David taunting Goliath: divine judgment and messianic expectation

BR Christianity;BS The Bible

Hale, Kevin William ; MacLeod, John Angus

University:University of Glasgow in partnership with Edinburgh Theological Seminary

Department:School of Critical Studies

关键词: David, Goliath, taunting, non-burial, messianic, messiah, Old Testament Messianism, 1 Samuel, curse.;   

Others  :  http://theses.gla.ac.uk/80253/1/2020HaleKevinMThR.pdf

来源: University of Glasgow

【 摘 要 】

This thesis examines the use of the taunting language used by David and Goliath against each other in 1 Samuel 17 and its usefulness in understanding both the David and Goliath narrative and 1 Samuel as a whole, particularly as it pertains to the themes of messiah and king. The research examines such language in order to test the Christo-centric reading of the narrative. In the content of a literarily fascinating verbal onslaught, one finds a set of threats involving non-burial and carrion-eating animals that is linguistically, syntactically, and thematically similar to numerous threats throughout the Hebrew canon.When examined, one finds these judgement scenes to have both a common purpose of judgement and a common eschatological force. Further, when one examines, the taunting language of the David and Goliath narrative against Ancient Near Eastern literature, various linguistic and narrative parallels are found which appear to share a very similar rhetorical function to the taunting language of 1 Samuel 17:43-47. In light of the shared function of the Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern analogues to both the taunting language of 1 Samuel 17 andthe David and Goliath narrative as a whole, one rightly reads the latter as a purposeful text designed with a particular function related to divine judgement, authority, and eschatological force - ideas that are brought together in the themes of messiah and king thus supporting a Christo-centric reading. This function of the David and Goliath narrative provides a clue to the potential purpose of its broader context. Indeed, when one situates 1 Samuel 17 in the broader narrative one finds that it is not an anomaly in how it functions but ties in with the narrative of 1 Samuel as a whole.