Acknowledgments
As the reader will observe from textual references and endnotes, this work is greatly indebted to the scholarship of others. It is also indebted to the suggestions, insights, and assistance of numerous other people. Apart from my own earlier ruminations on this project (discussed in the Introduction), an impetus for this book came in 1994 from John Corrigan, whose manuscript draf of the “Christianity” section in the subsequently published Jew, Christians, Muslims: A Comparative Introduction to Monotheistic Religions (Prentice-Hall, 1998) I was asked to review. Corrigan’s attention to the role of Scripture in the history of Christianity, though not extensive, meshed with my own embryonic thoughts about the role of Scripture in Christian history. I wondered, could a more comprehensive story of the Bible’s infuence in Christian history be told in a way that would at once blend history and hermeneutics? Could I ofer some insight into why a particular biblical text came to the fore, was given a particular interpretation, and subsequently infuenced the course of Christian history? What follows, of course, is an answer to these and many other questions raised by the readers and listeners of presentations of this book in its various stages of development.
I frst tried out the general shape of this book in two settings—ecclesiastical and academic. For listening patiently to underdeveloped ideas and prodding greater clarity of expression, I thank the participants in a 1996 adult education class at Immanuel Presbyterian Church (Miami) and students in a 1998 fall seminar at the University of Miami. Among the latter, I gratefully acknowledge the indulgence of Glaister Brown, Scott Chadda, Jessica Gilbride, Kateri Hilton, Nathan Novak, Kristen Oostdyk, Jenny Reider, and Renata Schwedhelm. Another student, Sarah Tompson Chule, rendered helpful bibliographic assistance and commented on several chapters. Tanks also to Alex Cuenca, my student assistant, for reconfguring the manuscript to conform to the guidelines of Oxford University Press.
A number of colleagues, known and unknown to me personally, took time away from their own work to lend assistance. For adding conceptual clarity to this project, I thank Mark Noll and several anonymous readers for Oxford University Press. Henry Green, Dexter Callender, Nancy Hardesty, Daniel Pals, Willard Swartley, and Michael Westmoreland-White ofered bibliographic suggestions and/or clarifcations on portions of chapters. Bernard McGinn, Mickey Mattox, Douglas Sweeney, Martin Marty, J. Denny Weaver, Stuart Murray, Arnold Snyder, Will Coleman, and Douglas Jacobsen read and commented upon individual
chapters. I have also beneftted from conversations with long-time friends Bruce Hultgren and David and Margo Miller.
To three scholars and friends who read the entire manuscript, I express my heartfelt thanks. In his usual timely and efcient manner, Craig Blomberg ofered balanced judgments and bibliographic suggestions. I am especially grateful to two colleagues in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Miami. With the eye of an assiduous editor, Stephen Sapp combed through the entire manuscript and saved me from infelicities in grammar and diction. John Fitzgerald plunged me deeper into the complex world of biblical scholarship, ofered extensive, thought-provoking comments, saved me from embarrassing blunders, and heightened my respect for his own feld of biblical studies.
Te stafs of several libraries answered queries and ofered much-needed assistance. Tanks to the library personnel and specialists at St. John Vianney College Seminary (Miami), Western Michigan University, Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, and especially the University of Miami, whose staf processed hundreds of interlibrary loan requests.
Several other people and institutions deserve special thanks for their encouragement and largesse. I probably would not have written this book if it were not for Cynthia Read of Oxford University Press, whose enthusiastic endorsement of this project in its prospectus stage enabled me to work with the confdence that what I was doing would eventually appear in print. I could have not sustained this project without the fnancial assistance of several granting agencies. Te University of Miami supported this work through a summer Max Orovitz Research Grant and a General Research Grant for travel. I am especially grateful to the Lilly Endowment–funded Louisville Institute for its generous Christian Faith and Life Sabbatical Grant that enabled me to devote the 1999–2000 academic year to this project.
