Esther Hornung - Böcker

The hermeneutics of human life is one of the most challenging issues in the fields of bioscience and of ethics today. Recent breakthroughs in bio science challenge the prevalent metaphors and paradigms which define human life in the human and natural sciences, that influence our understanding of «diseases», «illness», «therapy», «aging», «dying», and, consequently, also shape medical practice. In the essays collected in this book, scientists, ethicists, philosophers and theologians bring Bonhoeffer’s ethics and his theological anthropology into dialogue with bioscience and explore current bioethical and anthropological issues. All articles were first presented as lectures at the Third International Bonhoeffer Colloquium at Freie Universität Berlin, 2009. Bonhoeffer’s Ethics, as presented in this book, helps to articulate a semantics of human life which stimulates a debate between science and ethics, and which assists in finding fresh ways for understanding human life and the related tasks of scientific research and medical practice.

This book examines the oracle of deliverance that Yhwh communicated to Ebed-melech, the Cushite (Jer 39,15-18). In order to comprehend this analeptically presented promise, however, the research also scrutinizes two other related events in Jeremiah’s mission in the context of Jer 37–39: i) the unpleasant incident in which the Jerusalem officials maliciously threw the Lord’s messenger into the muddy cistern (Jer 38,1–6) and ii) Ebed-melech’s benevolent intervention to rescue the prophet from the water reservoir (Jer 38,7-13). In this monograph, the author uses the historical-critical method and rhetorical & narrative analyses.