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New Directions in Biblical Exegesis
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
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With the Reformation, its increasing preoccupation with the Bible and its insistence that it be made available to all, came a growing interest in how such literature was to be interpreted, which is to say, Christianity became vitally concerned with exegesis. In spite of the ‘democratisation’ of Bible and religion, the difficulties in making an ancient Semitic literature speak in contemporary accents were surely not underestimated by Luther and Calvin both of whom made solid contributions to biblical exegesis. In his ‘Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen’ (8th September 1530), Luther referred to the lone task of interpretation and the need for patience,1 a theme which he elaborated in his Vorreden zur Heiligen Schrift. To understand Vergil's Bucolics and Georgics, one should have a five-year experience as a shepherd or farmer; at least twenty years' occupation in politics is needed to fathom Cicero's letters and a fortiori, no one can claim to have digested the Scriptures unless he has led congregations with the prophets for a hundred years—in other words a lifetime of existential experience with the Bible is insufficient. These comments led in turn to his famous affirmation, in Saxon German within a Latin text: ‘Wir sein pettier—Hoc est verum!’2 Statements of this kind should preclude once for all the notion that the reformers underestimated the difficulty of exegesis in view of their promotion of the ‘priesthood of all believers’.
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- Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1971
References
page 317 note 1 K. H. Miskotte, Zur biblischen Hermeneulik (Theologische Studien, Heft 55) (Evangelischer Verlag, Zollikon, 1959), p 5f Cf. the statement by George O. Kent in reference to history: ‘The understanding … of history clearly is not a simple task. It requires patience, tolerance, common sense, and a critical mind’ (‘Clio the Tyrant: Historical Analogies and the Meaning of History’, The Historian, XXXII (1969), p. 106).
page 317 note 2 ibid., p. 6.
page 318 note 1 i.e. the study of Gattungen (genres, literary types). See the article by Baumgartner, W., ‘Zum 100. Geburtstag von Hermann Gunke’, Vetus Testanuntum Supplement IX (E. J. Brill, Leiden, 1963)Google Scholar; Gunkel, Hermann, Genesis übersetzt und erklärl (Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen, 1964), CV-CXXIIGoogle Scholar. In this article Baumgartner reminisces how Gunkel used to ask ‘was denn oie erste Frage sei bei einem Psalm’ (Genesis, p. cvi).
page 318 note 2 Gunkel, Hermann, ‘Ziele und Methoden der Erklärung des Alten Testaments’, Reden und Aufsätze (Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, Göttingen, 1913), 21 (translation mine).Google Scholar
page 318 note 3 See e.g. Mitchell Dahood's commentaries on the Psalms in the Anchor Bible, two volumes thus far published (Doubleday, Garden City, 1966 and 1968) where Ugaritic is marshalled to support the consonantal Hebrew test.
page 319 note 1 ‘Zicle und Methoden’, op. cit., 27.
page 319 note 2 Engnell, Ivan, ‘Methodological Aspects of Old Testament Study’, Vetus Testamentum Supplement VII (Congress Volume, 1959) (E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1960), 21.Google Scholar
page 319 note 3 James Muilenburg, in his presidential address at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, 1968, printed in Journal of Biblical Literature, LXXXVIII (1969), 1–18.
page 319 note 4 It may seem strange and it is pernaps due to the occasional provincialism of the theological disciplines that these scholars have been virtually ignored in histories of biblical scholarship as e.g. in Hans-Joachim Kraus, Geschichte der historisch-kritischen Erforschung des Alien Testaments (Neukirchener Verlag, Neukirchen, 1956) in which both Buber and Rosenzweig are mentioned once each, in a peripheral manner.
page 319 note 5 Buber at any rate believed that Christians have no right to the Old Testament.
page 319 note 6 For a brief discussion on this subject see Beek, M. A. and Weiland, J. Sperna, Martin Buber, Personalist and Prophet (Newman Press, Westminster, Maryland, 1968, translated from the Dutch), the chapter entitled ‘The Translation’, pp. 27–41.Google Scholar
page 320 note 1 See Kayser, Wolfgang, Das Sprachliche Kunstwerk (Francke Verlag, Bern-München, 10 1964)Google Scholar; Staiger, Emil, Die Kunst der Interpretation (Atlantis Verlag, Zürich, 4 1963)Google Scholar; and Die Werkinterpretation, ed. Enders, Horst (Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, 1967).Google Scholar
page 320 note 2 Staiger, op. cit., pp. 10–13.