Family members did not contribute anything directly to this work, but I have been sustained by their love in the realization that the meaning of human relationships far exceeds the meaning of texts. Parents-in-law Gordon and Phyllis Bacon deserve special recognition for their care and support through the years. Tanks to my children—Elizabeth Corson, Justin Kling, Phillip Kyrk, and Hannah Kling—for enriching life in so many ways and ofering a welcomed respite from “another day at the ofce.” A thank you hardly expresses appreciation to my wife, Barbara, who has graced my life and on numerous occasions adjusted her busy schedule to accommodate my scholarship.
Tis book is dedicated to parents whose call to serve and minister in the Christian church inspired me in the pursuit of another, though not unrelated, calling. It is to them that I owe my frst exposure to the Bible.
Abbreviations
AB Anchor Bible
ABR American Benedictine Review
ACW Ancient Christian Writers: Te Works of the Fathers in Translation. Edited by J. Quasten et al. 55 vols. New York: Newman; Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist, 1946–.
ANF Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325. Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson. 10 vols. 1885–96. Reprint, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1978–79.
ANTC Abingdon New Testament Commentaries
BNTC Black’s New Testament Commentaries
BTB Biblical Teology Bulletin
BJRL Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester
CFS Cistercian Fathers Series
CGR Conrad Grebel Review
CH Church History
CS Cistercian Studies
CSS Cistercian Studies Series
CWS Classics of Western Spirituality: A Library of the Great Spiritual Masters. Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist, 1978–
FC Fathers of the Church
FCB Feminist Companion to the Bible
GNC Good News Commentary
HTR Harvard Teological Review
IB Interpreter’s Bible. Edited by G. A. Buttrick et al. 12 vols. New York: Abingdon, 1951–57.
IBCR International Bulletin of Missionary Research
ICC International Critical Commentary
ITC International Teological Commentary
JAAR Journal of the American Academy of Religion
JAH Journal of American History
JBC Jerome Biblical Commentary. Edited by Raymond E. Brown et al. Englewood Clifs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1968.
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature
JES Journal of Ecumenical Studies
JETS Journal of the Evangelical Teological Society
JPT Journal of Pentecostal Teology
JPTSS Journal of Pentecostal Teology Supplement Series
JR Journal of Religion
JRS Journal of Roman Studies
JSNT Journal for the Study of the New Testament
JSNTSS Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series
JTS Journal of Teological Studies
LCC Te Library of Christian Classics. Edited by J. Baillie et al. 26 vols. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1953–66.
LCL Loeb Classical Library
LQ Lutheran Quarterly
LW Luther’s Works, American Edition. Edited by Jaroslav Pelikan, vols. 1–30; Helmut T. Lehman, vols. 31–55. St. Louis: Concordia, and Philadelphia: Fortress (formerly Muhlenberg Press), 1955–86.
MFC Message of the Fathers of the Church
MQR Mennonite Quarterly Review
MS Monastic Studies
NCB New Century Bible (Commentary)
NICNT New International Commentary on the New Testament
NICOT New International Commentary on the Old Testament
NIGTC New International Greek Testament Commentary
NPNF A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. Edited by Philip Schaf et al. 2 series (14 vols. each). 1887–94. Reprint, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1952–56.
NTM New Testament Message
OTG Old Testament Guides
OTL Old Testament Library
Pneuma Pneuma: Journal for the Society of Pentecostal Studies
PSB Princeton Seminary Bulletin
SAC Studies in Antiquity and Christianity
SP Sacra Pagina
SEC Studies in Early Christianity: A Collection of Scholarly Essays. Edited by Everret Ferguson. 18 vols. New York: Garland, 1993.
StPatr Studia Patristica
TTo Teology Today
TLS Teology and Life Series
TNTC Tyndale New Testament Commentaries
TOTC Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries
TPINTC TPI New Testament Commentaries
TS Teological Studies
WBC Word Biblical Commentary
WC Westminster Commentaries
Introduction
Te basic idea for this book originated in the classroom. During my teaching career, I have taught in two kinds of educational environments: one a private, nonsectarian university, the other a variety of Christian settings, including a Protestant college, a Catholic seminary, and a number of Protestant churches. In my experience, students in both groups labor under misapprehensions that, although quite diferent, are related. On the one hand, university students may learn something from a course in the history of Christianity, but when the last assignment is completed and the fnal exam taken, they have little knowledge of the Bible’s relationship to developments in the history of Christianity. Ironically, it is as if the Christian faith, ofen labeled a “religion of the book,” were beref of a guiding sacred text throughout its history. On the other hand, although students in Christian educational settings have a working knowledge of the Bible, they have little understanding of how various biblical texts have been interpreted and applied throughout history. For them there is a diferent irony: it is as if the Christian faith, ofen called a “historical religion,” were devoid of twenty centuries of history. And so the idea occurred to me, now expressed in the pages that follow, to make some attempt to bridge the gap between Scripture and its place in the history of Christianity.
