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Student ID Number: 120002013
Due Date for Essay: 17.12.12
Module Code: DI5203

Assignment No. 2
Essay Title: Biblical hermeneutics
Essay Length: (word count) 5500

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After 1) defining the essential hermeneutical difference(s) between a "pre-modern", "modern", and
"post-modern reading of the Scriptures, present a model of the relationship between history and
theology that 2) proposes a way forward and 3) takes seriously the task of biblical theology. Your
dialogue partner throughout will be Michael C. Legaspi, The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical
Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

A survey of pre-modern, modern, and post-modern readings
As early as Plato, the old offensive myths of Homer were being made relevant for the contemporary
reader. The vulgar speculations concerning the gods were made relevant for readers by showing the
true intention the myths were ciphers for philosophical truths. This allied to Platos teaching of the
cave that things were not what they appear to be - allowed the undignified and amoral actions of the
gods, as well as contradictions in the text, to be interpreted as ethical truths and natural laws even if
the interpretation led to unusual and questionable effects. This then is the beginning of demythologising
ancient texts, the texts themselves are not discarded but made applicable for the modern reader even if
they have to be contorted in the process of doing this.
1
Hellenised Judaism used this very technique to
allow it to contextualise and contemporarise the Old Testament texts for the Greek intellectual culture,
Philo being the finest example. Early Christianity from the 4
th
century onwards was influenced by the
Greek philosophical and metaphysical categories and also took on this layered meaning of Scripture.
The first literal meaning was still important though; Aristotle argued against this Platonic philosophical
speculation and certain traditions such as the Alexandrian school, which Origen was a part, continued
this belief. Thus philology was made central as the natural meaning of the text was most important
Origens Hexapla being the climax of this method.
2
The traditionally held classification of the differences
between the Antiochene and Alexandrian Schools is therefore rather simplistic. That said, there is still a
broad distinction in Origens On First Principles between the literal and spiritual sense.
3
John Cassian
(360-435) develops this two senses account into a more detailed formula which is carried into the
Middle Ages as Denys Turner translates,
. . . contemplative knowledge [of Scripture] is divided into two parts, namely, the historical and the
spiritual. But there are three kinds of spiritual knowledge, the tropological, the allegorical and the
anagogical . . . history embraces the knowledge of things past and visible . . . but the allegorical
contains what follows thereafter, for the events of history are said to have pregured the form of a
mystery . . . the anagogical sense ascends from [those] spiritual mysteries to even more sublime
and hidden secrets of heaven . . . [while] the tropological sense is the moral teaching which has to
do with the emendation of life . . . And so these four gures interpenetrate . . . in one subject, so
that one and the same Jerusalem may be understood in four ways: historically, it is the city of the
Jews; allegorically, it the Church of Christ, anagogically, it is the city of God which is heaven . . .
tropologically, it is the human soul . . .
4


1
Manfred Oeming, Contemporary Biblical Hermeneutics, An Introduction trans. Joachim Vette (Aldershot,
England: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2006), 10
2
Ibid., 13
3
Denys Turner, Allegory in Christian late antiquity, in The Cambridge Companion to Allegory, eds Rita
Copeland and Peter T. Struck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 71
4
Ibid., 72
3

