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There is no consensus regarding the interpretation of the "Spirit like a dove" comparison in Jesus' baptism (Mk 1:10). Although scholars have proposed at least fifty different interpretations of the dove comparison, no study appears to have considered Isaiah's three dove texts as the background for the Markan dove (cf. Is 38:14; 59:11; 60:8). This neglect is surprising considering the abundance of Isaianic allusions in Mark's Prologue (Mk 1:1-15), and the growing awareness that Isaiah is the hermeneutical key for both the Markan Prologue and Jesus' baptism within it. Indeed, Mark connects the dove image inseparably to the Spirit's "descent" from heaven, which alludes to Yahweh's descent in a New Exodus deliverance in Isaiah 63:19 [MT]. Furthermore, each Isaianic dove text uses the same simile, "like a dove" or "like doves," which appears in Mark 1:10, and shares the theme of lament and restoration which fits the context of Mark's baptism account. This study therefore argues that the dove image in Mark 1:10 is a symbol which evokes metonymically Isaiah's three dove texts. So the Spirit is "like a dove" not because any quality of the Spirit resembles that of a dove, but because the dove recalls the Isaianic theme of lament and restoration associated with doves in this Scriptural tradition. After discussing the Markan dove in terms of simile, symbol, and metonymy, the study examines the Isaianic dove texts in the MT and LXX and argues that they form a single motif. Next, later Jewish references to the Isaianic dove texts are considered, while an Appendix examines further dove references in Jewish and Greco-Roman literature. Finally, the study argues that the Markan dove coheres in function with the Isaianic dove motif and symbolizes the Spirit's effect upon and through Jesus by evoking metonymically the Isaianic dove texts.

This thesis provides the first account of complaint in Older Scots literature. It argues for the coherent development of a distinctively Scottish complaining voice across the fifteenth century, characterised by an interest in the relationship between amatory and ethical concerns, between stasis and narrative movement, and between male and female voices. Chapter 1 examines the literary contexts of Older Scots complaint, and identifies three paradigmatic texts for the Scottish complaint tradition: Ovid’s Heroides; Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae; and Alan of Lille’s De Planctu Naturae. Chapter 2 concentrates on the complaints in Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Arch. Selden. B. 24 (c. 1489-c. 1513). It considers afresh the Scottish reception of Lydgate’s Complaint of the Black Knight and Chaucer’s Anelida and Arcite, and also offers original readings of three Scottish complaints preserved uniquely in this manuscript: the Lay of Sorrow, the Lufaris Complaynt, and the Quare of Jelusy. Chapter 3 focuses on the relationship between complaint and narrative, arguing that the complaints included in the Buik of Alexander (c. 1438), Lancelot of the Laik (c. 1460), Hary’s Wallace (c. 1476-8), and The Buik of King Alexander the Conquerour (c. 1460-99) act as catalysts for narrative movement and subvert the complaint’s traditional identity as a static form. Chapter 4 is a study of complaint in Robert Henryson’s three major works: the Morall Fabillis (c. 1480s); the Testament of Cresseid (c. 1480-92); and Orpheus and Eurydice (c. 1490-2), and argues that Henryson consistently connects the complaint form with the concept of self-knowledge as part of wider discourses on effective governance. Chapter 5 presents the evidence that a text’s identity as a complaint influenced its presentation in both manuscript and print witnesses. The witnesses under discussion date predominantly from the sixteenth century; the chapter thus also uses them to explore the complaints’ later reception history.

This thesis explores the role of lament and praise in the respective theological approaches of Walter Brueggemann and David Ford for the purpose of examining how Christian faith transforms human response to suffering. The first three chapters trace Brueggemann’s engagement with Israel’s lament psalms, beginning with his observation that their typical dual form mirrors the collective shape of Israel’s psalter as well as all biblical faith. Influential interactions with sociology eventually lead Brueggemann to propose faith not simply as response to God’s faithfulness, but rather through rhetorical tension maintained between conflicts perceived in aspects of scripture such as praise and lament. We critique this view of irresolvable textual tension for leaving Brueggemann with an unresolved understanding of divine fidelity which obscures biblical expectation that God will respond faithfully to human lament. The fourth and fifth chapters concern David Ford’s consistent engagement with praise and subsequently, Christian joy. His early collaborative scholarship proposes praise as the result of faith in who God is through the suffering person and work of Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, continued ethical concerns lead Ford to identify Christian faith as an inextricable relationship between joy and responsibility resulting from “facing” Christ’s life and suffering death. We critique Ford for failing to clarify how such “facing” is made possible through who God is in Christ, rendering faith merely the result of human expression of Christ’s example, and thus obscuring any real reason for praise amidst suffering. Beyond a synthesis of Brueggemann and Ford’s respective approaches to lament and praise, the final chapter argues that a trinitarian approach to Christ’s atonement is necessary to propose how God confronts both suffering and sin thereby producing faithful human response amidst persistent evil. We conclude by arguing that a trinitarian understanding of praise cannot be proposed apart from either who God is in Christ’s atonement or how the atoning Christ is humanly faithful in lament.

