EXC 2060 C3-18 - Concepts of overcoming violence in the Hebrew Bible and its reception

Basic data for this project

Description

Though the Old Testament includes some texts which speak of divine or human violence and were occasionally read to legitimize violence there, are also sections which contain approaches for the containment or even the overcoming of violence. Even today political impulses can emanate from these approaches. There are legal texts which sketch a society in which the causes for violence are diminished by solidarity and social justice. Many Psalms point out injustice and violence suffered but devolve the resistance to God. On the basis of a universalistic shape of monotheism ethnical antagonisms and hostilities can be abolished designing a world without political or religious conflicts. The project analyses those texts asking for their patterns of reasoning, literary links and historical and religious suppositions. They form the basis for investigations on the field of reception history. How were biblical texts read in Christianity to curtail interpersonal violence? There are e.g. spiritual readings of war narratives which reduce these texts to the struggle of virtues against vices or arguments deriving from biblical texts for the overcoming of hostility and war.