This reading of scripture would have been acceptable at any time in the Western tradition from late
antiquity to the late Middle Ages and up to the onset of the Reformation. However within this
hermeneutical stance there is a disjoint between history and theology as the literal meaning of scripture
is secondary. What is the final arbiter of this layered and allegorical meaning? The goal of interpretation
was to uncover the authors intended meaning, however layered, and as the author was God, ultimately
to hear from God. Therefore the author and the authority of scripture were tied and as such the Church
held total authority over meaning and interpretation of scripture but not the literal sense of scripture.
Additionally, increasingly, in the Middle Ages, the theology and theological speculation of the Church
tended to be separated from the process of biblical interpretation. The Bible became merely a ground
for proof texting the Churchs dogma and doctrine.
What was the major difference in modern readings of scripture? Secularisation theory suggests that
modernity is merely a transformed version of the pre-modern medieval Christianity. The attributes of the
concept of God, a sovereign subject who is all determining, were transferred to the modern concept of
self. The turn to the self as sovereign subject rather than the transcendent was a result of the
Enlightenment.
5
Therefore, Kevin Vanhoozer calls this the first age of criticism which is characterised
by the authors (human or divine) intention. This shift of author from human to divine was, ironically,
initiated by the Reformers. Luther insisted on the Bible as the sole criterion and arbiter of tradition
appealing to the plain or natural meaning of the text. There was a stress on the disposition of the
hermeneut as scripture interprets us as much as we interpret it it was a hermeneutic of faith but also
one of suspicion, due to the recognition of the fallen nature of humanity. Nevertheless interpretation
was done alone without appeal to the dogmas and doctrine of the Catholic Church and its associated
allegorical interpretations. There is no higher authority than scripture and to establish its authority by
appealing to something outside of scripture would be to create an authority higher than scripture,
therefore scripture is its own interpreter. Calvins goal of interpretation was also clear, It is the first
business of the interpreter to let his author say what he does say, instead of attributing to him what he
ought to say.
6
He was a Renaissance humanist and his concern for the literal sense of the text was in
part due to this influence. Humanists concern was to deduce the original and genuine meaning of the
classical literature which meant recovering the mind of the author. The natural interpretation of a
passage was one that did justice to the intention of the author.
7
This original sense is used as a check
on reading back into the texts any presupposed dogma or doctrine.
For the secular hermeneut, while they may not view the biblical texts as inspired, the original meaning
of the author, the intention, still remains the goal of interpretation. Whether Luther and Calvin would
have liked it or not their shift from a theocentric to an anthropocentric worldview led to an hermeneutical
subjectivism. The human mind became the prior faculty in the interpretation of texts, even the Bible.
Rather than a chastened stance of faith, as the Reformers held, a radical stance of suspicion reigned,
governed by human reason. The Bible was studied scientifically. One universal theme of this study
was you do not assume any presuppositions, theological or otherwise. In a scientific endeavour one
does not use any proposition that one knows by faith. As such the meaning of the text will be what the

5
Kevin J Vanhoozer, Is there meaning in this text? (Leicester: Apollos, 1998), 45
6
Vanhoozer, 47
7
Ibid., 47
4

human author intended to attest, divine intentions do not enter into it.
8
This Enlightenment context
hailed the rise of the critical movement in which literal sense was still insisted upon, but with two
possible results. Either the historical nature of scripture was shown to be false, calling the authenticity
of Christianity as a whole into question. Or the historical meaning was explored in order to abstract from
it timeless theological truths, assuming these would revitalize areas of contemporary life that the literal
sense did not effect.
9

It is clear here then that theology and history have had an irreconcilable break in the modern
hermeneutics. It is this break that Legaspis account in the Death of Scripture takes as its starting point
to show the rise of biblical studies that followed this seismic shift in both history and interpretation.
Before turning to Legaspis account there was one final inevitable turn in the hermeneutical story. The
modern move to the self as the producer of meaning had one more turn the vacation of self
altogether. This post-modern hermeneutical turn is what Vanhoozer describes as the second and third
ages of criticism. In the second stage the interest was lost in the author and it moved to the text
(beginning with structural linguists in the 1950s a modern form of Literary Theory). The critical focus
was on the methods that allowed a gaining of knowledge of the text.
10
Are the interpretations that
survive the test of time objectively the best or are there subjective factors at work? Are there criteria to
judge between better and worse translations or is meaning relative to the interpreter and community
that interprets it? Finally, in the third age interest moved from the text to the reader. Reader response
stresses the incompleteness of the text until it is constructed (or deconstructed) by the reader.
Conservative reader response assumes the text itself invites a participation in the construal of meaning
and that we always read from in a tradition. Radical reader response gives the initiative to the readers
to put questions to the text or simply to use the text to their own aims and purposes. The reader is the
producer of meaning with an inactive text.
11
Therefore basic to post-modern readings is the belief that a
text must produce different meanings in different discursive settings without the possibility of
determining a correct meaning. A hermeneutic that is influenced by such a recipient-orientated
approach must survive without universal criteria of right and wrong. Never ending interpretation and
limitless semiotics arise in its place.
12
This leads to the present state of affairs where there is a plurality
of methods varying hermeneutical approaches that exist side by side.
From this survey it can be seen that the intent of the author in order to ascertain the literal meaning of
scripture was common to pre-modern and modern readings but that the allegorical meaning of the pre-
modern period was deemed more important than the literal one though it was limited to three senses
beyond the literal. In the modern era the allegorical meanings were rejected in favour of a solely literal
meaning, however, the ecclesial context in the modern era was lost and so under Enlightenment
influences the literal meaning was reduced to the historical meaning. A full circle has been achieved in
the post-modern era with once again multiple layered meanings. However, in the post-modern era
authorial intention has been jettisoned entirely along with ecclesial context which has led to a limitless

