Week 13 Exegesis Activity: How It Might Mean (Genesis 34)
This
week, return for the last time to Genesis 34. This time, we consider what
meanings the text might have for later communities, especially some particular
community of today in some particular circumstances.
Prepare:
Engage
again the resources you visited last week (course materials and discoveries
from “How it Meant”), but this time with an eye on how Genesis 34 might mean
more broadly, beyond its original author(s) and their community/communities in
their ancient context. What kinds of meanings, intended or unintended, might Genesis
34 be able to sustain? What kinds of misreadings or misunderstandings about Genesis
34 are possible?
Post
a total of about 500 words:
Theological
Analysis: In about 250 words, and engaging course materials as appropriate,
address the following directly and thoroughly:
Analyze
Genesis 34 theologically. What are the major theological claims
of the
passage? (e.g., about does it say or assume about God, about the nature of
God’s activity in the world, about people, about human community, about the
so-called “natural world,” etc. How are God, humans and the world
presented in relation to one another?)
Are
these claims appropriate to your own understanding of God’s love
for all persons and God’s demand that everyone embody that love?
Are
these claims credible? By “credible,” we mean:
1)
are these claims coherent
to other biblical witness? How or how not? What if they are not?
2)
are these claims intelligible
in the light of the way the world is understood today? How or how not? What if
they are not?
3)
are these claims moral? Why
or why not? What if they are not?
Hermeneutical
Analysis: In about 250 words, and engaging course materials as appropriate
address the following:
Based
on your exegetical and theological analysis, can you suggest some hermeneutical
possibilities of the text for the life of the church and the situation of the
world today? (You should, for clarity, have a particular group or situation
in view.) If your theological analysis of the text concludes that its
claims are inappropriate to the gospel or unintelligible to the world today or
immoral, what can you say about the text to the modern church and world?
Avoid
platitudes! First, keep your one, select group or situation clearly in view, as
opposed to “the church” more broadly conceived. Second, your
hermeneutical possibilities should follow recognizably from the fruits of your
“How It Says” and “What It Meant” work, as well as your
theological analysis above.
