Puzzling Portraits: Seeing the Old Testament's Confusing Characters as Ethical Models - Softcover

Culp, A.J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 161097588X ISBN 13: 9781610975889

Publisher: Wipf and Stock, 2013

Synopsis

How are we to see the Old Testament's characters--typically a tangle of both virtue and vice--as models for our own ethical living? It is clear that Scripture intends for us to embody some qualities while eschewing others, and at times these are immediately obvious: David's wholehearted pursuit of God is admirable, while his adultery with Bathsheba and murder of Uriah are deplorable. But more often than not we are left with shades of gray, not really knowing whether the narrator approves, disapproves, or is indifferent to the behavior of these characters.The present work seeks to address this issue, situating itself at the fault line of the problem: character portrayal. It argues that often what we take to be the narrator's silence about a character is not silence at all; rather, the narrator is simply speaking in ways that we are not attuned to. By becoming attuned to the voice of biblical narrative and by understanding its role in ethics, therefore, we are better able to understand the characters as resources for our own ethics. This work develops its ideas by leveraging pertinent literary and ethical models, which are then trained upon a particular case in point: the Gideon account in Judges 6-8.

About this title

About the Authors

A.J. Culp is Assistant Professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at Yellowstone Theological Institute.

M. Daniel Carroll R. is Distinguished Professor of Old Testament at Denver Seminary, Denver, Colorado, and adjunct professor at El Seminario Teologico Centroamericano, Guatemala City, Guatemala. He is the author of Christians at the Border: Immigration, the Church, and the Bible (2013).

Edition details

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 161097588X
• ISBN 13: 9781610975889
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 146