NTT Journal for Theology and the Study of Religion - Volume 74, Issue 4, 2020

What particularities can be observed in the translation of notions of “anger” from the Hebrew to the Greek language, from a Semitic to a Hellenistic culture? This question is examined in an exemplary manner with reference to the oldest sapiential book of the Hebrew Bible, the Book of Proverbs, and its Greek translation in the Septuagint, since Prov^LXX is a particularly free, receptor language oriented translation. Four tendencies can be detected in the LXX-translation of this basic emotion: the tendencies to theologization, to ethicization, to psychologization and, most clearly, the tendency to politicization.

In Christianity the final goal of human life has usually been indicated as seeing God, but not in the sense of really seeing, with bodily senses. From Christology, however, the idea of the body’s desire for ultimate happiness received a new impulse. This article focuses on a crucial moment in its history: the theology of Robert Grosseteste. The appearance of God in the flesh, he claims, was not only needed for saving man, but also fulfilling man, and for fulfilling not only the mind, but also the body. Starting from his innovating argument this article points out how this idea is sustained in his wider theological vision.

Religious texts represent a specific rhetorical genre. What does it mean to construct these texts? In order to answer this question we reflect upon our experience of co-authoring a religious text, the Ordinary Catechism (Gewone Catechismus), published in 2019. The findings include insights in collaborative spirituality, a dynamic interaction with tradition, and various levels of abstraction in theologizing. Further, we analyze these findings by using genre theory. It is concluded that religious texts are responses to a rhetorical situation; they are part of genre repertoires that religious communities use to express and to experience the Christian faith.

As part of NTT JTSR’s series on Key Texts, the present article discusses the magnum opus of the medieval Muslim scholar Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, Iḥyāʾ ʿUlūm al-Dīn (Revival of the Religious Sciences): its genre, the main aspects of the critique it generated and its relevance to contemporary Muslim debates. This work is still celebrated in Muslim traditionalism as a masterpiece on Islamic spiritual sublimity and self-purification, based on scriptural-traditional references and the mystic experience of the author. The Iḥyāʾ inspired many authors with commentaries, annotations, epitomes and explanations. Yet it stirred no less critique among religious scholars and conservative currents as a work indulging religious novelties as well as spreading inauthentic traditions and unorthodox practices among Muslims. The controversy about this work reflects an intra-Islamic antagonism towards the notion of orthodoxy, and what it entails for the Muslim faith and praxis.