Deliverance from Slavery

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Published Oct 2015
ISBN: 9789004273023

Attempting a Biblical Theology in the Service of Liberation

Dick Boer, University of Amsterdam

‘Delivery from slavery’: these words, taken from a Dutch labour movement song, perfectly map onto the Bible’s central concern. They are also similar to the Torah’s key phrase: ‘I am YHWH, your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage’ (Ex 20:2).

The words are invoked here to serve as an axiom to be introduced into the modern period. The watchword ‘delivery from slavery’ translates the biblical message of the exodus from slavery into the theory and practice of a modern liberation movement. The present work argues that biblical theology is the attempt to ‘update’ the ‘language of the message’. It searches for a language that attends to the concerns of today’s world while ‘preserving’ the concerns that originally motivated biblical language.


Biographical note

Dick Boer, Dr. theol. [1939], theologian, retired professor at the University of Amsterdam. He has published monographs on ‘theology and ideology’, the history of modern theology and Karl Barth.

Readership

All interested in biblical theology, philosophy and Marxism.

Table of contents

Translator’s Note

Foreword by Roland Boer

Introduction

1. Text and Context

2. Canon

3. Exodus

4. Covenant

5. Creation

6. Anthropology (Gn 2–4)

7. Entry

8. The Real Israel

Postscript 1. Paul and the Messianic Community

Postscript 2. Though he liberated others, he could not liberate himself

References

Index