Given the specialties and subspecialties of the feld, historians of Christianity seldom venture into the discipline of biblical scholarship. In fact, a perusal of general works on the history of Christianity turns up limited references to the impact of the Bible as a formative infuence in Christian history. Apart from a discussion of the formation and role of sacred texts as they relate to the early Christian community and a comment on Luther’s “evangelical breakthrough” in his reading of Romans 1:17, few narratives on the history of Christianity consider specifc biblical texts in any depth. Biblical scholars, although they are attuned to historical developments, typically focus on the original Sitz im Leben the life setting in which the text was produced and used—rather than on the appropriation and application of a text in subsequent history.
Several consequences arise from detaching biblical texts from their application in diverse historical contexts. For one, such neglect creates a false impression that sacred texts are static, stable entities, that they function independently of time and place. But this has never been so. First, the Bible itself is embedded in a variety of cultural contexts and refects the infuences of its social settings. Second, because of the changing nature of life itself, nearly every generation of Christians
The Bible in History. David W. Kling, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197525364.003.0001
has reinterpreted Scripture (with varying degrees of self-awareness) in order to make the Bible relevant to their concerns. Tis interpretive task is precisely what the hermeneutical enterprise endeavors: to understand how a biblical text is to be interpreted and applied in the present-day situation.1 In the words of Paul Ricoeur, “Hermeneutics is the very deciphering of life in the mirror of the text.”2 We decipher life by carrying on a dialogue with the text about our world and its world.
Consider the example of Anthony, the subject of the frst chapter. Afer hearing the words of Jesus, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven,” this obscure Egyptian Christian in the late third century took this advice with a literalminded passion. He gave away his possessions, lef the civilized world, headed to the desert, and became the putative founder of the monastic movement. Troughout the centuries, however, other Christians have understood Jesus’ words to the rich young man quite diferently, and, in fact, some see in Anthony a perversion of Jesus’ intent. No, they argue, Anthony was more infuenced by his surroundings (e.g., a general ascetic environment) than he was by a correct reading of the text. What, then, was the rise of monasticism? A continuation of themes adumbrated in the New Testament, an unwitting concession to the ascetic milieu of the ancient world, or some combination? Such questions prompt other questions engaged throughout this book. Why do particular texts become the focus of attention? What factors give rise to a new understanding of a text? What traditions or pre-understandings does an interpreter bring to the text? How do we understand the interaction between text—be it in oral form as in Anthony’s case or in written form as in Luther’s—and the interpreter? Who discerns the correct meaning of a text—the learned, the pious, the ecclesiastical authorities, the poor, the marginalized? Is there a single meaning, or are there multiple meanings to the text?3
As a work of both history and biblical studies, this book addresses the history of ten texts—in some cases a single text, in others clusters of related texts, and in still others, whole chapters or large portions of a particular book in the Bible. Although I discuss my criteria for choosing particular texts later, the necessary limitation of texts indicates that this study is intentionally episodic, illustrative, and selective rather than exhaustive or comprehensive in scope. Dozens, even hundreds, of texts have exerted infuence in the history of Christianity (though exactly how one measures infuence is not easy to defne). In tracing the history of ten texts, I ofer not so much an introduction to the history of biblical interpretation as “the operation of taking soundings”4 or identifying certain texts at certain moments in history that resonate (“sound”) in the lives of individuals and extend to a larger Christian community. Each chapter is shaped roughly like an hourglass. Tat is, I trace the history of a text on either side of a particular episode in which the text undergoes an innovative interpretation. Tis critical
juncture—the neck of the hourglass—becomes the primary focus of attention in each chapter.
