New Testament Semiotics

Navigating through different realist and nominalist traditions, Timo Eskola suggests that signs are about conditions and functions and participate in a web of relations. Questioning Derridean poststructuralism, the author reinstates Benveniste’s hermeneutics of enunciation and suggests a new approach to metatheology.

New Testament Basics is a primer that encourages and empowers students to competently read and interpret the New Testament for themselves. The book identifies what the New Testament is (and is not) while helping students develop biblical literacy, as well as literary, canonical, historical, hermeneutical, and theological sensibilities.

This book is an introduction to the field of semiotics specifically directed to students of the Bible as well as to biblical scholars trained in other methodologies. The primary focus is on what semiotics is now-how contemporary scholars actually approach the Bible semiotically. Attention is given to the history and varieties of semiotic theory, because as it has influenced the work of more recent thinkers, and because postmodern reappraisals of semiotics call for rereading of biblical texts. The book is organized according to topics ('Sign', 'Message', 'Text', etc.), which provide a way to interrogate semiotics as a system. This stimulating account also includes, for good measure, reflections on what theology has become, for believer and unbeliever alike, in a post-Nietzschean, post-Heideggerian world: What does it mean to see theology as 'ideology'-a complex and never wholly conscious network of understandings, preconceptions, and expectations about 'the way things are'.

History and Classics of Modern Semiotics -- Sign and Meaning -- Semiotics, Code, and the Semiotic Field -- Language and Language-Based Codes -- From Structuralism to Text Semiotics: Schools and Major Figures -- Text Semiotics: The Field -- Nonverbal Communication -- Aesthetics and Visual Communication.

Focusing on the metanarrative of exile and restoration Timo Eskola claims that a post-liberal, narrative New Testament theology is both consistent and explanative. Combining a post-New Quest perspective on Jesus with an eschatological reading of Paul, the author states that Jesus' temple criticism aims at restoration eschatology. Jesus starts a priestly community that expects God's jubilee to begin with Jesus' work, and proceed with the preaching of the new gospel. The reception of this message in the post-Easter church results in resurrection Christology that proclaims Jesus' Davidic kingship on God's throne of glory. Both Paul and Jewish Christian teachers later present Christ's community as a new temple where believers serve the Lord as priests of the new covenant. Furthermore, restoration eschatology provides a new basis for understanding Paul's contrast with the words of the law, and his teaching of justification.

"Eco wittily and enchantingly develops themes often touched on in his previous works, but he delves deeper into their complex nature . . . this collection can be read with pleasure by those unversed in semiotic theory." —Times Literary Supplement

This book explains and illustrates a variety of semiotic issues in the study of biblical law. Commencing with a review of relevant literature in linguistics, philosophy, semiotics and psychology, it examines biblical law in terms of its users, its medium and its message. It criticizes our use of the notion of 'literal meaning', at the level of both words and sentences, preferring to see meaning constructed by the narrative images that the language evokes. These images may come from either social experience or cultural narratives. Speech performance is important, both in the negotiation of the law and the narratives of its communication. Non-linguistic semiotic phenomena, utilizing other senses and involving such notions as space and time, also need to be taken into account. For the early biblical period, at least, conceptions of law based upon modern models need to be replaced by the notion of 'wisdom-laws'. Amongst the issues addressed in the course of the argument are the structure of the Decalogue, the role in the law of (Greenberg's) 'postulates', 'covenant renewal' and 'talionic punishment'.

In God in the Labyrinth, Andrew Hollingsworth uses Umberto Eco’s semiotic concept of the model encyclopedia as the basis for a new model and approach to systematic theology. Following an in-depth analysis of the model encyclopedia in Eco’s semiotics, he demonstrates the implications this model has for epistemology, hermeneutics, and doctrinal development. This work aims to bridge the unfortunate gap in research that exists between the fields of systematic theology and semiotics by demonstrating semiotic insights for theological method.

Sacred Tropes interweaves Tanakh, New Testament, and Qur'an essays which collectively and individually enlist literary approaches including environmental, cultural studies, gender, psychoanalytic, ideological, economic, historicism, law, and rhetorical criticisms. Sacred Tropes represents a pioneering, comparatist approach to Abrahamic studies.

