No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
The task of interpreting the Bible has two main phases— the understanding of the text and the transformation or making relevant of its meaning for modern readers. The steady decline of monolithic religious structures and the growth of pluralism in modern society have produced multivariant forms of intellectual activity embracing the Bible as part of their subject matter. Thus the Bible is embedded in the given of European culture and functions as part of the hermeneutical processes of Jewish, Christian, Muslim and secular traditions. The quest for understanding may be common to all the traditions but the task of transformation can take one of two forms. From within the religious tradition transformation is the attempt to reinterpret the text so as to make it meaningful in contemporary terms but always controlled by the tradition. This form may simply be termed transformation from within or controlled transformation. The alternative form is transformation without limits or control. In this form fidelity to a tradition is not paramount and the real concern is to see how far the material may be transformed so as to constitute an independent entity itself.
page 501 note 2 This remains the case in spite of the expressed pessimism of Kaufman, G. D., ‘What Shall We Do With the Bible?’, Interpretation 25 (1971), pp. 95ff.Google Scholar
page 501 note 3 Newman, J. H., An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845)Google Scholar; the edition I have used is the recent Pelican edited by Cameron, J. (London, 1974) whose introduction (pp. 7–50Google Scholar) is an excellent account of the matter.
Newman's tests are set out on pp. 116–47. ‘Newman provided certain tests for distinguishing between developments, tests which convinced no one and which he himself once admitted to be incapable of performing their ostensible purpose.’ So Chadwick, O., From Bossuet to Newman (Cambridge, 1957), p. 143.Google Scholar
page 502 note 1 cf. Wiles, M., The Making of Christian Doctrine (Cambridge, 1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; The Remaking of Christian Doctrine (London, 1974), esp. pp. 1–19.Google Scholar
page 503 note 1 Faith after the Holocaust (New York, 1973), p. 45.Google Scholar
page 503 note 2 cf. Karl Barth's observation ‘we must not overlook the fact that when two people do the same thing it is not necessarily the same even when it is perverted in both instances’, CD. III/1, p. 125.
page 503 note 3 cf. ‘If from one day to the next you promise “To-morrow I will come and see you”—are you saying the same thing every day, or every day something different?’, Wittgenstein, L., Philosophical Investigations (Oxford, 1972), I. 226Google Scholar. See also his Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, ed. Barrett, C. (Oxford, 1966), pp. 53–72Google Scholar. cf. Hudson, W. D., Wittgenstein and Religious Belief (London, 1975), pp. 151–193.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 503 note 4 The Interpretation of History (New York, 1936), p. 63Google Scholar; reprinted in The Boundaries of Our Being (London, 1973), p. 342.Google Scholar
page 504 note 1 cf. Smith, M., Palestinian Parties and Politics that Shaped the Old Testament (London, 1971)Google Scholar; Rivkin, E., The Shaping of Jewish History (New York, 1971), pp. 21–41Google Scholar. The novelist John Barth makes the point that ‘mythology is the propaganda of the winners’ in his novel Chimera (London, 1974), p. 277.Google Scholar
page 504 note 2 The Way of Transcendence (London, 1971), p. 203.Google Scholar
page 505 note 1 cf. Barth, K., C.D. I/2, pp. 457–740Google Scholar; Pannenberg, W. (ed.), Revelation as History (London, 1969)Google Scholar. The notion of revelation has been seriously criticised by Downing, F. G., Has Christianity a Revelation? (London, 1964)Google Scholar, and Barr, J., Old and New Interpretation (London, 1966), pp. 15–33, 65–102.Google Scholar
page 505 note 2 John Sawyer has argued for an extension of the original meaning to the final form of the text, ‘The “original meaning of the text” and other legitimate subjects for semantic description’, in Brekelmans, C. (ed.), Questions disputées d' Ancien Testament (Louvain, 1974), pp. 63–70.Google Scholar
page 505 note 3 That science is a branch of literature is a point made by Popper, Karl, Objective Knowledge (London, 1972), p. 185Google Scholar. On the Bible as literature see among others Barr, J., The Bible in the Modern World (London, 1973), pp. 53–74Google Scholar; ‘Reading the Bible as Literature’, BJRL 56 (1974), pp. 10–33Google Scholar; Richter, W., Exegese als Literaturwissenschaft (Göttingen, 1971).Google Scholar