As noted, the concerns of this book address a wide audience of nonprofessionals (students, informed laypeople) and scholars. For the uninitiated in the academic guild, as well as for instructors who may wish to use this book as a supplement to other reading or to assign only selected chapters, I have sought to provide sufcient historical background so that each chapter stands alone as a discrete unit. Where possible, I have also sought to avoid the technical language and apparatus that characterize contemporary biblical studies.
At the same time, by undertaking an interdisciplinary study of history, theology, and biblical studies, I hope to ofer scholars new ways of thinking about the function of sacred texts within the cultural communities that engage and appropriate them. Historians, biblical scholars, theologians, and ethicists will obviously fnd some things that are familiar to them, but this work of synthesis is intended to broaden their interdisciplinary horizons. For example, this project extends the previous work of Gerhard Ebeling, Karlfried Froelich, Ulrich Luz, Roland Murphy, and recent scholars (primarily biblical) who have expressed a renewed appreciation for the Wirkungsgeschichte, or history of the efects that Scripture has produced in many contexts throughout the history of Christianity.5 My work difers from theirs, however, in its focus on the role of a biblical text in a particular historical episode; that is, a historical event or development is the framework for the understanding and application of a biblical text.
Ebeling envisioned the history of Christianity as the complex interplay of selfunderstanding and biblical interpretation, but as Froelich has remarked, “Tere seems to be no comprehensive attempt anywhere to write church history from the angle of the history of the exposition of Scripture. Ebeling himself . . . never tackled the task.”6 Afer working on this project for a number of years, I think I know why. Te task is simply too daunting. Te infuence of hundreds of texts upon thousands of individuals and groups over the course of two thousand years is a challenge too big for any one individual to comprehend.
In its attention to “hourglass episodes,” this book proceeds chronologically. I have applied three criteria in selecting such episodes.
1. Signifcance. Te primary criterion of selection is the extent to which an interpretation or application of a biblical text signifcantly shaped or was invoked as a critical text in the subsequent history of Christianity. I am not suggesting that great shifs in the Christian church necessarily turn on important biblical texts, for great shifs tend to be attitudinal and general in scope. As the historian Edmund Morgan observes, “Change in Christian thought, even so radical a change as in the Reformation, has usually been a matter of emphasis, of giving certain ideas a greater weight than was previously accorded them or of carrying one idea to its logical conclusion at the expense of another.”7 During
such upheavals, a specifc scriptural text is cited (e.g., Luther’s use of Rom. 1:17), brought to bear on the situation, and accorded a special status, ofen thereby assuming a paradigmatic quality. Reasonable people will disagree about what events I deem signifcant—perhaps more about what I have lef out than what I have included—but my list generally accords with the consensus of other historians of Christianity and biblical scholars concerned with the history of texts. Space limitations required eliminating a number of texts and episodes of comparable signifcance to those that are included.8
2. Diversity of traditions and texts. I have taken into account the major Christian traditions, though with diferent degrees of emphasis roughly proportionate to my assessment of each tradition’s historical impact. I have also selected a variety of settings among diverse peoples, although emphasis is given to American developments for reasons of my own academic expertise and the intended reading audience. In addition, I have chosen a variety of scriptural genres such as narrative, poetry, and didactic literature.
3. Interpretive strategy and varied themes. I have selected incidents that demonstrate a cross section of exegetical and hermeneutical approaches, be they simplistic or sophisticated. Moreover, I have chosen episodes that illustrate the varied application of scriptural texts in matters related to church polity (chapters 2, 8), theology (chapter 4), missiology (chapter 9), ethics (chapters 1, 5, 6, 10), and religious experience (chapters 3, 7). Some texts have been a source of comfort; others have been a source of social transformation; still others have been the basis of revolutionary behavior.
