OT367 (group tutorial) (1.5 CR)
Lecturer(s): Dr Daniel Block / Tutor: Dr Andrew Lee
Venue: BGST Clarus Centre
Starts: Friday, 13 April, 2012
Time: 7.15-9.50pm
ABOUT THE LECTURERDr. Block is the Gunther H. Knoedler Professor of Old Testament at the Graduate School of Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. He has previously taught at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, at Bethel Theological Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota, and at Providence College and Seminary, Otterburne, Manitoba. He has been a guest lecturer in Canada, England, Denmark, China and Greece.
Dr. Block studied at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Illinois, and at the University of Liverpool, where he completed at D.Phil. in Semitics and Classical Hebrew. He has written more than fifty scholarly essays and numerous popular articles on biblical texts and subjects. He has published commentaries on Ezekiel (Eerdmans, 1997, 1998), and on Judges and Ruth (Broadman & Holman, 1999).
Dr. Block lectures and preaches frequently at Bible conferences and spiritual retreats. In his church-based teaching two of his major concerns are to make the Old Testament live today and to recover a biblical theology of worship for the church.
TUTORAndrew undertakes his doctoral research in the Old Testament at the University of Gloucestershire, UK. His dissertation, entitled “The Narrative Function of the Song of Moses in the contexts of Deuteronomy and Genesis-Kings,” examines the theological and hermeneutical role of the Song of Moses within its contexts in their final form. Prior to his doctoral studies, Andrew took his MCS and MDiv at BGST. He was formerly a staff-worker of Singapore Youth For Christ, through which he helped supervise the work of youth evangelism amongst secondary school students.
SYNOPSIS
Ezekiel is often considered the lunatic of the Old Testament. Because of the bewildering opening vision, his strange street-theatrical performances, and his bizarre retelling of Israel’s story, well-intentioned people often give up on reading, let alone studying, the book of Ezekiel. Ezekiel was the only prophet to minister exclusively outside the land of Israel. Although his language and themes are firmly rooted in the literary traditions of the Sinai revelation and the book of Deuteronomy, many of his oracles betray the influence of the outside world, both in their language and in their motifs. At other times, the language he uses is simple Hebrew but his choice of expressions is shocking, bordering on pornographic (chaps. 16 and 23). Apparently, for him the only way to penetrate the hardened hearts of his audience and to wake them out of their lethargy was to use outrageous language and to reconstruct Israel’s history as God saw it in startling if not repugnant terms. Perhaps more than in other prophetic books, when we read this book we must ask a series of serious questions:
- What does the text say? (the text-critical question);
- What does the text mean? (the hermeneutical question);
- Why does he say it like that? (the literary question);
- What relevance does his message have for me? (the practical question).
When we have explored the world in which Ezekiel lived and the audience to which he spoke, the answers to all these questions become clearer.
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