Journal of Theological Interpretation 7, 2 (Fall 2013)

The latest issue of the Journal of Theological Interpretation recently came through the post, containing the following articles:

Stephen Fowl

Effective History and the Cultivation of Wise Interpreters

R.R. Reno

Using the Fathers

John Riches

Reception History as a Challenge to Biblical Theology

John L. Thompson

At the Margins of the Rule of Faith: Reflections on the Reception History of Problematic Texts and Themes

Andrew E. Nelson

“Who Is This?” Narration of the Divine Identity of Jesus in Matthew 21:10–17

Joshua E. Leim

In the Glory of His Father: Intertextuality and the Apocalyptic Son of Man in the Gospel of Mark

Tomas Bokedal

The Rule of Faith: Tracing Its Origins

Brad Embry

“Redemption-Acquisition”: The Marriage of Ruth as a Theological Commentary on

Yahweh and Yahweh’s People

Eugene R. Schlesinger

Fire in the Water: Baptismal Aptness and Ecology in the Petrine Epistles

J. de Waal Dryden

Immortality in Romans 2:6–11

Relegere: Studies in Religion and Reception

I know this won’t be to everyone’s taste, but for many years I’ve had an abiding interest in the study of the so-called ‘reception history’ of biblical texts, and here’s a brand new open access journal – Relegere – ‘established to promote and disseminate academic research on reception history, broadly understood, both within and across religious traditions’.

Here’s the longer blurb:

‘The journal has been founded on the conviction that the study of reception and religion must not limit itself to a mere cataloguing of influence or a simple recounting of the trajectories of foundational religious texts across time. Beyond this basic research, reception history needs to be more thoroughly understood on a conceptual and theoretical level; reception history must actively interrogate the taken-for-granted idea that foundational texts are somehow fixed, that their essential natures can be distinguished from their subsequent reception. In pursuit of this goal, Relegere actively encourages methodological, theoretical, and philosophical contributions relevant to reception history and religion, whether in relation to particular case studies or as stand-alone theoretical reflections. Through the production of a coherent body of theoretical and practical reflection by and for scholars in very different fields and with very different interests, it is our hope that such an approach will facilitate a fruitful and ongoing discussion among scholars.’

And here are the contents of the first issue:

Editorial

Beyond Christianity, the Bible, and the Text: Urgent Tasks and New Orientations for Reception History

Articles

Mark Dennis

Rethinking Premodern Japanese Buddhist Texts: A Case Study of Prince Shōtoku’s “Sangyō-gisho”

This article examines the Sangyō-gisho 三経義疏 (Commentaries on the Three Sūtras), three Buddhist texts written in classical Chinese that have been attributed to Japan’s Prince Shōtoku (574-622 CE). I will focus on the different ways in which four figures from the Kamakura era (1185-1333 CE) understood, used, and valued these texts. Even among this small group of contemporary monks from the thirteenth century we will find distinct notions of what constitutes the “text,” some of which differ in important ways from modern scholarly conceptions of the Sangyō-gisho. Through highlighting these different perspectives, I offer an alternative approach to a large body of modern scholarly studies, which has focused on a set of technical concerns looking back to the moment of the texts’ composition.

James E. Harding

David and Jonathan between Athens and Jerusalem

This article seeks to explain what made it possible for modern biblical scholars to ask whether the relationship between David and Jonathan in 1-2 Samuel should be regarded as sexual. The answer is to be found in the way the David and Jonathan narrative was read in the nineteenth century alongside passages in Greek and Roman texts that refer to analogous pairs of friends who had already become, or were on their way to becoming, tropes for homoeroticism.

James G. Crossley

Life of Brian or Life of Jesus? Uses of Critical Biblical Scholarship and Non-orthodox Views of Jesus in Monty Python’s Life of Brian

It is often argued that Monty Python’s Life of Brian should not be regarded as blasphemous or offensive, largely because Brian and Jesus are two distinct characters in the film. Many religious opponents have claimed otherwise. This article argues that to some degree these pious opponents have a point: Brian does in someway represent Jesus. What Life of Brian does, through interaction with scholarly literature and ideas, is to attribute to Brian a whole host of mildly subversive and critical views about Jesus and effectively create a critical life of Jesus.