8
Alvin Platinga, Two (or More) Kinds of Scripture Scholarship pp19-57 in Behind the Text: History and
Biblical Interpretation, ed. C Bartholomew et al. (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2003), 29
9
N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge,
1992), 19-20
10
Vanhoozer, Is there meaning in this text? 26
11
Ibid., 28
12
Oeming, Contemporary Biblical Hermeneutics, 26
5

number of meanings depending on the reader and her context. Modernism in contrast to both pre-
modernism and post-modernism has the rational thinking self as the centre of thought, whereas
everything else has to be subjected to methodological doubt. By contrast the pre-modern and post-
modern approach has the individual belonging to a community in which she is not a rationally self-
sufficient entity. However they sharply diverge at this point. The pre-modern sees corporately shared
beliefs and creeds as things to be respected however the post-modern world sees these beliefs and
creeds as conventions to be suspected.
13

What is also noticeable in this survey is that the authority to interpret scripture has moved from the
Church in the pre-modern era to scripture itself at the Reformation and then in the modern and post-
modern eras to the individual whether that authority is individuals reason or the individuals social
context. What is also clear though is that other than the Reformers hermeneutic all authority to interpret
scripture lies outside the scriptures themselves. Therefore all determiners of meaning lie outside the
text itself, outside of its literal meaning - the interaction point between history and theology is found
outside of scripture which demonstrates all models as allegorical forms of interpretation. Once both the
literal sense and the ecclesial nature has been discarded as in the modern and pre-modern periods
scriptures demise is assured.

Legaspi and the Death of Scripture

The hermeneutical survey has served as an introduction to the book, The Death of Scripture and the
Rise of Biblical Studies by Michael Legaspi. In it, he primarily aims to show that the rise of biblical
studies as an academic discipline, in particular in eighteenth century Germany, was the result of, as his
book title suggests, the death of Scripture. The ultimate result of this is the rise of the non-confessional
academic Bible (as a replacement for the scriptural confessional bibles that resulted from the
Reformation) and its continuing value. This was the result of the aforementioned loss of the bible as
scripture as an historical and theological whole. Below is a survey of the book and Legaspis main
arguments.
Before the Reformation, the Bible had functioned scripturally as an authoritative anthology of unified,
authoritative writings belonging to the Church.
14
However, after the divisions that ensued in the
sixteenth century, the Church stopped being a unified entity able to maintain a coherent claim on the
Bible as its Bible and therefore the Bible could no longer function straightforwardly as scripture. Its
nature and authority had to be explained using extra-scriptural concepts Catholics juridically and
Protestants doctrinally.

The Bible moved from being scripture to a text that was a resource for the
legitimacy for these extra-scriptural theoretical understandings.
15
Legaspi argues that this death of
scripture and the ensuing textualization relied on two developments. Firstly, the opacity of the Bible
itself a result of the division in the church which saw the demise of the Vulgate as the Western Churchs

13
Anthony Thiselton, New Horizons in Hermeneutics: The Theory and Practice of Transforming Biblical Reading
(Grand rapids: Zondervan, 1992), 143
14
Michael Legaspi, The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 3
15
Legaspi, The Death of Scripture , 4
6

scripture. The Bible became a contested text eventually being devolved into various bibles with distinct
canons, ecclesial contexts and theological frameworks. Secondly this loss of the Bible as scripture
precipitated a search for a new understanding of the relation of the Bible to modern culture.
16
Legaspi
contends that the main concern of biblical scholars in the eighteenth century German Enlightenment
universities was actually to protect the authority of the Bible by rearticulating its cultural relevance. This
was done through demonstrating its value as a philological, moral, aesthetic, and historical resource.
The first step in doing this was to strip these confessional bibles of their scriptural character they
could no longer be considered catholic scripture but only understood within specific confessional
hermeneutics. Therefore these scriptural confessional bibles had to be abandoned so that the Bible as
the foundation of European culture could be revived and received once more. This death of Scripture
and the introduction of a non-confessional Bible is the religious legacy of modern biblical criticism which
was a constructive response to the disintegration of Christendom.
17

