Give us a king to govern us : an ideological reading of 1Samuel 8-12

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The purpose of this study is to explore who is saying what to whom for what purpose in the text of 1 Samuel 8-12 through an analysis of the manifestations of ideology in this text. The emphasis of this thesis lies in the application of multiple methodologies in biblical interpretation with a view to (a) reconstructing the material and ideological conditions under which the biblical text was produced in order to determine which group produced the text and whose socioeconomic interests it served; and (b) investigating how these conditions are encoded in reproducing a particular ideology in order to determine how the texts incorporated the particular ideologies or interests of the time.The present research, for this reason, combines an extrinsic and an intrinsic analysis to read the world of 1 Samuel. The extrinsic analysis makes use of a social-historical and a social scientific approach to explore the particular circumstances. It indicates that the biblical writing should be regarded as conscious writing which aims to interpret historical incidents and construct specific ideologies. 1 Samuel 8-12 might therefore have been constructed by exilic groups to provide reasons for their difficult past. The intrinsic analysis makes use of narrative criticism, especially the theory of conflict plot, to do an in-depth investigation of the rhetoric of 1 Samuel 8-12. This analysis indicates that these chapters highlight the ambivalence of the monarchy, although the surface structure might tell a different story. The findings of the research have led to the conclusion that 1 Samuel 8-12 appears to present no clear position with regard to the future of the monarchy.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University