Gitte Buch-Hansen

Lars von Trier’s Antichrist, the Bible, and Docetic Masculinity

Lars von Trier’s Antichrist (2009) has been criticised by feminists for its perceived misogyny. This interpretation ignores the long afterlife of the biblical figure of the Antichrist, which is more complex than its traces in contemporary popular culture would suggest. Reading the film into the reception history of the Antichrist, drawing on both contemporary scholars and Friedrich Nietzsche – whose virulent critique of Christianity, Der Antichrist, has long been on the director’s bedside table – I argue that von Trier uses the figure to paint a scathing, even shocking, critique of masculinity as inscribed in the creeds of the early Church. The three interrelated poles of my analysis – the biblical, the aesthetic and the Nietzschean – all point in the same direction: Antichrist is not a film about the dangerous female psyche, but about a masculinity that has gone astray – or, to borrow a term from theological discourse, become “docetic.”

Essay

Philip R. Davies

Reading the Bible Intelligently

Book Reviews

Aspects of Theological Interpretation 10

[This is the tenth of twelve posts outlining a number of streams in the current interest in theological interpretation, paying particular attention to recent treatments. For earlier introductions to theological interpretation, see here, here, and here.]

#1 – Its uneasy relationship with historical criticism

#2 – Its disputed overlap with biblical theology

#3 – Its natural affinity with precritical interpretation

#4 – Its noteworthy exemplar in Karl Barth

#5 – Its relative comfort with multiple interpretations

#6 – Its significant emphasis on the role of the community of faith

#7 – Its contested dependence on ‘general’ hermeneutics

#8. Its careful attention to the role of the canon and typology

#9. Its renewed reflection on the doctrine of Scripture

#10. Its increasing interest in reception history

Increased interest in theological interpretation has gone hand in hand with an increased appreciation for a study of the ‘reception history’ (Rezeptionsgeschichte) or the ‘history of effects’ (Wirkungsgeschichte) of biblical texts.

[While Wirkungsgeschichte is associated mostly with Hans Georg Gadamer, Rezeptionsgeschichte comes largely from the work of his student, Hans Robert Jauss: Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, trans. Timothy Bahti, Theory and History of Literature 2 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982). In fact, Thiselton traces ‘history of effects’ back to Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911): ‘Meaning in the public world is largely perceived in relation to some “effect” (Wirkung). Thus Dilthey prepares the ground for Gadamer’s notion of a “history of effects” (Wirkungsgeschichte) or “effective history”.’ See Anthony C. Thiselton, Interpreting God and the Postmodern Self: On Meaning, Manipulation and Promise, Scottish Journal of Theology Current Issues in Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995), 62.]

In view here is the observation that each successive reading of a text shapes the ‘horizon of expectation’ which subsequent readers bring, and so condition how it is understood. Since our horizon has been formed partly by the text and the tradition generated by its interpretation, the presuppositions we bring to the text and the questions we ask of the text are partly the result of our response to that tradition.

[See Anthony C. Thiselton, ‘Resituating Hermeneutics in the Twenty-First Century: A Programmatic Reappraisal’, in Thiselton on Hermeneutics, Ashgate Contemporary Thinkers on Religion: Collected Works (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 33-50, at 39-45. Cf. also the discussion of Rezeptionsästhetik and speech-act theory as a reconfiguration of reader-response criticism in Anthony C. Thiselton, ‘Communicative Action and Promise in Interdisciplinary, Biblical, and Theological Hermeneutics’, in Roger Lundin, Clarence Walhout, and Anthony C. Thiselton, The Promise of Hermeneutics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 191-208.]

The notion of a ‘gap’ between past and present is thus misleading, for there is a ‘much more complex dynamic interrelationship’, in which ‘there can be no self-contained past or present’, but rather ‘a continuing responsible participation in the history of the text’s effects as we try to fuse our horizons without confusing them’.

[Frances M. Young and David F. Ford, Meaning and Truth in 2 Corinthians, Biblical Foundations in Theology (London: SPCK, 1987), 152.]

One early example of such a consideration is Gerhard Ebeling’s comparison of different traditions’ interpretations of biblical texts.

[Gerhard Ebeling, ‘Church History as the History of the Exposition of Holy Scripture’, in The Word of God as Tradition: Historical Studies Interpreting the Divisions of Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1968), 11-31.]

More recently, Karlfried Froehlich has sought to continue Ebeling’s task:

‘I have become convinced myself that historical “understanding” of a biblical text cannot stop with the elucidation of its prehistory and of its historical Sitz im Leben, with its focus on the intention of the author. Understanding must take into account the text’s past-history as... the way in which the text itself can function as a source of human self-interpretation in a variety of contexts, and thus, through its historical interpretations, is participating in the shaping of life.’

[Karlfried Froehlich, ‘Church History and the Bible’, in Mark S. Burrows and Paul Rorem (eds.), Biblical Hermeneutics in Historical Perspective: Studies in Honor of Karlfried Froehlich on His Sixtieth Birthday (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 1-15, here 9.]