Legaspi charts this process as follows; the initial textualization of the Bible had its roots in Renaissance
humanism, which preceded the Reformation, but provided the Reformers with the tools and learning to
challenge the Catholic Church. This division of the Western Church also created a new environment for
biblical interpretation. The textualization of the Bible became a serious problem in light of its textual
characteristics was the Bible perspicuous, was its meaning self-evident or not?
18
The presence of the
other Christian confession, which also claimed fidelity to the Bible, resulted in each group having to
defend its mode of biblical interpretation. In the following clashes the textualization increased, as the
Bible was increasingly objectified, removing it from its ecclesial context due to the text becoming the
basis for these hermeneutical disputes.
19

Therefore the Bible had become intelligible only as a confessional construct with its ensuing divisions
and theological polemics. However, outside of confessional sectarianism, textualisation - the very
precursor of these divisions was seen also as a remedy - critical science could be harnessed to
regularise interpretation and rescue the text from confessional abuse.
20
If it was to find a role in the
new political order wedded to the ideal of the unifying power of the state, it would have to be one that
was a common cultural inheritance. This was the very goal of the eighteenth century Enlightenment
university. Legaspi notes that religious irenicism in the face of confessional discord was a primary aim
of biblical studies, in fact he states the goal was and remains irenicism.
21
This was the great insight of
German academics who were at work in new and renewed institutions during the age of Enlightenment
university reform of the eighteenth century.
They mastered and activated the older scholarshipby then two centuries worth of philological, text-
critical, and antiquarian learningin an effort to embed the Bible in a foreign, historical culture. In this
way, they introduced a historical disjunction that allowed them to operate on the Bible as an inert and
separated body of tradition. They used historical research to write the Bibles death certificate while
opening, simultaneously, a new avenue for recovering the biblical writings as ancient cultural products

16
Ibid., 4
17
Ibid., 9
18
Ibid., 17
19
Ibid., 19
20
Ibid., 21
21
Ibid., 7
7

capable of reinforcing the values and aims of a new socio-political order. The Bible, once decomposed,
could be used to fertilize modern culture.
22

Historical understanding was never an end in itself - historical research was expected to produce new
bridges of understanding even while it destroyed old ones. However it should not be concluded that
these methodological innovations can be called historical criticism or the historical-critical method
which is the predominant form of modern biblical criticism.
23
Modern biblical criticism had already taken
shape in the eighteenth century some time before the nineteenth century questions of history,
historicity, and historicization began to dominate the concerns of critical interpreters.
24
This does not
mean that history was not important but that history was only one dimension of a larger cultural retrieval
that included aesthetics, moral philosophy, and political theory as well. This clearly suggests, though,
that historical criticism and modern criticism are not identical. Legaspi suggests a better way to
understand the relation of theological readers to modern biblical scholarship, is to view it as a cultural
enterprise designed to surmount confessional loyalties while preserving Christian intellectual and
religious forms.
25

What is clear though, Legaspi, concludes, is that, The Bible had disappeared as scripture and what
had emerged through the work of philologists, classicists and orientalists was an academic biblical
science.
26
Thus the bible became,
an exotic resource for political philosophy, ancient history, and poetics. Instead of looking
through the Bible in order to understand the truth about the world, eighteenth-century scholars
looked directly at the text, endeavouring to find new, ever more satisfactory frames of cultural and
historical reference by which to understand the meaning of the text.
27

It is this eighteenth century German project that Legaspi accredits as one of the main achievements of
Johann David Michaelis (1717-1791). He was the leading Orientalist scholar of his generation and
spent the majority of his life at the newly instituted Enlightenment university, Georgia Augusta which is
located in Gttingen. Augusta reflected the aims of a strong central governments wish to create a new
institution in direct service of a deconfessionalized state a cameralist endeavour. Michaelis in his
role as a biblical scholar considered that,
the study of the Bible no more needed a theological framework than a proper understanding of the
Augsburg confession required knowledge of Syriac. Michaelis, for his part, would show that the
Bible, quite apart from dogmatics, was directly relevant to modern life.
28