page 320 note 3 The Biblical Narrative (World Zionist Organisation, Jerusalem, 1959).Google Scholar
page 320 note 4 ‘Wege der neuen Dichtungswissenschaft in ihrer Anwendung auf die Psalmenforschung’, Biblica, 42 (1961), 225–302; ‘Einiges über die Bauformen des Erzählens in der Bibel’, VT, 13 (1963), 455–475Google Scholar; ‘Weiteres über die Bauformen des Erzählens in der Bibel’, Biblica, 46 (1965), 181–206.Google Scholar
page 321 note 1 van Daalen, A. G., Simson (Van Gorcum, Assen, 1966)Google Scholar; Deurloo, K. A., Kain en Abel (W. ten Have, Amsterdam, 1967)Google Scholar; Cohn, G. H., Das Buch jona (Van Gorcum, Assen, 1969)Google Scholar. See also Beek, M. A., ‘Verzadigingspunten en onvoltooide lijnen in hct onderzoek van de oudtestamentische literatuur’, Vox Theologica, 38 (1968), 2–14.Google Scholar
page 321 note 2 Rosenzweig, in Die Schrift und ihre Verdeutschung, had made the comment that the siglum of classical literary criticism to designate Redactor, was for him ‘Rabbenu’ (our teacher), determining the Tendenz of the entire work. The enormous difficulty which literary criticism has encountered with such books as 1 Samuel in the attempt to isolate sources, seems to suggest the relative quality of the work of the ‘final editor’.
page 321 note 3 Cases of ‘unevenness in the text are recognised but not necessarily as indications of composite authorship’ (Van Daalen, op. cit., 43, and Deurloo, op. cit., 74).
page 321 note 4 This has virtually become the consensus in German scholarhsip since Kremers, Heinz, ‘Leidensgemeinschaft mit Gott im alten Testament’, Evangelische Theologie, 13 (1953), 122ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar: see Hempel, J., Worte der Profeten (Töpelmann, Berlin, 1949), p. 76Google Scholar, and von Rad, Gerhard, Old Testament Theology, II, English translation (Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1965), p. 208Google Scholar. For a corrective view see Rietzschel, Claus, Das Problem der Urrolle (Gerd Mohn, Gütersloh, 1966) pp. 96ffGoogle Scholar, and Kessler, Martin, ‘Jeremiah Chapters 26–45 Reconsidered’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 27 (1968), p. 86f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 322 note 1 Used as a generic term, regardless of the actual authorship of the pericope.
page 322 note 2 The narrator does not use nkh to describe Ishmael's assassination of the pilgrims, however, but the root šht which functions 51 out of 84 times as a terminus technicus for the killing of sacrifice (Brown, Driver and Briggs, Lexicon, ad loc).
page 323 note 1 The athnah (verse divider) stands just before wayyišmahu, which thus receives the emphasis it deserves.
page 323 note 2 A lengthy noun clause followed by a verbal clause with inverted order (object, verb, subject, with accusative of material), for ‘rhetorical exposure’ (Ronald J. Williams, Hebrew Syntax (University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1967), par. 573).
page 323 note 3 Is the narrator trying to compare the contemporary scene unfavourably with even the times of continuous conflict between Judah and Israel such as existed during the days of Asa and Baasha?
page 323 note 4 See Jeremiah's subsequent diatribe against Egypt, 43.8–13.
page 324 note 1 Noun clauses (2 = 18, 6 and 9; all of them accusative; 9 is an ‘emphatic accusative of specification’: the accusative being the semantic subject (Williams, Ronald J., Hebrew Syntax An Outline, (University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1967), par. 58)Google Scholar, circumstantial clauses (at least seven, in 1, 4, 5, 6, 15), and about thirteen relative clauses (2, 7, 9, 11, 12, 14, 16, 17).