As I have intimated, this book is less concerned with the most accurate or latest critical understanding of a sacred text than with the way a text was appropriated by an individual or a community. Along the way I consult biblical scholars and literary critics and apply their insights to establish a modern critical reading of the text. However, this approach is of secondary importance to discerning the impact of a text within a particular historical setting. From the perspective of some biblical scholars, this approach may appear to be an irrelevance, especially if a text was grossly misunderstood in light of modern historical-critical scholarship.9 Why should anyone care about the infuence of a fawed interpretation of Scripture? But raising this question gets to the very heart of what this project is about, namely, describing the assumptions, presuppositions, or mentalité by which Christians apprehend a sacred text and live out its teachings. Experience accompanies and even informs these assumptions to create a dynamic interplay among belief, experience, and Scripture. Put another way, on some occasions Scripture confrms one’s predispositions; on others, it challenges or alters them. Te dynamics of scriptural interpretation point to the fact that a sacred text, as with all literature, is contested territory. And truth be faced, it is no less hotly contested among contemporary scholars.
For readers unfamiliar with the history of biblical interpretation, it may be helpful to note briefy its broad contours.10 Perhaps the simplest way of viewing this complex history is to demarcate the traditional period from the modern period or, to be more precise, to distinguish between the pre-historical-critical (more commonly but less accurately known as “precritical”) and the historicalcritical period. Te latter emerged during the Renaissance and came into its own in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Tis distinction, it should be noted, locates the interpretive enterprise among the learned and privileges their understanding of the Bible. Such is a conventional perspective, for the very existence of a text implies a literate reader, one who is able to discern meaning in the written word. Yet other ways have been proposed. On occasion, especially since the Reformation, there has been the recognition that the Spirit of God enables the unlearned, even the illiterate, to grasp the basic teachings of Scripture. Te crosscultural missionary enterprise has proceeded on this assumption. Troughout Christian history, not only have the learned read the Word, but also perhaps more ofen the ignorant have heard it. Te theme of exodus in the African American experience discussed in chapter 6 highlights the latter perspective. At the same time, in the precritical period, both black slaves and literate Euro-Americans shared the traditional interpretation of Scripture, for both groups afrmed that the words and sentences (as heard or read) accurately described real events and real truths. Tis assumption underlay the traditional view of the Bible.
Hans Frei has noted three basic elements of the “traditional realistic interpretation of biblical stories.”11 First, the Bible describes actual historical people and events. Tus Moses actually existed, and the exodus event actually occurred as described. Second, a single narrative, what has been called a “grand narrative” or “metanarrative,” holds the Bible together. For Christians, this narrative is the story of redemption, foreshadowed and anticipated in the Old Testament and fulflled in the New with the coming of Christ. Tus Moses, in leading the people of Israel to the Promised Land, foreshadows or prefgures Christ, who led his followers to the heavenly Promised Land of the celestial city. Te story of Moses was indeed true, but it also prefgured the larger narrative of Christ’s redemptive work. Tird, if the world as described in the biblical narrative is “the one and only real world,” then its message transcends time and space. Te reader sees her own life, attitudes and actions, motivations and behavior, in the biblical narrative. All of life is fltered or understood through this real biblical world.12
We see this view of Scripture embedded in the New Testament itself. Trough a typological (or fgurative) and christological interpretation of the Old Testament, the authors of the New Testament believed that the Hebrew Scriptures anticipated or foreshadowed the coming of Christ. For example, in Luke 4:16–19, Jesus quotes from the Book of Isaiah (61:1–2; 58:6) to announce that “today this scripture has been fulflled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21). Te
author of Hebrews envisions the prophecies and promises of the Old Testament fulflled in the “new covenant” that now through the unique priesthood of Christ superseded the old Jewish system. Paul draws a correlation between Adam and Christ (the new Adam) and between Israel and the church (the new Israel). Even as the New Testament emerged, its writers were conscious that all of Scripture bore the imprint of God’s salvation history that culminated in Christ.
