Context and violence in individual prayers for protection

The individual prayers for protection within the Psalter are marked by a consistency in terms of the context supposed and the nature of violence experienced by the psalmists. Consistently, these psalms also assert that the right to retributive violence against the enemies belongs to Yahweh alone. Such a consistent pattern indicates that those responsible for assembling the Book of Psalms intended to model this as the appropriate response for the faithful.Continued 2001 as 'Verbum et Ecclesia'Spine cut of Journal binding and pages scanned on flatbed EPSON Expression 10000 XL; 400dpi; text/lineart - black and white - stored to Tiff Derivation: Abbyy Fine Reader v.9 work with PNG-format (black and white); Photoshop CS3; Adobe Acrobat v.9 Web display format PDFhttp://explore.up.ac.za/record=b102527

David and Uriah (with an occasional appearance by Uriah’s wife) : reading and re-reading 2 Samuel 11

The interpretation of 2 Samuel 11 has been built around three points: 1. The primacy of the relationship between David and Bathsheba; 2. Uriah dies in a cover-up; 3. The narrative is full of ambiguity. This paper explores the narrative from the perspective of the ambiguities employed, showing that the third point undermines the first two. This is achieved by drawing on Genette’s theory of anachrony which emerges as an important historiographical feature in Samuel. The text is meant to be read and then re-read as each anachrony is encountered, thus coming to a clearer understanding of what is meant by the narrator’s closing comment

Responses to violence in some lament Psalms of the individual

Lament psalms of the individual that reflect a motif of violence are here examined so as to determine whether or not the editors of the Psalter had a pattern of instruction that they wished to inculcate with respect to the experience of violence. An examination of prayers of the accused and prayers of sickness as sub-groups within the Gattung indicates the presence of such a pattern, and suggests that the editors wished to model a pattern that rejects the right of human retribution. This pattern needs to be tested further through an examination of a third sub-group, the prayers for protection.Continued 2001 as 'Verbum et Ecclesia'http://explore.up.ac.za/record=b102527

Narrative voice and chronology in the books of Samuel

Although the importance of chronology as a device employed within the Old Testament is widely recognised, its analysis has not employed some of the tools made available by literary theorists. This article adopts Genette's fourfold model of the relation between narrative voice and chronology to the books of Samuel, arguing that they employ all four types (subsequent, prior, simultaneous and interpolated) in a sophisticated interplay between narrative voice and chronology, with the different modes used to indicate the relative knowledge of the characters in comparison with the extradiegetic narrator. Exegesis of Samuel therefore needs to consider the rhetorical goals made evident through such analysis