Monsieur Augustin LWAMBA KAGUNGE, de Mulindilwa (RDC), présentera sa dissertation doctorale pour l’obtention du grade de docteur en théologie en co-tutelle avec la KU Leuven, et la soutiendra publiquement le 10 novembre 2020 à 13h.

Le jury est composé de MM. les professeurs

J. Leemans, président (KU Leuven)

H. Ausloos, promoteur

B. Lemmelijn, promotrice (KU Leuven)

M. Richelle,

B. Doyle, correcteur extérieur (KU Leuven)

E. Bons, correcteur extérieur (Université de Strasbourg)

Finally Released! Exodus 12,1 - 13,16 from a text-critical perspective

English Proceeding from the illustrative study of the so-called Pesah and Mazzot Narratives in Exodus 12,1-13,16, the present study aims at demonstrating that the study of the multiple 'physical' texts in textual criticism essentially contributes to the subsequent literary and redactional study of the text. It does not only offer a critically assessed textual basis on which the literary and redactional study can work. It also reveals that studying the 'empirical' material of the multiple texts as a first phase in research brings to the fore elements in function of the interpretation of the textual and literary growth (literary and redaction criticism) and even with respect to the theological concerns of the text. With a view thereto, the text of Exodus 12,1-13,16, which has been preserved in different Hebrew and Greek textual witnesses, will serve as a basis for a case study. The research aims at investigating these texts in a text-critical way in order to define their differences, their interrelation and their quality in terms of text-critical 'preferability'. On the basis thereof, literary and contextual relations will be detected on the textual level already, thereby offering indications to a meaningful approach of the literary and theological concerns of the text. Finally, and fundamentally, a text-critical study of this kind will undeniably demonstrate that any use of the Biblical text has to take into account its plural and pluriform textual witnesses. Textual criticism demonstrates that there is no such thing as 'the' Biblical text. Rather, it reveals and unravels a dynamic and actualising tradition of human generations of readers, redactors, scribes and translators interpreting and altering it in changing circumstances. This insight is of utmost importance in the actual global uprise of fundamentalism, which is primarily based on an inadequate use and misuse of religious source texts, c.q. the Bible.