In the early church, two understandings of Scripture predominated. Both refected continuities with the early hermeneutical approaches of Jewish rabbis, ancient philosophers, and the writers of the New Testament. Te literal approach, which ofen bordered on extreme literalism, referred to what the divinely inspired author intended to convey by what he wrote. It involved the meaning of the smallest of units (words, phrases, sentences) and extended to paragraphs, chapters, and whole books. Tis textual meaning or contextual meaning communicated belief in the divine origin, authority, and trustworthiness of Scripture. Te other way of interpreting Scripture, one that reached its greatest expression during the medieval period, was the spiritual or allegorical meaning of the text. In this reading, the text pointed to Christ or some higher, deeper, or hidden spiritual truth than was contained in the literal sense. Whether a reader approached Scripture in a literal or spiritual way, both patristic and medieval interpreters assumed that the normative sense of Scripture must accord with the rule of faith, that is, with what Christians believe and the church teaches.
Under the infuence of John Cassian (ca. 360–435), these two modes of interpretation expanded into what became known as the medieval fourfold sense of Scripture: the letter (facts), allegory (what is to be believed), the moral (what one is to do), and the anagogical (what is hoped for). As we will see with Bernard of Clairvaux in chapter 3, the literal sense was not abandoned but ofen was obscured or neglected because of what the other senses ofered the interpreter: an elasticity of interpretation that fed the imaginative and creative spiritual juices of the commentator. A text had not one but multiple meanings, and together these conveyed a variety of truths, though all pointed to the one Truth. To be sure, commentators who followed this fourfold interpretive scheme engaged in fights of fancy, but their fdelity to Catholic dogma reined in the possibility of heterodox interpretations.
In varying degrees, the application of modern critical methods to understanding the Bible—“critical” because these methods applied literary, grammatical, scientifc, and technical methods to the ancient text and made judgments about it (“critical” comes from Greek, krisis = judgment)—challenged the traditional ways of viewing the Bible. With the Renaissance cry of ad fontes (“to the sources”) came a renewed interest in the meaning of original ancient texts and other sources. Scholars, notably Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) and John Colet (1466–1519), began to read Hebrew and Greek, the original languages of
the Bible that had been largely ignored (or were unavailable) in the West since Jerome’s Latin translations in the fourth century. Tis attention to the ancient languages resulted in a greater interest in the original meaning of the text (i.e., the author’s intention) and in the minimization (though not the abandonment) of the allegorical interpretation. Te contributions of the Protestant Reformers Martin Luther and especially John Calvin proved decisive in establishing the grammatical-historical method. Calvin wrote commentaries on nearly every book of the New Testament wherein, like Luther, he stressed the necessity of historical and literary context, as well as the analogy of faith (i.e., Scripture is interpreted by other like passages of Scripture).
Reacting to the Protestant stress on the literal sense of Scripture, Catholics continued to emphasize the value of the allegorical as the traditional timehonored interpretation. Still, the literal (plain) sense gained currency, abetted by the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and the subsequent historical and archaeological discoveries that enlarged the contextual understanding of the biblical Near East and uncovered genres of literature (legal, historical, poetic, and wisdom texts) similar to that of the Bible. With these fnds, the allegorical method all but disappeared.
Te modern critical perspective assumes that the events described in the Bible refect a particular historical background. Te Bible did not magically appear or drop down from heaven; rather, its style and content disclosed the cultural settings of the writers. Scripture’s literary forms or genres confrmed its place within the larger context of Near Eastern culture (Old Testament) and the Greco-Roman world (New Testament). Increasingly, the Bible was subjected to the same rigorous critical scrutiny as other ancient literature. At the same time, its study was increasingly disconnected from church doctrine as academics (with varying degrees of religious commitment) investigated its contents free from the constraints of ecclesiastical boundaries.
In the last two centuries, scholars have raised questions about the Bible’s authorship, date of composition, sources used by the authors, purpose in writing, audience, and genre (style, form, content, function). Some concluded that the diversity and irreconcilable diferences of Scripture were so vast as to rule out any kind of unity—the very unity that informed the traditional view and that Calvin and other Reformers afrmed as the analogy of faith. In some cases, critical methods were joined with naturalist assumptions to yield skepticism regarding biblical miracles and the divine nature of Jesus. John Goldingay observes how this approach difered from the traditional view of the Bible: “In the precritical period interpreters would have taken for granted that there was no distinction between the story told by a biblical narrative and the events that actually took place in biblical times, or between the fgure traditionally associated with a particular book and its actual author. During the critical age it is these distinctions
that have been taken for granted, and the major concern in interpretation of the stories has been to establish and defend views of their historical background and reference.”13 In the traditional view, the exodus was a real event as described; the critical view assumed no such similitude. One might of course reach the conclusion that the exodus was a real event (either in every detail or in a general way)— but only afer subjecting the narrative to critical scrutiny.