Christian lament songs play an important role in the context of the local church. There are several key differences between Christian lament and secular “sad songs” that are due to Christianity’s perspective of suffering that revolves around the hope of Jesus Christ. Christian songwriters have been writing lament songs through the lens of biblical hope in Christ throughout church history. Due to the nature of lament songs and how they give voice to negative emotions, which can help people to process their grief, and the communal nature of corporate worship, it is important that local churches ensure they use lament songs as often as needed to meet the needs of their congregations.

The project within this portfolio seeks to help Christian Gen Z undergraduates at Biola University navigate setbacks in a way that fortifies their faith. Both anecdotal evidence at Biola and survey data demonstrate that Gen Z required increased support and intervention when they reached college campuses in the mid 2010’s. The American College Health Association has surveyed hundreds of thousands of Gen Z college students over the past seven years and found as far back as 2016 that 87.1 percent of the 27,787 undergraduate respondents to their Fall 2016 survey said they felt “overwhelmed by all they had to do'' within the previous 12 months. Fast-forward to 2023, and the Spring 2023 survey of over 55,000 undergraduates reported that three of every four participants were noticeably nervous to some degree over the previous year, while about 45 percent of undergraduates reported having a moderately to highly stressful academic problem over the prior year. In this larger context, undergraduates at Biola indicated they were unwilling to participate in a new, unknown activity that did not promise to be highly entertaining. Consequently, the best way to help undergrads navigate the inevitable setbacks of their college experience was to leverage the avenues students already turned to for support. Luckily, hundreds of undergraduates meet with a spiritual director at Biola every semester for spiritual support. So this project was shaped as a course that equips spiritual directors to support their undergraduate directees through life setbacks.

From the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, life in the United States fractured over political and social unrest. The fracturing spilled into churches in the United States and caused grief over the loss of members, friendships, and community. Churches and their members often lack the language to process the experienced trauma and grief. This project seeks to equip church communities with the language needed to name and process their grief by introducing lament into the regular rhythms of the church year through experiential participation in the practices of lament. By reclaiming practices and language of lament, persons, and congregations may find healing through renewed connection with God, with ourselves, and with each other.

One of the most challenging aspects of the human experience is dealing with the loss of a loved one. Although death marks the end of human life, it can affect the life of the ones closest to the deceased. Often, the griever is left in a sea of pain, which can produce doubts, isolation, and emotional conflict. Although the grieving believer may turn to the church for support in his/her time of grief, the church body may find itself unsure of how to respond best and support the needs of the bereaved. This qualitative historical study examines the literature pertaining to the grieving process and the worship ministries of the church directed toward the bereaved. While the research is narrowly focused on those who have experienced the loss of a loved one to death, it is realized that grief may be experienced as the result of other stressful life losses. Such situations might include relational breakup, job loss, divorce, loss of a loved one to addiction, loss of health, or loss of mental faculties). The findings of this study may prove applicable to those facing such situations. Collection of data from interviewees provided accounts from those dealing with loss to identify the challenges they face or faced when striving to worship and how they find or found comfort in the corporate worship setting. Data gathered throughout the interview process was analyzed to determine common emergent themes. From these themes, guiding principles were synthesized and offered to church worship leaders, their teams, and those preparing for the worship ministry as a means of equipping the body to more effectively meet the needs of fellow worshipers who experience the pain brought on by the death of a loved one.

This thesis explores book two of the Psalms and how it displays and reacts to the theme of the suffering of the righteous at the hands of fellow community members. It explores the nationality, tactics, and motivations of the enemies in Psalms 52, 53, 55, 62, 64, 69, 70, and 71. It is shown that the Psalmist is often pitted against other Israelites who are even within his religious circle. These enemies who are closest to the psalmist employ certain tactics and are motivated by specific worldviews. The concluding chapter explores the implications for worship and theology that these findings pose.

