Bibliography
| Title: The death of Josiah. Exegesis and hermeneutics in scripture and tradition Type: Thesis Year: 1990 Abstract: "The various reports of the death of Josiah extant from late antiquity provide the materials for exploring the nature of the canonical process, the on-going relationship between the community of faith and the writings they looked to as Scripture. These dynamics, as presently understood, are set forth in chapter one. Looking first to the biblical account in Kings (chapter two) and Chronicles (chapter three), form critical analyses determine something of the history of their formation, as well as the hermeneutic of the tradents responsible for their production. The text of Chronicles shifted the emphasis from the person of Josiah to the Passover which he observed, and in the matter of his death, from the underlying doctrine of the transferability of guilt found in Kings to a doctrine of immediate, individual retribution. Moving from the canonical Hebrew accounts, several other texts are explored. The early Greek translations and recensions (chapter four) require reconstruction. In doing so, a previously unidentified translation of 4 Reigns is isolated. Produced subsequent to the Old Greek and witnessed to in 4 Reigns Lucianic and 2 Paraleipomena, this translation seems to be the source responsible for many of the innovations shared by these two extant texts. Having reconstructed the history of the Greek text, we move to an analysis of the later Greek accounts in 1 Esdras, Josephus, Aquila and 2 Baruch (chapter five) and an assortment of other treatments in Syriac, Aramaic and Latin from the early centuries of the common ears (chapter six). All of these accounts contain significant shifts in emphasis and are studied in the light of the model of canonical process outlined in chapter one. Chapter seven concludes the study with points being made about the nature of the canonical process, the stabilization of the Hebrew text, the growing restraints on the resignification of texts in this era, the development of a hermeneutic of text and the deutero-canonical status of Chronicles among the Greek treatments. And finally, critiques of current scholarly practice are offered with reference to text criticism and current understandings of the transmission of tradition in Antiquity". Keywords: Jewish History: Old Testament Period |