers, another Hindu tradition.

The programme went on to interview an Indian theolgian about the validity of these Hindu-Christian fused disciplines. The scholar described how in the early church there were many 'Christologies' (doctrines or theories based on Jesus or Jesus's teachings) that were held simultaneously by different groups of believers. He also impotantly said that not one single 'Christology' can be universal, not one idea, theory, or depiction of Christ can be valid for all believers world-wide. However, this is very much what has happened in European history with the spread of Christendom across Europe and beyond since the time of Constantine.

For those who have been listening to Edward Stourton's advent series on Radio 4, In the Footsteps of Jesus, tracking the state of contemporary scolarship with regard to the historical Jesus (and those who haven't, what are you playing at?!), this might be of interest.

Political Jesus comes under public spotlight - The director of the religious thinktank Ekklesia is to go head-head tonight on BBC Radio with an outspoken Conservative MP, to discuss the political implications of Jesus life. [Ekklesia News]

Jonathan Bartley, director of Ekklesia goes head-to-head with former Home Office minister Ann Widdecombe to look at Jesus as a political figure and how the political consequences of Jesus' life have often been ignored. Edward Stourton takes his journey to Rome to discover how the Jesus of history waas adopted by the Roman empire and the era of Christendom dawned.

The programme airs this evening at 8pm on BBC Radio 4.

BBC Radio 4 is running a new series with Edward Stourton on the changing understanding of Jesus.

From the In the Footsteps of Jesus microsite:
Edward Stourton embarks on a journey in the footsteps of Jesus, bringing to life the world in which He lived.

There has never been a greater public demand for information about Jesus, the real man. Mel Gibson's The Passion and Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code have both tapped into this desire to learn more about the man who is at the centre of the world's largest religion.

For one third of the world’s population, Jesus is the son of God, while a quarter views Him as a prophet and many others revere Him as a great teacher. But in this series Edward will also trace how the idea of Jesus and our understanding of Him has changed through the centuries; from Jesus, to Christ, to Emperor and finally to Guru.