Sin

This dissertation probes one of the central religious ideas in the Hebrew Bible – the concept of sin – through the most pervasive metaphors used to express the notion in Biblical Hebrew. The approach adopted in this study emerged out of a consideration of perspectives coming out…

Feminist theology has become a site of contestation as womanist, mujerista , lesbian, Jewish and other self-named feminist theologies challenge the privilege of white, heterosexual, Christian perspectives. This dissertation argues that postmodern critical tools can assist femini…

The introduction establishes the main purpose of the dissertation as an investigation of the use of debt as a metaphor for sin in the Gospel of Matthew, particularly in the exegesis of the Lord's Prayer (Matt 6:9-15), the teaching on anger (Matt 5:21-26) and the parable of the u…

Evangelist William Franklin Graham, Jr. has been a dominant presence in the world since the middle of the twentieth century. His preaching has enjoyed sustained public attention for over fifty years, and has been a model and a standard for multitudes of preachers. How simple ora…

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the role of mass media in framing, and thereby changing the dynamic of apologetic discourse. Media have the power to constrain a rhetor's ability to develop an effective defense by influencing audience perceptions of (a) the public …

This study addresses the problem of the existence of sin and the determination of its source as reflected in texts of the Second Temple period. The study surveys the relevant Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, and Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as the works of Philo and (where relevant) Jose…

The thirteenth-century missionary effort of the Order of Preachers to convert Jews, Muslims and other non-Christians has been viewed by scholars as a manifestation of a “persecuting society.” Jeremy Cohen argues that the mendicants, under the direction of Friar Raymond of Peñafo…

This dissertation is a full-scale investigation of Matthew's soteriology embedded in his Gospel from literary-critical and historical-critical perspectives. This dissertation consists of five main chapters. My investigation begins by reconstructing the Sitz im Leben of Matthew a…

Among scholars of Medieval Christianity, it is virtually a cliché to say that the sermon functioned as a "mass medium" of the communication and transmission of culture within society. Despite fulfilling a comparable role in Islam, scholars have yet to explain the cultural impact…