Browsing by Author "Evans, John Frederick"

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    An inner-biblical interpretation and intertextual reading of Ezekiel's recognition formulae with the book of Exodus
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2006-04) Evans, John Frederick; Bosman, Hendrik; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Theology. Dept. Old and New Testament.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: One of the most striking literary phenomena in the entire Old Testament, Ezekiel's recognition formula is repeated over seventy times. According to S. R. Driver that refrain, "You shall know that I am Yahweh," strikes the keynote of the prophecy. Though one might expect to find many monographs and journal articles treating at length the formula's literary and theological function in Ezekiel, the only substantial work on the subject comes from Walther Zimmerli and is nearly fifty years old. More recent scholarly discussion has tended to be oblique, occasional, or subordinate to other interests. Brevard Childs has suggested that Ezekiel shows a "preoccupation with Scripture." Applying this insight, the dissertation at hand argues the thesis that the seventy-odd recognition formulae in Ezekiel mark a theological nexus and intertextual relationship between the prophecy and the book of Exodus (in some recensional form), and that those formulae are best interpreted alongside the numerous recognition formulae in Exodus. Interpreted intertextually, Ezekiel's formula points readers of the oracles to know Yahweh as the God of the Exodus, who still acts, in covenant, to judge and to deliver. Here the term intertextuality is used in a broader sense to include both a more diachronic "intertextuality of production" (Ellen van Wolde), in which a text can only be written in relationship to other texts, and a more synchronic "intertextuality of reception," in which a text can be read only in relationship to other texts. With regard to methodology, the approach of innerbiblical interpretation is employed to explore the text-production angle and the questions which emerge concerning the re-use and re-presentation of Scriptural "traditions." Also appropriate is a synchronic intertextual approach which inquires how Exodus and Ezekiel texts-in particular the recognition formulae-may be read together from a text-reception angle. Both approaches used together reveal a large number of parallels between Exodus and Ezekiel and indicate how well the recognition formulae may be read together. This study contributes to scholarship by offering an extensive review of past scholarship on the formula; a fresh exegetical research of the formula's use in Ezekiel and in other Bible books, with comparisons drawn; a study of the socio-historical and religious context addressed by Ezekiel's oracles and the formula; and a theological interpretation of the recognition formulae in Ezekiel alongside those in Exodus. There are many strong conjunctions (or continuities) between the formulae in Ezekiel and Exodus: a covenant stress; no positive use of the formula when spoken to the nations; an unbreakable link to announcements of Yahweh's mighty acts in history; etc. Yet there is also a jarring disjunction (or discontinuity) between the formulae in Ezekiel and Exodus: the prophecy repeatedly declares that Israel "shall know that I am Yahweh" in judgment. This is "a radical inversion of its former usage" (Carley); elsewhere in Scripture the formula always sounds a positive note when spoken to Israel.