It is beyond the scope of this introduction (and the intention of the book) to discuss the complex twists and turns in contemporary biblical scholarship, but several summary observations are in order. First, increasing dissatisfaction with the limits of the historical-critical method, combined with the exposure of biblical scholars to the interpretive methods of the social sciences and literary theory, has resulted in the proliferation of new interpretive approaches. Literary methods, for example, tend to focus on the text itself in its fnal form (not on the pre-text as is the focus of historical methods), the relationships among texts, and the interplay between the text and the reader. In the past half-century, structuralist criticism, narrative criticism, and reader-response criticism, to name several literary methods, have assumed their place alongside conventional historical-critical inquiry. Not just two or four levels of understanding Scripture govern the life of the church or rule the academy; rather, multiple and ofen competing approaches characterize the interpretive enterprise. To be sure, there is general agreement that the historical-critical method is a useful tool and that the primary task of interpreting biblical texts is to determine (or approximate) what the writers were conveying to people in their own time. But an emphasis on the pre-text (e.g., sources and traditions) has been viewed by some scholars as of limited value in establishing the meaning of the existing text. Some have objected that the historical-critical method so brackets the transcendent intention of the text that it skews the very nature of the text itself. Others contend that the narrow focus on the original meaning of the text limits or eliminates the relevance of the text for people today. Others complain that the method is so rooted in European Enlightenment assumptions that it cannot address the concerns of the Tird World. Still others wonder whether it is possible to discern the original meaning of the text unless they recognize biases of such things as culture, gender, and economic situation in the interpretive process.
Tese objections point to a second observation: hermeneutics has increasingly preoccupied the contemporary study of Scripture.14 Hermeneutics (derived from Hermes, the messenger god of the Greeks) defnes the rules, guidelines, or methods by which one determines the meaning of Scripture—not only the meaning in its original context but its meaning for today. Although most Christians consider Scripture the rule of faith and practice, an appeal to “What does the Bible say?” is, by itself, inadequate. Why is it that Christians difer in their views of creation, war, homosexuality, or roles of women in the church? Te
Bible, written under diverse circumstances and cultural settings and addressed to diverse audiences, contains diverse points of view. Moreover, diverse interpretive methods can yield and—as this book demonstrates—have yielded diverse understandings of a particular text. One can exegete a text, that is, determine the meaning of the text as the author of the text intended his original audience to understand it, but once established, how does the meaning of that text correlate with other related texts? Moreover, what principles or axioms are brought to bear in making those texts applicable for the contemporary Christian community? How does one bridge the cultural chasm between the ancient writers and the twenty-frst-century reader? Or, more germane for our purposes, how was that cultural gap bridged throughout and at particular moments in two millennia of Christian history? Tese are the questions of hermeneutics that I engage in what follows.
“To a large extent,” writes Wesley Kort, “either by acts of dependence or by acts of rejection, Western culture can be understood as a long and complex commentary on and reapplication of biblical texts.”15 Similarly, Northrop Frye has described Scripture’s profoundly shaping infuence as a kind of “great code” for comprehending Western culture.16 I ofer this study as a way of describing and explaining how the Western Christian tradition—or, better yet, selected individuals, groups, and institutions within that tradition—encountered, grappled with, and were shaped by the sacred text. Most of us (despite our visually saturated culture) continue to be inspired by texts of one sort or another, be they stories, lyrics, or poems. Such texts may not be accorded a sacred status, but they nonetheless alter our ways of thinking and behaving. So this book makes explicit what is implicit. It seeks to highlight those texts that have transformed people’s lives and that have a signifcant bearing no less pertinent today than in the past. At the same time, the biblical texts I have chosen infuenced ordinary people in extraordinary ways that not only transformed individuals but also inspired a movement or a collective response that would eventually take on a life of its own and reshape the contours of history.