At Georgia Augusta, Michaelis was thoroughly influenced by the philhellenism of Gesner and Heyne.
Their classical philology had as its goal the connecting of the ancient world to the modern university.
By uniting philological, literary, and antiquarian studies, Heyne sought to encounter the totality (das
Ganze) of the ancient world in an empathetic way. Michaelis thought that just as Rome and especially
Greece furnished ideals for the eighteenth-century Germans, Israel, too, could be made a relevant

22
Ibid., 5
23
Ibid., 165
24
Ibid., 167
25
Ibid., 9
26
Ibid., 166
27
Ibid., 26
28
Ibid., 27
8

resource for the new cultural, social, and political order.
29
He drew directly and successfully on
methodological developments in classical studies which were primarily shaped by Heyne.
30
He
therefore placed philology at the core of biblical interpretation but actually surpassed his predecessors
in widening the scope of comparative philology, refining its methods, and placing biblical studies on a
new academic course.
31

Michaelis sought to preserve Israelite society as a classical resource and thought that to understand
the Bible one had to grapple with the particular genius of the Orient. It was this conception of a
classical, ancient Near Eastern Israel, and not the churchly construct of an exceptional, supra-historical
race, that ultimately opens the literature of the Hebrew Bible to the interpreter.
32
Michaeliss project
ultimately failed, however, because his construct of Israel was ultimately a figment of historical
imagination. Michaeliss commitment to the classical venerability of Israel hindered his project.
33

Michaeliss classical Israel was respected enough to be a plausible part of religious scholarship, but too
impoverished theologically to sustain an actual community of faith. For Legaspi, Michaeliss projects
greatest achievement was in a new way for understanding and appropriating the Old Testament. It was
Michaelis who made the academic Bible a viable alternative to the scriptural Bible in the context of the
university.
34
As Legaspi notes,
In the future that Michaelis envisioned, it is the academic Bible, and not the scriptural one, that
shapes culture. Michaelis created the academic Bible in the first place by generating new
conceptual frameworks for biblical interpretation. In order to interpret the Bible, one must have a
point of reference outside the passage he or she is interpreting. Biblical texts can only be
interpreted in relation to something else: a concept, a question, a belief, a historical reality.
35

Moving to the modern legacy of this Enlightenment project, Legaspi agrees with Kugels assessment
then that modern biblical scholarship has ruled out religious readerly assumptions the notion of a
Bible requires a manner of reading and interpretation which is based on a particular understanding of
what the bible is: disparate texts that are a unified body of divine writings. Modern biblical scholarship
has instead tried to discover the Bibles true meaning in history it is about the history of the materials
that later constituted the Bible. Therefore the modern criticism is completely irreconcilable with a
religious reading.
36

Within the modern context of biblical criticism, the hegemony historical criticism once held since the
nineteenth century has waned, which Legaspi suggests is beneficial in demonstrating that historical
questions have always been epiphenomenal. The disarray of modern biblical studies regards
methodology, lack of consensus on key questions and the problem of the relationship to the Bibles
religious readership has led some scholars to jettison historical criticism.
37
Legaspi agrees that in
modern biblical criticism, historical questions are not central to the project. Even though the debates

29
Ibid., 6
30
Ibid., 83
31
Ibid., 83
32
Ibid.,104
33
Ibid., 156
34
Ibid., 159
35
Ibid., 164
36
Ibid., 25
37
Ibid., 167
9