page 505 note 4 ‘Religion and Literature’, Selected Prose (London, 1963), pp. 32f.Google Scholar
page 505 note 5 cf. his ‘Tradition and Individual Talent’, The Sacred Wood (London, 1920; 1966 reprint), pp. 47–59Google Scholar; reprinted in Selected Prose, pp. 21–30. For his celebrated explanation that the line ‘Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper tree’ means‘… Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper tree’, see Spender, S., Eliot (London, 1975), p. 129Google Scholar. Applied to the Bible this approach would mean ‘the literature is its own meaning’, cf. Barr, J., BJRL 56, p. 32.Google Scholar
page 506 note 1 The Concept of Mind (London, 1963), pp. 61 ff.Google Scholar, esp. p. 72. In contrast see Wimsatt, W. K., ‘The Intentional Fallacy’, The Verbal Icon (New York, 1954), pp. 3–18.Google Scholar
page 506 note 2 A notable modern writer who insists on this aspect of language is George Steiner; most recently in After Babel (London, 1975), passim.Google Scholar
page 506 note 3 On ambiguity see Empson, W., Seven Types of Ambiguity (London, 1930)Google Scholar. For ambiguity in language see Quine, W. V. O., Word and Object (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), pp. 129–141.Google Scholar
page 506 note 4 Hirsch, E. D., Validity in Interpretation (New Haven, 1967), p. 8Google Scholar. For distinctions between meaning and significance in modern linguistics see Lyons, J., Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 410ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 506 note 5 Grice, H. P., ‘Meaning’, Philosophical Review 66 (1957), pp. 377–388.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 506 note 6 For this distinction see Pelz, W., The Scope of Understanding in Sociology (London, 1974), p. xiGoogle Scholar. The phenomenological notion of intentionality is somewhat distinct from the conventional meaning of the word, so this point may not be very useful for the present discussion. On intentionality see Husserl, E., Logical Investigations 2 (London, 1970), pp. 493ff.Google Scholar; Cartesian Meditations (The Hague, 1970)Google Scholar; Piveevic, E., Husserl and Phenomenology (London, 1970), pp. 45–54.Google Scholar
page 507 note 1 cf. Kelsey, D. H., The Uses of Scripture in Recent Theology (Philadelphia, 1975), pp. 198ff.Google Scholar
page 507 note 2 cf. Barr, J., ‘Trends and Prospects in Biblical Theology’, JTS NS 25 (1974), pp. 265–282CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Barbour, R. S., ‘The Bible—Word of God?’, in McKay, J. R. and Miller, J. F. (eds.), Biblical Studies (London, 1976), pp. 28–42, 199–201.Google Scholar
page 507 note 3 ‘The problem of interpretation is precisely that of understanding’, so Bultmann, R., ‘The Problem of Hermeneutics’, Essays: Philosophical and Theological (London, 1955), pp. 234–261, quoting from p. 261.Google Scholar
page 508 note 1 On translation see Steiner, After Babel, passim; also Quine, op. cit., pp. 26–79. One of the more interesting critical attacks on the N.E.B. is Robinson, I., The Survival of English (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 22–65.Google Scholar
page 508 note 2 I have dealt more fully with this passage in my article ‘Translation and Attribution in Isaiah 8:19f.’ (as yet unpublished).
page 509 note 1 Beyond (New York, 1974), pp. xi-xiv. Examples of his system are t—t = technical use; et—et = etymological use; m—m = metaphor. The structuralist's notion of code enables a text to be read because the code entails collective knowledge and shared norms; the text is made up of codes which are the source of its meanings; see Culler, J., Structuralist Poetics (London, 1975)Google Scholar. If biblical texts are texts with plurality of meanings then structuralism might have something to offer biblical hermeneutics.
page 510 note 1 So Ong, W. J., ‘The Myth of Myth’, The Barbarian Within (New York, 1962), pp. 131–145.Google Scholar
page 510 note 2 On myth as the science of the concrete see LéVi-Strauss, C., The Savage Mind (London, 1966), pp. 1–33.Google Scholar
page 510 note 3 cf. Barth, C.D. III/2, pp. 3ff, esp. p. 7. For the Jewish view that the Jews never invented a cosmology of their own see Jacobs, L., ‘Jewish Cosmology’, Blacker, C. and Loewe, M. (eds.), Ancient Cosmologies (London, 1975), pp. 66–86.Google Scholar
page 510 note 4 cf. Lévi-Strauss, op. cit., pp. 35–74.
page 511 note 1 The Relevance of Science (London, 1964), p. 127Google Scholar; see also pp. 42–54.