Bloomsbury Semiotics offers a state-of-the-art overview of the entire field of semiotics by revealing its influence on a wide range of disciplinary perspectives. With four volumes spanning theory, method and practice across the disciplines, this definitive reference work emphasizes and strengthens common bonds shared across intellectual cultures, and facilitates the discovery and recovery of meaning across fields. It comprises: Volume 1: History and Semiosis Volume 2: Semiotics in the Natural and Technical Sciences Volume 3: Semiotics in the Arts and Social Sciences Volume 4: Semiotic Movements Written by leading international experts, the chapters provide comprehensive overviews of the history and status of semiotic inquiry across a diverse range of traditions and disciplines. Together, they highlight key contemporary developments and debates along with ongoing research priorities. Providing the most comprehensive and united overview of the field, Bloomsbury Semiotics enables anyone, from students to seasoned practitioners, to better understand and benefit from semiotic insight and how it relates to their own area of study or research. Volume 3: Semiotics in the Arts and Social Sciences presents the state-of-the art in semiotic approaches to disciplines ranging from philosophy and anthropology to history and archaeology, from sociology and religious studies to music, dance, rhetoric, literature, and structural linguistics. Each chapter goes casts a vision for future research priorities, unanswered questions, and fresh openings for semiotic participation in these and related fields.

A New Semiotics is an introductory guide to the field of semiotics. Assuming no prior knowledge of semiotics, this accessible text takes a fresh look at semiotics and suggests that many of the forebears and many contemporary contributors to semiotics have misconstrued the nature of their work. The authors start off by asking ‘What is semiotics?’ and go on to outline a journey towards a new semiotics. It offers a clearer way forward out of the prison of complexity invented by the fathers of contemporary semiotics—Peirce and Saussure. Each chapter ends with a summary, exercises and discussion points for students, and further reading. This is the ideal text for introductory courses in semiotics within linguistics, communication studies, visual arts and related areas.

This study focuses on a reading of Proverbs 1-9 as satire and argues that it alludes to two points of critique against Solomon: his political policy of socio-economic injustice and his numerous sexual (in)discretions. That Solomon abandoned his divinely proscribed duty only evinces his lack of "fear of Yahweh". First, Solomon demonstrates his lack of discernment by an inability to rule with righteousness, justice and equity because of administrative policies that bled the innocent dry of their resources for his own self-aggrandizement. Second, Solomon's sexual behavior reflects his need of Wisdom as the personification of eroticism. The absence of the "fear of Yahweh" in Solomon prompts the poet's reproof in Proverbs 1-9 that he should resume his proper role of Torah meditation. How the "son" responds to the decision posed to him remains decidedly open-ended, since satire generally offers no denouement to its plot. Nevertheless, the signs of this satiric poetry intimate the wise king as a royal fool.

The semiotics of the Christian imagination describes the repository of signs and the logic of signification through which a community of faith envisions spiritual truths. This book analyses various examples in text, images, music, art and scientific treatise of the imaginative semiotisation of the fall of Man and the Church's semiotic perception of the Divine plan for Redemption. The book includes a chapter detailing the theory of signs, based on a close reading of primary sources, and has nine further chapters on the meaning-making inherent in ideas of the Fall and Redemption of mankind. These are filtered through and given material representation by the semiotic paradigms of various cultural fields, including philology, verbal arts and science. Central to this practice - and to the book's message - are two themes of theological semiotics fundamental to man's understanding of himself in the larger scheme of things. Two of these include the theology of the Fall and a sacramental theory of signs. The theory is grounded in the doctrine of analogy, and this is the only reliable cognitive link between the immanence of the thinking subject and the transcendence that is the object of thought.

This book details how semiotics furthers an understanding of the science of Christology. In the light of the trend towards evolutionary worldview, the book goes beyond description and critically engages the sign system of C. S. Peirce, which it sees as a conceptual tool and method for a better understanding of some of the basic issues in Christology.

Most of the current scholarly literature on biblical intertextuality--or the use of the Old Testament in the New Testament--exhibits a high degree of variance regarding methodological approach. The variety of methods employed naturally yields a variety of results. Semiotics, or the study of signs and how they communicate, offers an avenue for approaching intertextual references that focuses on communication theory and meaning. In addition, semiotic theory provides an overarching methodological framework for examining intertextual references. As such, a semiotic approach can assist in creating greater methodological consistency and clarity for this nuanced area of New Testament study. The purpose of this book is to explore the use of semiotics as a viable approach to biblical intertextuality. The intertextual references to Isaiah in 1 Peter will serve as the test case for an application of the method. A semiotic approach is promising because it offers a solution to the pervasive problem of methodology in intertextual studies. Moreover, the investigation of 1 Peter's use of Isaiah provides a fresh perspective on how Peter utilizes this important source in the construction of his epistle and the communication of his message.