Browsing by Subject "Hermeneutics."
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Item A canonical exegesis of the eighth Psalm : YHWH's maintenance of the created order through divine reversal.(2010-10-08T16:21:23Z) Keener, Hubert James.; Bellinger, W. H.; Religion.; Baylor University. Dept. of Religion.This dissertation presents a canonical exegesis of Psalm 8. The dissertation seeks to contribute to two areas of scholarship: 1) literature on the canonical approach to exegesis carrying forward the emphases first articulated by Brevard Childs, and 2) literature grappling with the question of how one ought to interpret Psalm 8 as Christian Scripture. The first chapter of the study reassesses the canon exegetical approach, concluding that it is a viable and salutary means for interpreting the text theologically, while arguing for some refinements to the approach as it is now understood that clarify its theological underpinnings. The rest of the dissertation then goes on to examine Psalm 8 in relation to the broader canon. In order to bring Psalm 8 into dialogue with the rest of the canon, the study attends to the literary context of the psalm (the Psalter) and utilizes key texts which relate to the psalm (Genesis 1; Job 7; Psalm 144; Matthew 21; 1 Corinthians 15; Ephesians 1; Hebrews 2) as entry points through which to connect Psalm 8 with the broader witness of Scripture. Thus, the study attends to the discreet witness of Psalm 8, the place of Psalm 8 in the shape of the Psalter, the relationship between Psalm 8 and the rest of the Old Testament, and the relationship between Psalm 8 and the New Testament witness. The dissertation describes the place of Psalm 8 within the Christian canon as representing the intersection of three motifs or trajectories: 1) The distinct theological message of Psalm 8, summarized as the reversal motif; the psalm describes YHWH as making his name great in all of creation by exalting relatively insignificant things over and against seemingly superior things, as is seen most prominently in the exaltation of the human to the role of YHWH's vice-gerent. 2) The motif of the conflicted and conflicting human, which permeates the canon; humanity finds itself beset by troubles and prone to misconduct. 3) The motif of the redeeming Christ, who becomes the ultimate representation of the reversal motif and who alone violates the type of the conflicted and conflicting human.Item Get rich or die tryin’ : a semiotic approach to the construct of wealth in rap music.(2011-09-14) Davis, Kristine Ann.; Stone, Sara J.; Journalism.; Baylor University. Dept. of Journalism.For the past 30 years, rap music has made its way into the mainstream of America, taking an increasingly prominent place in popular culture, particularly for youth, its main consumers. This thesis looks at wealth through the lens of semiotics, an important component of critical/cultural theory, using a hermeneutical analysis of 11 rap songs, spanning the last decade of rap music to find signification and representation of wealth in the rap song lyrics. The research finds three important themes of wealth - relationship between wealth and the opposite sex, wealth that garners respect from other people, and wealth as a signifier for "living the good life" - and five signifiers of wealth – money, cars, attire, liquor, and bling.Item Reading as an Imitatio Christi : Flannery O’Connor and the hermeneutics of cruci-form beauty.(2013-09-16) Train, Daniel Mark.; Wood, Ralph C.; English.; Baylor University. Dept. of English.At its simplest, this dissertation proposes two, possibly counterintuitive but mutually dependent, claims: 1) that O’Connor’s fiction can be, even must be, considered “beautiful,” and 2) that O’Connor writes the way she does to make her audience better readers. Given the dark, shocking, grotesque, even carnivalesque character that pervades all her fiction, this first claim is likely to give the greatest offense or at least engender the most skepticism. But, as I argue throughout this work, it is essential that we be able to first conceive of her work as beautiful in order to also preempt one of the main objections to my second claim, a claim that O’Connor herself would be wary of endorsing in so far that it suggests and then elevates the didactic or pedagogical function of her art. To say she hopes to make better readers out of us would seem to suggest that her real contribution is as a schoolmarm rather than as an artist. Even worse, it would seem to place O’Connor squarely in that category of writing that she so abhorred: sentimental, pietistic moralizing in the guise of “fiction.” And yet, if we can entertain the possibility of O’Connor's work as exemplifying beauty, I argue that we can also: 1) avoid suggesting as so many have that O’Connor's work perpetrates a fundamental violence on her characters and/or readers (thereby further ratifying modern assumptions regarding the essential inevitability of violence); and 2) entertain the possibility that a non-violent, non-manipulative apprehension of the beautiful is in fact the ability to see or more clearly, or as in this case, to read more clearly. Indeed, as David Hart shows, only by restoring “the beautiful” as a proper dimension of not just aesthetic, but philosophical, theological, ecclesiological and ethical reflection, can we even conceive of a speech-act that is not ultimately just another expression of one violence over another in an interminable, self-extinguishing cycle.