Book Review of Riegner, Irene E. The Vanishing Hebrew Harlot: The Adventures of the Hebrew Stem ZNH (SBL 73). Peter Lang: New York, 2009. Irene E. Reigner's The Vanishing Hebrew Harlot: The Adventures of the Hebrew Stem ZNH seeks to challenge our understanding of the Hebrew root ה"זנ. The book is the published version of a doctoral thesis, which was submitted at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA. The starting point of the study is the observation that ה"זנ is used both in a sexual context and in prophetic speech chastising the wrong religious cult practices of the Israelites. The book, therefore, examines three hypotheses. The first is that "[t]he stem זנה has three significations: a. Participate in non-Yahwist praxis; b. Prostitute, be promiscuous and c. Innkeeper (noun)" (p. 3). The second hypothesis concerns the negative significances ה"זנ acquires, "as it becomes associated with repugnant sexual terms and images and destructive theological terminology" (p. 4). The last hypothesis is centred around the argument that "the signification of prostitution and promiscuity functions independently of and distinct from זנה' participate in non-Yahwist praxis'" (p. 4).
This article reflects on the question of how we might understand the Septuagint to be 'African' and why such a designation is significant. African biblical scholarship has borrowed from African American biblical scholarship an interest in the Bible in Africa and as African. The article focuses on notions of African place, African identity, African production and African reception. The article undertakes an in-depth analysis of ancient African production and reception of the Septuagint, before turning to contemporary African reception, with a particular emphasis on socially engaged reception. The article understands that in contemporary LXX textual criticism production is reception, recognising the presence of more than one Hebrew text and more than one LXX production, moving beyond notions of the LXX as secondary to the Masoretic Text to notions of the LXX as substantive theological literatures (in the plural). This is a particularly resonant aspect of ancient production, forging lines of connection with contemporary South African Black Theology's reminder that the biblical text is a site of struggle, both in terms of interpretation and intrinsically in terms of its production and re-use. The article concludes by reflecting on the purpose or voice of the Septuagint, arguing that engaging with the theologies and ideologies of the Septuagint offers insights into its ancient purposes and resonant lines of connection with contemporary African religio-cultural and socio-historical concerns. An African Septuagint has the potential for contemporary African appropriations.
Scholars applying principles of trauma studies on Hebrew Bible texts emphasise that successive devastating traumatic experiences did not obliterate ancient Israel, but caused it to thrive and endure in various guises in the three modern day monotheistic religions. Similarly, scholars reading Hebrew Bible texts through a critical-spatial lens emphasise that the concept of thirdspace as a counter space from which to transform all other spaces explains biblical authors' ability to retell past events in such a way that it can become a source for re-imagining Israel's future. It is a worthwhile exercise to investigate the cause of this unexpected resilience of an insignificant ancient Near Eastern people and their written documents millennia after the memory of their powerful conquerors and their achievements were all but forgotten. The present study applies trauma studies and critical spatiality as heuristic lenses to the collection of poems known as the המעלות שירי (Pss 120-134) in general and the brief Ps 131 in particular. These poems can be read in the context of individual and collective belief in YHWH as the only true, universal, divine king against the background of the trauma caused by colonial domination from outside and inner-Judaic marginalisation from inside during the late-Persian period.
In the exemplary consideration of the field of tension between spirituality (faith) and natural science, the article focuses on the so-called "humility gap," a gap in knowledge that challenges humility and seems to be a constant challenge for believers and researchers. However much an individual has communion with God, however deep the researcher penetrates into the "real" world, there will once again be (sometimes insurmountable) gaps in knowledge that pose a challenge to humility. This will be illustrated on the one hand with the character of Job 28 and on the other hand using exemplary systems of ideas presented by physicists researching in the subatomic field. One way of (regularly) conditionally opening up and overcoming the "humility gap" could be in the sought-after actuality, the divine (or God) actively meets the seekers and researchers, communicates itself to them; which is shown by means of a nuclear undertaking on the one hand and the situation of Job (including his second reply to God's answer) on the other hand.
In this article, I ignite a comparative interdisciplinary discourse on mourning rituals and practices in the Old Testament and amaXhosa tradition. To do this, I apply symbolic interactionism as a theory to unmask how grief becomes a compass guiding social cohesion, consciousness, spiritual continuity and defiance against distortion. Three significant findings emerge. First, mourning rituals and practices serve as the heartbeat of community-based identity, echoing across generations and cementing spiritual bonds. Second, the Old Testament rituals and practices resonate as spiritual instruments of repentance and obedience, while amaXhosa mourning rituals and practices emerge as rhythmic expressions of ancestral reverence and the cyclical connection between life and death. Third, the colonial and insidious assault on amaXhosa mourning rituals is interrogated, with this tradition exemplified as a defiant cornerstone resisting cultural annihilation. This intellectual discourse underscores death rituals as holy stages for cultural revitalisation amidst death.
