Discernment and Biblical Spirituality – An Application: Discernment in the Milieu and Wake of Nehemiah 8

Abstract

In this contribution, as the culmination of a research project on discernment, theologically considered, the conceptual and methodological insights gained in the preceding publications are here brought to bear on a biblical text as a means of applying these insights exegetically. This application however does not occur in an exegetical research vacuum: key moments in Hebrew Bible research history are therefore taken into brief review and placed within the light of the most recent insights on the sociological scenario within postexilic Israel. Within this ancient context, the different modes of divine communication, namely mediated through Scriptures or experienced through direct revelation, was at times a point of intense contestation, as it is in the modern world. This prophetic-Mosaic dispute forms the theological background to Nehemiah 8, as a textual attempt in post-exilic Israel to find a median position between these two contested forms of discerning in the most
valid way the divine will.

Keywords: Discernment, Orthodoxy, Biblical Spirituality, Charismatic revelation, Nehemiah 8, Inner-biblical contestation, Divine communication, Torah versus prophecy