Professor, Department of Biblical Studies, Faculty of Theology, University of Aarhus.

Project: "Images of God in contemporary hymn writing."

The project will deal with:

• hymns from Den Danske Salmebog 2002 (Danish Hymn Book) written by both men and women poets
• hymns not included in DDS 2002, but written in the last 50 years
• other kinds of religious poetry

The aim of the study is to investigate whether the biblical hymns or other biblical texts have been normative for the form and/or content of contemporary hymns. As regards form, I expect to show that the biblical use of metaphors, metonymies and parallelism to describe God has been normative for contemporary hymn writing. As regards content, I expect to show that biblical images of God are reused and that there is a tendency to limit the number of images to only a few, depending on whether the one referred/spoken to is the Father, the Son or the Holy Ghost.

The project will comprise various case studies:

• the role played by nature in a selection of contemporary hymns compared to the use of nature in Old-Testament hymns, with reference to other GT texts.
• use of imagery by men and women writers (similarities and differences?)
• criteria for the selection of contemporary hymns for DDS 2002
• analysis of works by selected Danish writers, e.g. Lisbeth Smedegaard Andersen, Vibeke Gundelach, Lars Busk Sørensen and Holger Lissner
• comparisons to images of God in contemporary religious poetry not belonging to the hymn genre

In the longer term, the project might conclude in reflections as to whether it would be possible to establish criteria for a Christian hymn. Are there certain requirements as to form and content that should be fulfilled in order that a hymn can be described as a Christian hymn? As regards form, this could be the use of special rhetorical figures (cf. above). As regards content, this could be the intertextual relations to the biblical images of God.

My study will also include contemporary poetry which is not written in the form of a hymn but concerned with representations of God. The aim is to investigate whether, when referring to God, the hymn genre as such is subject to certain restrictions which do not apply to other kinds of religious poetry, cf., for example, the collection of poems "Til Gud" (To God) by Lars Busk Sørensen.