between modern biblical critics and traditional readers have been held in the courtroom of history, and it
therefore seems fundamentally concerned with history, its historical inquiry has served larger moral and
religious questions.
38
Legaspi notes Collins, in whose judgement post-modern interpretation is merely
an extension of historical criticism proper despite post-modernitys denial of the objectivity, knowability
or truthfulness of history. This is because the real value and usefulness of both is their ability to
structure a non-confessional from of dialogue. Legaspi quotes Collins, the historical focus has been a
way of getting distance from a text, of respecting its otherness; it allows participants to structure a
conversation about the Bible according to academic rules.
39
Collins sees post-modern criticism as an
asset to historical criticism.
Legaspi critiques this position and concludes that the fusion of both is not an enhanced historical
criticism but actually an academic criticism. However, this is indeed the value of such an approach as
Legaspi sees there has been a move from nineteenth century preoccupation with the historical and a
return to eighteenth century.
40
It is here we see the favourable comparison Legaspi draws between
Collins and Michaelis,
Michaelis had shown that academic criticism could not only generate new interpretive frameworks,
it could also provide the study of a textualized Bible with a hospitable placethe philosophical
faculty of the universityand a useful social purposethe reinforcement of religious irenicism.
41

Biblical scholars in the Enlightenment set aside the scriptural Bible, shackled to its confessional
identities and which had torn Europe apart and Michaelis devoted himself to the creation of an
academic Bible that would be tied to the unifying power of the post-confessional state. Similarly,
Legaspi argues, Collins main academic interest is ultimately a moral one and as such, integral to
scholarship itself. Collins seeks to protect academic freedom and fight fundamentalism by using
scholarship to defeat religious conviction.
42

Finally Legsapi surmises the scriptural Bible and the academic Bible are essentially different creations
oriented toward rival interpretive communities. Although somewhat analogous, they should function
independently in order that they retain their integrity. They may be able to provide insight to each other
but ultimately they are loyal to separate authorities. Although modern academic criticism has produced
much valuable information, in its contemporary from it seems unable to give a coherent intellectual
account of what this information is for. As such the result is a shifting of the rationale for modern biblical
criticism from the intellectual to the social and moral a truly eighteenth century endeavour.
43





38
Ibid., 166
39
Ibid., 168
40
Ibid., 168
41
Ibid.,168
42
Ibid., 169
43
Ibid., 169
10

In Summary

As can be seen from Legaspis account the textualization of the Bible (the modern move away from the
Bible as scripture - non-confessional Bible) had its primary motive in religious and political irenicism. In
fact, it is clear that historys relationship to theology in this modern project is one of purposeful
remoteness. History is being used to distance and isolate the text in antiquity so as to utterly detach it
from traditional or theological readings. This was seen as a salvific act by Enlightenment academics so
as to save the Bible for modern society to use the Bible as a cultural resource. This was not
unexpected as the modernist tendency was not to see the Bible as scripture and sought to remove it
from its ecclesial context. Just as Plato had demythologised Homer for his contemporary audience,
Michaelis would use the Bible similarly as the foundation of Western society it would not be
discarded. As such, Michaeliss crowning achievement was not a classical interpretation of Israel, which
proved an historical fraud, but the production of an academic non-confessional Bible hewn from a
classical methodology that was centred around philology. As the individual had become the final
authority regards interpretation Biblical texts could be interpreted in relation to concepts outside of both
the Bible and ecclesial contexts. This allowed scripture to be profitably interpreted for the modern
secular context.
Legaspi regards the academic bible as a fine achievement as it continues to allow non-confessional
dialogue. This is Michaeliss great achievement - however Legaspi does recognise the problems that
biblical criticism currently has. The discipline of modern biblical criticism is in disarray with its continuing
fruitless nineteenth century emphasis on the purely historical. However, Legaspi sees this as a benefit
because it highlights, along with post-modern perspectives, that history was not an end in itself but
merely a way of structuring non-confessional dialogue. There has been much useful information
produced from the discipline but no coherent idea what to do with it, or indeed what it is for. Therefore
much of the malaise would disappear if the discipline stopped justifying itself on intellectual grounds
and returned to its eighteenth century moral and social justification. Collins is therefore the modern day
Michaelis a true heir of the Enlightenment as he sees this as the primary purpose of the historical-
criticsm what Legaspi coins academic criticism. This non-ecclesial academic Bible can be still used to
fight religous fundamentalism.
Immediate questions that occur include; are confessional and religious stances as dangerous as
Legaspi imagines in the 21
st
century especially seeing as confessions are no longer wedded to states
in a secular and pluralist West? Secondly and linked to the previous question is the moribund nature
of biblical studies actually due to the modernist dislocation of the academic Bible from the very ecclesial
communities it is intended for - with their canonising tendencies? Has the intellectual justification failed
due to this very reason? Can such a flood of allegorical interpretations due to the deliberate severing of
theology from history in the modern project ever hope to have a coherent focus? Can a moral
justification narrowly defined as a fight against fundamentalism act as a rallying point to such a
moribund discipline? Secondly what kind of fundamentalism is being fought and is this really the goal of
scholarship? Legaspi rejects outright the idea of a mixing of confessional and academic bibles but can
a fruitful dialogue not had?

