본문 바로가기
  • Home
Basic Search

The Old Testament and Humanities: Reading the Old Testament from the Perspectives of History, Literary, and Philosophy

  • Korean Journal of Old Testament Studies
  • Abbr : KJOTS
  • 2017, 23(3), pp.140-171
  • DOI : 10.24333/jkots.2017.23.3.140
  • Publisher : Korean Society of Old Testament Studies
  • Research Area : Humanities > Christian Theology
  • Received : June 30, 2017
  • Accepted : August 20, 2017

Yoon Kyung Lee 1

1이화여대

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Theology is the study of God. Nonetheless, theology and the humanities share a common goal of making humans more human and better. In this respect, the Old Testament theology written with the background of the life and history of the ancient Israelites, is also inseparable from the humanities. Specifically, the Old Testament theology is closely related with the humanities in a methodological way. In this paper, I will examine how the Old Testament theology and the humanities have developed in a close relation with each other from the perspective of ‘reading the Old Testament from the viewpoint of History, Literature and Philosophy.’ The development process of the study of history is in line with the development of historical criticisms of the Old Testament. The development of historical viewpoints from positivism to presentism is consistent with that of historical criticisms of the Old Testament that has undergone from the objective reconstruction of Israel's history to the subjective reconstruction of a historian such as Deuteronomist. On the other hand, differently from the historical interests, the literary features of the Old Testament has been investigated. Such literary interests are in parallel with the development of literary theories of English in general. Methodology of literary criticism, such as narrative criticism or rhetorical criticism, is applied to the interpretation of the Old Testament. Narrative criticism and rhetorical criticism have different concerns from historical criticisms, which explore the historical and social backgrounds of the text or investigate any literary forms among the text that share with the other literature. Narrative criticism and rhetorical criticism, however, attempt to reveal the literary and poetic characteristics of a text, and to focus on the message of the text. Finally, philosophy and the Old Testament have developed in a close relationship with each other. Especially in the modern age, poststructuralism strongly affects the hermeneutics of the Old Testament.

Statistics

  • 623 Viewed
  • 388 Downloaded

Tools

Issue List

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

Basic Search Advanced Search