page 511 note 2 Against Method (London, 1975), pp. 295–309Google Scholar. For the traditional opposition between myth and logos in Greek thought see Vernant, J.-P., Mythe et société en Grèce ancienne (Paris, 1974), pp. 196–200.Google Scholar
page 511 note 3 On myth and musical structure see Lévi-Strauss's, Mythologiques, esp. The Raw and the Cooked (London, 1969), pp. 1–32.Google Scholar
page 511 note 4 On the mystical in Wittgenstein's earlier philosophy see his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (London, 1963)Google Scholar; also Hudson, op. cit., pp. 78–112.
page 512 note 1 The Logic of Gospel Criticism (London, 1968), pp. 197fGoogle Scholar. cf. Jaspers, Karl in Jaspers, K. and Bultmann, R., Myth and Christianity (New York, 1958), p. 17.Google Scholar
page 512 note 2 Richards, I. A., The Philosophy of Rhetoric (Oxford, 1936), p. 92.Google Scholar
page 512 note 3 Gasset, Ortega y, The Dehumanization of Art (Princeton, 1956), p. 30.Google Scholar
page 512 note 4 Barfield, O., Saving the Appearances (London, 1957; New York, 1965), p. 126Google Scholar. The general literature on metaphor is vast but the following I have found helpful: Barfield, ibid., pp. 116–21; Binkley, T., Wittgenstein's Language (The Hague, 1973), pp. 206–219CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Black, M., ‘Metaphor’, Models and Metaphors (New York, 1962), pp. 25–47Google Scholar; Brooks, C. and Warren, R. P., Understanding Poetry (New York, 1960 3), pp. 268–339Google Scholar; Hawkes, T., Metaphor (London, 1972)Google Scholar; Richards, I. A., The Philosophy of Rhetoric, pp. 89–138Google Scholar; Wellek, R. and Warren, A., Theory of Literature (1949 3, London, 1973), pp. 186–211Google Scholar; Wicker, B., The Story-Shaped World (London, 1975), pp. 1–113Google Scholar; Wimsatt, W. K., The Verbal Icon, pp. 119–130Google Scholar. For the New Testament parables as metaphor see Funk, R. W., Language, Hermeneutic, and Word of God (New York, 1966), pp. 133–162Google Scholar. On scientific theories as metaphors see Barnes, B., Scientific Knowledge and Sociological Theory (London, 1974), pp. 53ff.Google Scholar
page 513 note 1 This is the main thrust of Barfield's understanding of language as it used to be experienced by man; see his Poetic Diction (London, 1952)Google Scholar, and Saving the Appearances.
page 514 note 1 Grey Eminence (New York, 1959 ed.), p. 235.Google Scholar
page 514 note 2 A point made strongly by Wicker in his The Story-Shaped World. He also argues strongly for using analogical language with reference to God. For analogy in theology see Mondin, B., The Principle of Analogy in Protestant and Catholic Theology (The Hague, 1968 2)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A recent attack on analogical language in theology in favour of ‘a public but nondescriptive theology’ is H. Palmer, Analogy (London 1973).
page 514 note 3 Collingwood, R. G., Speculum Mentis (Oxford, 1924), pp. 264–270Google Scholar. Elsewhere or him God is an absolute presupposition, i.e. his existence is never a proposition but is presupposed in all thinking, An Essay on Metaphysics (Oxford, 1940), pp. 32f, 185–90Google Scholar; see Krausz, M. in Krausz, M. (ed.), Critical Essays on the Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood (Oxford, 1972), pp. 222–240.Google Scholar
page 515 note 1 Kermode, F., Wallace Stevens (London, 1960), p. 127Google Scholar. Stevens is an important poet on the uses of metaphor and for understanding the nature of imaginative survival in a world devoid of God; on his religious ideas see Morris, A. K., Wallace Stevens: Imagination and Faith (Princeton, 1974)Google Scholar. Useful as a general introduction to his work is Beckett, L., Wallace Stevens (Cambridge, 1974)Google Scholar.