11

A way forward?

The modern separation of history and theology is an example of what Murray Rae classes as the
disengagement from history in Western thought.
The disengagement from history in Western thought has two forms, both of which are premised on
the conviction that history and divine action are mutually exclusive categoriesthat it is improper
to speak of Gods participation in the unfolding nexus of historical life.
44

The first form sees no value in the realm of contingent history in the quest for truth it properly belongs
to the eternal realm of the divine and is not amenable to historical mediation. History is not a proper
object of knowledge. The second form is the modern form which labours under the presupposition that
the integrity of historical enquiry and the legitimacy of claims to historical knowledge must be protected
by resisting the use of theological categories in reconstructions of what has taken place.
45
The Christian
view is that God is indeed active in history and that history and truth can indeed be regarded as
coalescent terms theological claims can be made based upon contingent historical claims. This held
sway until the modern era but in the Enlightenment there was a rejection that history can be a
repository of truth that knowledge can be achieved. History was eschewed for human reason.
46

However, much of the Bible takes the form of an historical narrative. It tells the story of the history of
Israel which is set in the context of Gods purpose for all nations. The telling of this story is based upon
the conviction that a true account of history will convey the involvement of God in these unfolding
events. As such as Von Rad noted, any study of scripture that does not start with its character as a
witness to the actions of God in history is condemned to sterility due to not taking account of the facts.
47

The writers of the Testaments were concerned with history and there can be no doubt that they
intended to refer to prior historical reality. They were certainly not constructing myths and whatever
fictionalizing inclination may be present is always secondary to the backward historical reference.
Therefore it can be said that the Bible is a theological account of history. That it is a theological account
utilising categories particular to its own concerns does not render it illegitimate as history. Every telling
of a story of history involves a choice and an interpretation of evidence according to the historians
beliefs about the meaning and purpose of the whole. There is no reason to suppose a purely secular
reading of history that precludes divine action brings a historian any closer to the truth.
48
As such the
bible should be confidently read as scripture in a confessional context without historic truth being
doubted because of theological content and academic readers should be able to share in this
endeavour. This also allows scripture to be the interaction point between history and theology with the
focus on the primary literal sense which avoids allegorical readings. Canonicity should be considered
as in any proper biblical theology as a replacement for confessions so that the one history does not
have many theologies to contend with. Finally, the moral and social value of the scriptural bible when

44
Murray A Rae, Creation and Promise, Towards a Theology of History, in Behind the Text: History and
Biblical Interpretation, ed. C Bartholomew et al. (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2003), 268
45
Rae, Creation and Promise, 268
46
Ibid., 270
47
Ibid., 283
48
Ibid., 283-284
12

read in its ecclesial context can have a shared focus with academic readers who share the same
concerns so that confessional and academic readers can share a conversation despite having different
interpreting communities.

























13

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Oeming Manfred, Contemporary Biblical Hermeneutics, An introduction. Translated by Joachim
Vette.Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2006
Platinga A. Two (or More) Kinds of Scripture Scholarship. In Behind the Text: History and Biblical
Interpretation, edited by C Bartholomew, C S Evans, M Healy, M Rae, 19-57. Carlisle: Paternoster
Press, 2003
Rae M A. Creation and Promise, Towards a Theology of History. In Behind the Text: History and
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---History and Hermeneutics. Edinburgh:T&T Clark, 2005
Sailhamer J S. Introduction to Old Testament Theology, A Canonical Approach. Grand Rapids:
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Reading. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992
Turner D. Allegory in Christian late antiquity. In The Cambridge Companion to Allegory, edited by. Rita
Copeland and Peter T. Struck, 71-82. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010
Vanhoozer K J, 1998. Is there meaning in this text? Leicester: Apollos
Wright N T. The New Testament and the People of God. Christian Origins and the Question of God.

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