Friday, September 30, 2016

Listen! And respond

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In 1 Chronicles 21 we see YHWH staying the hand of the angel as if waiting for David to intercede. We also see YHWH lingering after sending ...
Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Dual role

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One concept noted repeatedly in this study is the mystification of agency found in causative and particularly in hybrid speech acts. In the ...
Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Available to all!

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The biblical writers have taken care to avoid the appearance of ritual speech. These narratives instead show characters apparently speaking ...
Monday, September 26, 2016

A theology of prayer

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Intercessors with ritual agency can follow divinely modeled instructions to resolve the problem of disastrous omens. Intercessors with magic...
Friday, September 23, 2016

Rituals are minimal...

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Persuasive agency is the only kind of human agency found in Texts 5-15. As we have seen, the biblical speech is presented as meaningful in c...
Thursday, September 22, 2016

Intercede!

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Unlike the portraits of the other gods in these apotropaic intercessory texts, YHWH is often shown as making room for human responses to his...
Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Circular reasoning

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Based on the notion that persuasive speech is tailored to its presumed audience, we can learn something about cultural perceptions of the go...
Tuesday, September 20, 2016

A Summary of Intercession in the Hebrew Bible

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The texts suggest that apotropaic intercession was considered to be generally, but not universally, effective, although even in cases where ...
Monday, September 19, 2016

Where does repentance fit?

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Notably, in none of the cases analyzed does the intercessor claim that the people have turned aside from their wickedness, nor does the inte...
Friday, September 16, 2016

Just own up to it!

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“Indeed experience demonstrates that we inflict heavier punishment upon persons who deny guilt and advance arguments in their own defense, b...
Thursday, September 15, 2016

What do we make of that?

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Two speech act categories are absent from the corpus [of intercessory prayers in the HB]: commissives and declaratives, both hallmarks of tr...
Wednesday, September 14, 2016

It isn't in the ritual

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Like biblical intercession with human superiors, biblical apotropaic intercession with YHWH uses ordinary discourse, persuading through appe...
Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Incense

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Aaron’s use of incense in Numbers 17 is anomalous in the HB in that Aaron brings it to the people, running into their midst and “standing be...
Monday, September 12, 2016

There's an narrow opening

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Verse 15, in which YHWH is said to change his mind (נחם) even before David intercedes, makes the reader wonder how important David’s interce...
Thursday, September 08, 2016

What qualifies you as an intercessor?

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David’s opening words add ballast to his prior confession, not only clearing the people but also seeking to reconcile his own relationship w...
Wednesday, September 07, 2016

Turn aside

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The goal of Amos’s intercessory appeals is to prevent the divine punishment in the respective vision. In Amos 7:2, the verb סלח (“pardon!”[s...
Tuesday, September 06, 2016

Are we practicing atheists, or not?

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That's basically what it boils down to in article (which you really should read; it's only a few paragraphs long): If we are convi...

So how does a prophet spend his/her time?

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The first word in Ezekiel’s intercession [Ezek 9] is the exclamation אהה [‘ahah], which Muffs considers to indicate “prophetic opposition to...
Friday, September 02, 2016

Moses and intercession

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Unlike Exod 32:11b-13, which never refers to the Israelites’ sin, the appeal in Deuteronomy [9] mentions their sin at a point of maximum pro...
Thursday, September 01, 2016

Pro-choice?

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The major distinction between this speech [Num 14] and the one in Exod 32:11b-13 is Moses’s citation of YHWH’s attributes in Num 14:17-18. H...