NTT Journal for Theology and the Study of Religion - Volume 43, Issue 2, 1989

On the basis of recent archeological research in the eastern Delta of Egypt the names and locations of the store-cities Pithom and Raamses mentioned in Exodus 1:11, are in all probability identifiable with the Pharaonic cities Pr-Itm n Mr.n-pth and Pr-R^c-ms-sw-mry-Imn, at present buried in the sites Tell el-Ratabe and Tell el-Dab^ca/Qantir. These two toponyms are not anachronisms, but original and historically authentic elements from the tradition concerning the forced labour of the Hebrews in Egypt.

In this article the author argues on the basis of new evidence that the late success of Christianity in the city of Aphrodisias and in the province of Caria in general may be due to the very strong position Judaism had built up there and to a Jewish-pagan coalition, forms of which are found also elsewhere in Asia Minor.

This paper starts from the awareness of a crisis of moral reflection which some moral philosophers interpret as symptoms of the emancipation of Western morality from its theistic past. This leads to the discussion of Iris Murdoch’s proposal to provide a resolution for the dilemmas of modern morality by focusing moral reflection on ‘the Good’ as the unitary, perfect, non-representable and necessarily real object of attention. In contrast to this conception I suggest that goodness should not be understood as an absolute value replacing the concept of God, but as an attribute of God. I attempt to show how goodness can be predicated of God on the basis of his trinitarian action as it is expressed in the discourse of faith in the Christian church. In this framework goodness is described as a relational predicate which refers to God’s goodness as the condition for the possibility of all created goodness. The paper concludes with some suggestions how the virtues, norms and values of human morality could be interpreted in such a conception.