OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 01/14/2019, SPi
chapter 46
Moder n Biblica l Cr iticism a n d th e Legacy of Pr e-Moder n I n ter pr etation Michael C. Legaspi
Someone riding an overnight train from one country to another awakes in a new and different land. He does not know precisely when a border was crossed; neither is he aware of gradual changes in the terrain that have given way to an altogether different vista. What appeared in the window the night before to be one sort of place seems now, from the same window, to have altered in nearly every possible respect. Yet, because he is an experienced passenger, he is neither alarmed by nor even curious about the change. Given certain assumptions about physical reality, an understanding of the relevant geography, and background knowledge of train journeys, he remains satisfied that the situation is normal and the change in perspective simply a matter of course. When it comes to the history of biblical interpretation, it is tempting to understand the contrasting hermeneutical environments of the early Christian Church and the modern academy in a similar way: as two different contexts connected by a linear, rational progression from what was ‘then and there’ to what is ‘here and now’. The temptation should be resisted: the analogy is Whiggish with respect to history, making the past mere prologue to the present, and it is deterministic with respect to the individual, likening historical actors to passive riders. It should also be resisted because, when it comes to the history of interpretation, the past does not lie behind the present but, in a certain sense, within it. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the way in which early Christian interpretation of Scripture, though banished by scholars in recent times to other disciplinary realms—patristics, theology, historical theology, or early Christian studies— nevertheless played an important role in the development of modern biblical criticism. To examine this is to trace a complex development of modern critical attitudes toward Scripture and tradition. Though often identified merely with a rejection of tradition in
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Dictionary: NOSD
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