Themes of the Bible

Extract

In recent years the study of the Scriptures has tended to be subordinated to other interests. These interests, often of great value in themselves, have begun to dictate the way in which the Scriptures were read and thus have provided various ways of looking at the Scriptures which amount to complete interpretations. We are all familiar with the ‘source book’ view of the Bible, with the Christianity-not-mysterious standpoint, and more recently with an apocalyptic interpretation which owes as much to a temperamental dislike of Hegel as it does to Scriptural sources. One grants that it is inevitable—since the Bible is addressed to all in every age—that each of us should respond to it in our own distinctive way. It is not suggested that each of the movements in modern Biblical study—in spite of their patent exaggeration—has not contributed something to our understanding of the Bible. What is suggested is that contemporary views of the Scriptures rest on theories about the Scriptures rather than on the Scriptures themselves, and that these theories often rest on premises which are not derived from the Scriptures, but are themselves the products of a non-Scriptural world view.