page 515 note 2 ‘Jerusalem’, plate 5, line 59, in Keynes, G. (ed.), Blake: Complete Writings (Oxford, 1969), p. 624Google Scholar. cf. Wordsworth in The Prelude: This spiritual Love acts not nor can exist Without Imagination, which, in truth, Is but another name for absolute power And clearest insight, amplitude of mind, And Reason in her most exalted mood. (Book 14, lines 188–92)
page 515 note 3 Quoted in Coulton, G. G., Five Centuries of Religion 1 (Cambridge, 1929), P. 443.Google Scholar
page 516 note 1 See Hanson, P. D., The Dawn of Apocalyptic (Philadelphia, 1975).Google Scholar
page 516 note 2 ‘Prophecy and fulfilment’, Essays, pp. 182–208, esp. pp. 2O5ff. For a discussion of this essay see Zimmerli, W., The Old Testament and the World (London, 1976), pp. 137–150.Google Scholar
page 517 note 1 That the dominant transformation of religion in our time is the process of secularisation is the argument of Wilson, B., Contemporary Transformations of Religion (Oxford, 1976)Google Scholar. A less pessimistic view may be found in Wilson, M., Religion and the Transformation of Society (Cambridge, 1971).Google Scholar
page 517 note 2 cf. Kelsey on Barth, op. cit., pp. 39–55. See Simon, U., The Trial of Man (London, 1973)Google Scholar; Story and Faith in the Biblical Narrative (London, 1975)Google Scholar. See the arguments for treating the biblical narrative as narrative in Frei, H. W., The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative (New Haven and London, 1974)Google Scholar. cf. also Wicker, op. cit.
page 518 note 1 Positivism and Christianity (The Hague, 1974), pp. 171f.Google Scholar
page 518 note 2 Published in 1947; Penguin edition 1962. Day, D., Malcolm Lowry (New York, 1975 ed., p. 326)Google Scholar, describes it as ‘the greatest religious novel of this century’. As the novel is also a ‘forest of symbols’ (p. 260) my treatment of it may be a precarious one=
page 519 note 1 cf. Berkovits, , Faith after the Holocaust, p. 126Google Scholar. There is a vast Jewish literature on this subject which, perhaps, should be prescribed reading for commentators on the suffering servant motif in biblical studies.
page 519 note 2 cf. Aulen, G., Christus Victor (London, 1931)Google Scholar. Although Aulen's book may be a fair account of elements in the New Testament and the classical ideas of atonement it also illustrates the fact that New Testament transformations of some Old Testament elements are not necessarily a progressive step. Thus Yahweh's triumph over evil and chaos at creation means ‘the whole earth is full of his glory’ (Is. 6:3), a feature of the world which awaits the future in the New Testament. However, the reality of evil in the world today would appear to discredit both the Old Testament view and the Christus Victor motif= For a serious statement about the tragic nature of evil see MacKinnon, D. M., The Problem of Metaphysics (London, 1974)Google Scholar; also Borderlands of Theology and Other Essays (London, 1968).Google Scholar
page 519 note 3 cf. Gardner, H., ‘The Drunkenness of Noah’, The Business of Criticism (Oxford, 1963). PP. 79–100.Google Scholar
page 519 note 4 C.D. II/2, pp. 346ff.
page 519 note 5 Pensées 219 (Penguin, ed., London, 1966), p. 313.Google Scholar
page 519 note 6 Quoted in Day, op. cit., pp. 247f.
page 519 note 7 See Epstein, P., The Private Labyrinth of Malcolm Lowry (New York, 1969)Google Scholar; cf. Day, op. cit., pp. 293ff.
page 520 note 1 For transformation within the tradition cf. ‘The task of structural theology in relation to the human senses of God is to uncover precisely those transformation rules or laws which have generated, constituted, and governed particular theistic universes of meaning’, Bowker, J., The Sense of God (Oxford, 1973), p. 109Google Scholar. For transformation that goes beyond the tradition I have not yet worked out the methodological procedures. This article is only a preliminary statement about this aspect of biblical hermeneutics.
page 520 note 2 Dogmatics in Outline (London, 1960), p. 12.Google Scholar
page 520 note 3 Polanyi, M., Personal Knowledge (London, 1962), pp. 199, 280.Google Scholar
page 520 note 4 Against Method, p. 49. The Sisyphean nature of much of modern scientific method is apparent from a reading of Popper, Karl, esp. his The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London, 1959) and Conjectures and Refutations (London, 1963), pp. 215ffGoogle Scholar. This possibility of perpetual scientific theorising has been questioned by Kneale, W., ‘Scientific Revolution for Ever?’, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 19 (1969), pp. 27–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 520 note 5 cf. Camus, A., ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (New York, 1955), p. 91Google Scholar. cf. the poet Garioch's, Robert more materialistic Sisyphus in Selected Poems (Edinburgh, 1966), p. 79.Google Scholar
page 521 note 1 
, Rabbi Tarphon in 
2:21.