Tag: From the Bookshelf

  • Tradition and Method

    Despite the preeminence sometimes assigned to method in hermeneutics, [i]n seeking to understand tradition[,] historical consciousness must not rely on the critical method with which it approaches its sources, as if this preserved it from mixing in its own judgments and prejudices. It must, in fact, think within its own historicity. To be situated within…

  • Jesus as Paul’s Hermeneutical Key

    Regarding the place of Jesus in Paul’s hermeneutic, James Aageson suggests that [Paul’s] hermeneutic is inherently theological and is governed by his experience on the Damascus road and its legacy. From a persecutor of the early church, Paul was transformed into a man with a mission to carry the name of Jesus to the Gentile…

  • Judges as Shepherds

    In an essay on “Jesus, John, and the Dead Sea Scrolls,” Craig Evans observes that Jesus’s appointment of the twelve (Mark 3:14; 6:7) is an extension of John [the Baptist]’s typology. The Jordan River has been crossed, and now representatives of the restored tribes have reentered the promised land, announcing the rule of God. If…

  • The Commonality of Communication

    In an introductory essay for his edited volume Modelling Early Christianity: Social-Scientific Studies of the New Testament in Its Context, Phillip Esler observes that All human groups, however diverse, are capable of communicating with one another. Merely to entertain the possibility of one culture seeking to understand or even translate another presupposes the necessary foundations…

  • מורה הצדק and Qumran Hermeneutics

    In working through some bibliography recently for a conference paper proposal about מורה הצדק (the teacher of righteousness), I came across the following: Der Lehrer [der Gerechtigkeit] ist von Gott autorisiert, die Geheimnisse der Prophetenworte zu enträtseln, denn die Worte der Propheten sind Geheimnisse (רזים [pHab] 7,5), die man ohne Auslegung des Lehrers nicht verstehen…

  • Hermeneutics and “the Near”

    Concerning interpreters’ obligation to look beyond themselves, Hans-Georg Gadamer observes the following: We are always affected, in hope and fear, by what is nearest to us, and hence we approach the testimony of the past under its influence. Thus it is constantly necessary to guard against overhastily assimilating the past to our own expectations of…