This, then, is more than a mere history of interpretation (Auslegungsgeschichte), but is concerned with impact of texts on ecclesial and non-ecclesial communities (Thiselton, ‘Resituating Hermeneutics’, 40). Different individuals, communities and traditions read the same passages in different situations and against different backgrounds, and ‘these variations of expectation promote an “openness to tradition” that enhances engagement with texts, and enlarges and extends the horizons of the self to listen to “the other”’ (Thiselton, ‘Resituating Hermeneutics’, 44). Along these lines, Wirkungsgeschichte has been a prominent and noted feature of Ulrich Luz’s work on Matthew, and has become increasingly associated with Thiselton’s oeuvre.

[See Ulrich Luz, Matthew 1-7: A Commentary, trans. Wilhelm C. Linss (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989), 95-99 for discussion; Matthew 8-20: A Commentary, trans. James E. Crouch, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001); Matthew 21-28: A Commentary, trans. James E. Crouch, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005); and esp. Matthew in History, Interpretation, Influence and Effects (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994). More generally, see his ‘The Contribution of Reception History to a Theology of the New Testament’, in Christopher Rowland and Christopher Tuckett (eds.), The Nature of New Testament Theology: Essays in Honour of Robert Morgan (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 123-34; Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000). See also Craig G. Bartholomew, Joel B. Green, Anthony C. Thiselton (eds.), Reading Luke: Interpretation, Reflection, Formation, Scripture & Hermeneutics Series Vol. 6 (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2005), 377-436 (Part 4: Issues in Reception History and Reception Theory, with essays by François Bovon, Andrew Gregory, and Heidi J. Hornik and Mikeal Parsons); Angus Paddison, Theological Hermeneutics and 1 Thessalonians, Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 133 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 7-9.]

It is also a distinctive feature of the Blackwell Bible Commentary Series (published by Blackwell, edited by David M. Gunn, Judith Kovacs, Christopher Rowland, and John Sawyer).

Strong encouragement has come from some quarters to make ‘history of effects’ an integral part of New Testament exegesis and theology.

[Markus Bockmuehl, Seeing the Word: Refocusing New Testament Study, Studies in Theological Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 64-68, and see 121-36 (‘The Icon of Peter and Paul Between History and Reception’), and 161-88 (‘Living Memory and Apostolic History’).]

Wirkungsgeschichte has the potential to draw together insights from a variety of approaches to texts. New Testament scholars, suggests Bockmuehl, should ‘adopt the history of the influence of the New Testament as an integral and indeed inescapable part of the exercise in which they are engaged’ (Seeing the Word, 64-65). It preserves an interest in history as well as reception.

[So also Stefan Klint, ‘After Story – a Return to History? Introducing Reception Criticism as an Exegetical Approach’, Studia Theologica 54, 2 (2000), 87-106.]

It shows how the meaning of the text is ‘deeply intertwined with its own tradition of hearing and heeding, interpretation and performance’; it links synchronic and diachronic approaches, as well as biblical studies and historical theology, and might also serve to draw in systematic theologians to reflect on the relationship between systematic theology and biblical studies (Bockmuehl, Seeing the Word, 65-66). Furthermore, ‘it offers a more holistic reading of the biblical text’, and provides a way of paying attention to ‘the social, as well as theological, context which conditioned the interpretation’.

[Christopher Rowland, ‘Wirkungsgeschichte: Central or Peripheral to Biblical Exegesis?’, Scripture Bulletin 36, 1 (2006), 1-11, here 7-8.]

John F.A. Sawyer on the Bible and its Reception

John F.A. Sawyer, A Concise Dictionary of the Bible and its Reception (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2009), xiii + 295pp., ISBN 9780664223380.

Here’s a dictionary – a concise one, note – which looks at the ‘afterlife’ of the Bible, at how the Bible has been received through the ages, and the effects it has had on readers. This interest is sometimes called ‘reception history’ or is known by the German word (get ready for it) Wirkungsgeschichte, the study of the history of effects of the Bible. As such, it looks at how biblical texts have been used by subsequent interpreters, the role the Bible has played in Judaism and Christianity as well as in other aspects of culture more broadly.

Interest in this sort of work has exploded in the last decade or so, and Sawyer has contributed to it, not least with this publication covering biblical (and apocryphal) books, major biblical personalities, images and events, interpreters and preachers, Bible versions, different approaches to the Bible, the reception of the Bible in literature and art, and more besides.