Power and Faith: The times of Ahaz and Hezekiah in Biblical Theology

Abstract:

The stories of the eighth century kings of Judah, Ahaz and Hezekiah, are told in full three times in the Old Testament: in 2 Kings, Isaiah, and 2 Chronicles. As well as this, the books of Hosea, Amos, Micah, and most of Isaiah 1–39 reflect on this era. So do many of the Psalms. Some Jewish traditions hold Hezekiah partly responsible for authorship of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs, and many scholars attribute the early collection of the former prophets to his era. Most of the classical messianic prophecies date to this era. Altogether, the 8th Century BC occupies as much space in our Bibles as the entire Johannine corpus. And yet the significance for Biblical Theology is not well explored. This module examines how the onset of imperial power challenged Israel’s theology, and the way that the events of the eighth Century shaped our Old Testament and theology. We will look at various genres: the way the events were later recalled through story, the poetic response of the psalmists, and the prophetic challenges to the political power structures of the time. We do this with the goal of understanding the Biblical relationship between human political power and faith, the role that the messiah plays in this as king of the nations, and how we might apply this to our own contemporary political theology in South African context.

Bio:

Dr Nathan Lovell is Director of Research at GWC. Dr Lovell has been on faculty since 2011, lecturing and doing research on Old Testament and the Hebrew language. He has previously taught postgraduate modules in Kings and Jeremiah, and his book Kings and Exilic Identity: Reading 1 & 2 Kings as a Work of Political Historiography will be released by T&T Clark in February 2020. He has several publications, with research interests that include Biblical and Political Theology, the coherence of Old Testament literature, and how the Old Testament can be preached and used faithfully in contemporary contexts. Nathan is married to Diane who is Dean of Women at GWC, and has two children, Shiri and Isaac. They are missionaries with the Church Missionary Society of Australia.