Jacopo Peri, Giulio Caccini, Emilio de’ Cavalieri, and Claudio Monteverdi used plainchant formulas in their compositions for solo voice: Peri used psalm tones in Euridice; Caccini used Tenebrae chant melisma in Le nuove musiche; Cavalieri quoted the Lamentations chant in his Lamentationes; Monteverdi evoked plainchant psalmody in the Lamento d’Arianna. Chant recitation was clearly a familiar model that could inform how to compose in the celebrated speech-like manner. As this dissertation demonstrates, chant and monody were also contiguous musical practices, united by imitation of ancient speech-like song. The evocation of chant in early monody may have had a pointed purpose: to gesture musically towards antiquity, and to formulate a distinct melodic character for solo-voiced music. In writings that circulated among creators of solo song and early opera, both Girolamo Mei and Vincenzo Galilei posited plainchant as a vestige of ancient music. In doing so, they imagined ecclesiastical recitation as a bridge between ancient music and modern attempts to revive the power of ancient singing. This was by virtue of chant’s apparently “antique” remnants: use of mode, extended recitation, and centrality of text. Vatican chant reformer Giovanni Guidetti, contemporary with Mei and Galilei, also connected antiquity and chant. In a previously unknown edition of his work that I have discovered, Guidetti compared Christian plainsong with Pythagorean theories of music, including its power to move affections and reform the soul. Mei, Galilei, and Guidetti thus espoused similar ideas about chant and antiquity, leading alternately to early solo song and opera, and the reform of Catholic liturgy and devotion. The idea of chant as a vestige of ancient song thus had strong cultural currency, operating across sacred-secular boundaries. By revealing how sacred and secular spheres intersected in early modern Italy, and by examining chant, monodies, and theoretical writings from ca. 1600, this dissertation highlights the previously obscured triangle of chant, ancient song, and monody. It furthermore provides new tools for analysis of music in the formative years of the first operas, and reframes 16th-century plainchant—largely neglected in music histories—as a significant creative force in early modern musical culture.

Koshok is a practice related to lament that is manifest in several types. The first type of koshok refers to a lament-like style of vocal music performed by women only and which includes a combination of text, melody and crying-like sounds. This type is performed three days after a death has occurred and on days set aside to mark the passage of time within a year of mourning. The second type of koshok refers to a purely instrumental performance that may be played by an individual, typically on the komus or by a large Soviet-style orchestra of folk instruments. This instrumental type serves the purpose of spreading the news of a death and may be performed by both men and women. The third type of koshok is a vocal performance by a male singer accompaning himself on the komus. This type is reserved for the remembrance of persons of high esteem. All three types share qualities of emotion and dialogue and such qualities underlie the decisions made by local Kyrgyz people as to what may be included in the category of koshok. Three months of ethnographic field-research with koshok as its central subject was conducted by the author in the Kyrgyz Republic from September 2008 until December 2008. The research took place mainly in the region of Talas and Chui and was informed by prior experience gained in the region of Naryn. Myth, as manifested in local stories and customs, is an emergent material through which an individual interacts with the world and with which he or she can create meaningful acts. Koshok is connected to myth in so much as the worlds in which koshok is performed are myth-infused. Understanding myth aids in understanding how koshok both gains meaning from contexts and adds meaning to contexts. The feeling and communication of emotion is constructed by the larger social system and the extent to which an individual, whether performer or listener, is embedded in this larger social system influences the extent to which that individual can participate meaningfully in a performance of koshok. Koshok belongs to a spectrum of activity that includes narratives about sadness or misfortune, activities such as mandatory visits and affective states such as weeping or fainting. This spectrum of activities is covered in the novel, The Day Lasts Longer than 100 Years, written by the Kyrgyz novelist Chingiz Aitmatov, through the stories surrounding a gravesite and description of the activities of a single family as they prepare to bury their father. Not only does Aitmatov write about koshok, but koshok also played a part in the public remembrance of Aitmatov forty days after his funeral. The koshoks presented in a public performance and broadcasted via mass media retained their traditional elements while providing a forum for the negotiation of national identity.

Scholars have considered Italian chamber recitative laments only a transitional phenomenon between madrigal laments and laments organized on the descending tetrachord bass. However, the recitative lament is distinguished from them by its characteristic attitude toward the relationship between music and text. Composer of Italian chamber recitative laments attempted to express more subtle, refined and sometimes complicated emotion in their music. For that purpose, they intentionally created discrepancies between text and music. Sometimes they even destroy the original structure of text in order to clearly deliver the composer's own voice. The basic syntactic structure is deconstructed and reconstructed along with their reading and according to their intention. The discrepancy between text and music is, however, expectable and natural phenomena since text cannot be completely translated or transformed to music and vice versa. The composers of Italian chamber recitative laments utilized their innate heterogeneity between two materials (music and text) as a metaphor that represents the semantic essence of the genre, the conflict. In this context, Italian chamber recitative laments were a real embodiment of the so-called seconda prattica and through the study of them, finally, we more fully able to understand how the spirit of late Renaissance flourished in Italy in the first four decade of the seventeenth century.