NTT Journal for Theology and the Study of Religion - Volume 59, Issue 3, 2005

In this article it is argued that Freuds The Future of an Illusion is highly influenced by two of his followers, Theodor Reik and Oskar Pfister. Their views on religion reflect positions in theological debates within modern theology, debates about the formation of dogmas, the historical core of religion and the position of psychology of religion in relation with dogmatics. Their work on religion as a system of dogmas, their ideas on religion as illusion and their analysis that dogmas are obsolete, are adopted by Freud. The Future of an Illusion can also be seen as part of a controversy between Freud and Pfister on the relationship between psychoanalysis and religion.

This essay explores the original meaning and understanding of the concept of ubuntu. It evaluates the strengths and limitations of this cherished African anthropological and philosophical notion. By bringing the anthropology of ubuntu in conversation with the anthropology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer possibilities for the re-valuation of ubuntu are opened. Attention to the anthropology of Bonhoeffer will help ubuntu to affirm community without falling into the trap of collectivism. It will also prevent Ubuntu from overestimating the capabilities of humans through the under-estimation of the reality of sin. Where ubuntu is also open to the transformative power of the gospel its redeeming potential on a broken continent is enhanced.

This article discusses the backgrounds of the fact that the early Jewish translators and commentators of Genesis 18:8 made Abraham's three guests eat their meal only apparently, not in reality (‘angels do not eat’) and why these same interpreters did not object to the at first sight n-onkosher combination of meat and milk on Abraham's table.

For a proper understanding of theology, an insight into the social and professional context in which it arises is at least as important as an appraisal of its content. This article examines the theological knowledge generated by a group of eighteenth and nineteenth-century academics represented by Johannes Hendrik van der Palm (1763–1840), one of the leading theologians of his generation. Using (among other things) statistical data concerning the knowledge produced by these theologians, a sketch is offered of the social and scholarly environment in which their theology arose. It is demonstrated that the credibility of theological knowledge is to a large extent dependant on the means by, and the circumstances in which, such knowledge is produced.

In Targum Jonathan to Isa. 52:13-53:12, the well-known picture of the suffering servant is transformed into the image of a victorious Messiah, of extraordinary appearance, who delivers his people from bondage, punishes the wicked and makes intercession for the sins of the people. This far-reaching interpretation has led some scholars in the past to suppose that the translation as we have it now is the result of Jewish-Christian polemic. In this paper we will compare the Hebrew and the Aramaic text, and see how they are related. On the basis thereof we will reconsider whether it is necessary and tenable to suppose Jewish-Christian polemic as the immediate cause for the present translation.