Evaluating N. T. Wright

Posted on February 2, 2013 by krhughes14

tomwright2My master’s thesis, “History and the Victory of God: The Contribution of N. T. Wright to the Study of the Historical Jesus,” is finished. Over the course of the last year I’ve spent working on this, I’ve gotten to dig deeper in areas as diverse as epistemology (Lonergan, MacIntyre), hermeneutics (Thiselton, Osborne), historiography (Collingwood, Meyer, Sheppard), and the role of theological interpretation in historical investigation (Bockmuehl, Treier, Green).

While I learned a lot on the way, part of me does wish I had pursued an “original” line of inquiry as opposed to the “summary of research” model I was advised to follow. Granted, when I started this thesis, I had not even begun my NovT article, which I think could have been expanded into a master’s thesis fairly easily. Perhaps the best way to view this exercise was that it helped instill in me an appreciation for good historical method and the limits of various approaches to studying Jesus and the first century.

I’ve posted a pdf of my thesis on the “academic archives” page. Here’s the abstract:

“N. T. Wright’s Christian Origins and the Question of God series is a landmark in New Testament scholarship not only for the ambitious scope and comprehensive nature of its inquiry but also its thorough articulation of historical method. The purpose of this thesis is to summarize and evaluate N. T. Wright’s influential historical method for studying the historical Jesus. Chapter 1 introduces the need for and approach of this study, suggesting that Wright’s holistic historical method offers a means of breaking the impasse of current historical Jesus scholarship. Chapter 2 analyzes the elements of Wright’s historical method, demonstrating that Wright uses a story-based critical realism to integrate the study of history with the study of literature and theology. Chapter 3 evaluates Wright’s method, examining three major objections that critics have raised in response to the historical method presented in the first volumes of Wright’s Christian Origins series. Specifically, the issues of holism and narrativity, the relative valuation of the sources, and the role of theology will be discussed, with the goal of surfacing ways in which Wright’s historical method can be improved. Proposed improvements, summarized at the end of chapter 3, include limiting the scope of the hypothesis, proceeding from the narrative context of the data, accounting for the transmission process, and utilizing the church’s theological heritage. Yet perhaps the real significance of Wright’s laudatory, if imperfect, historical method is that it raises questions of historiography to the center of the discussion in historical Jesus studies where they belong.“

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In Layman’s Terms: Wirkungsgeschichte (2)

Posted on January 29, 2013 by krhughes14

imagesThe interpretation of the millennium in the Apocalypse of John (Rev 20) has been contested throughout church history. Background and exegetical study of the text is indecisive; there really is no such thing as “the Bible says” on this one. So we have at least three options (pre-millennialism, amillennialism, post-millennialism) for interpreting this passage that are exegetically viable. Here is where a study of the fore-ground of the text, its earliest reception history or Wirkungsgeschichte, can illuminate our understanding of the passage.

Papias (60s?-155?) authored the five-volume Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord, of which we have only fragments preserved in other writings. According to Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. 5.33.4; late 2nd c.), Papias was a “hearer” of the apostle John and a companion of Polycarp, perhaps the most famous of John’s disciples. Assuming this is accurate, this means that Papias had direct access to John’s teaching, and he might be uniquely qualified to comment on John’s teaching. Concerning the millennium of Revelation 20, then, we are told (by Eusebius, H. E. 3.39.12) this about Papias: “Among other things he says that there will be a period of a thousand years after the resurrection of the dead when the kingdom of Christ will be set up in material form on this earth.” Eusebius, an amillennialist, thought Papias an idiot in this regard, reflecting the ascendancy of amillennialism in especially the third century. Be that as it may, here we have strong evidence that Papias, a “hearer” of John, interpreted Revelation 20 in a pre-millennial fashion.

Justin Martyr (100-165?) might also be linked with the apostle John. His Dialogue with Trypho is presented as having taken place in Ephesus, where tradition holds that John lived out his days well into the 90s. This means it is very possible that Justin had access to the living memory of John through those who were students and disciples of the apostle. Appealing to John’s memory, Justin writes, “But I and others, who are right-minded Christians on all points, are assured that there will be a resurrection of the dead, and a thousand years in Jerusalem…” (Dial. Tryp. 80). Another link to John, another pre-millennial interpretation.

The Didache, Epistle of Barnabas, and Irenaeus of Lyons also offer potential early support for the dominance of pre-millennial interpretation in early Christianity. Yet it is this evidence, resulting from access to the living memory of the apostle John, that I find very interesting. Of course, it is possible that the traditions are wrong or there’s some grand conspiracy at work, but Occam’s Razor suggests otherwise. This apostolic memory is not an infallible guide for interpretation, but I suggest it should count as significant evidence.

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In Layman’s Terms: Wirkungsgeschichte (1)

Posted on January 25, 2013 by krhughes14

Yes, it’s German, but what is is? It’s an idea worth being familiar with because some biblical scholars believe that the study of Wirkungsgeschichte is the future of NT studies. At the least, increased attention to Wirkungsgeschichte has significant potential for the way we read and understand the Bible.

Recent conventional wisdom held that there was an “empty gap” between the world of the text and the world of today (in Bible study and preaching this is often alluded to in the phrase “bridging the gap”). The German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer, in his Truth and Method (1960), rejected this view and instead argued the gap is not empty but full of centuries of interpretation and history that color any attempts at interpretation today.Hans-Georg Gadamer

We normally stress going “behind” the text to study the cultural, historical, and linguistic background that helps us understand it. Gadamer suggests that it is just as important to go “in front” of the text to study the text’s history of interpretation and performance. This “effectual history” (Wirkungsgeschichte) of a text thus emphasizes how intervening tradition colors any attempts to interpret a text today. As Markus Bockmuehl (Seeing the Word, 65) summarizes, “The meaning of a text is in practice deeply intertwined with its own tradition of hearing and heeding, interpretation and performance.” Thus, Gadamer focused on how the historical impact of a text, its “past,” colors our reading of it in the present. Strictly speaking, the reception history of a text, its “history of interpretation” (Auslegungsgeschichte), is not strictly the same as Wirkungsgeschichte, which focuses more on the history of the influence of the text, but for convenience sake I will follow most NT scholars in including the reception history of a text as part of the text’s Wirkungsgeschichte.

This has important ramifications for NT study. Again, Bockmuehl (65): “New Testament studies on this view could find a focus in the study of the New Testament as not just a historical but also a historic document. Its place in history clearly comprises not just an original setting but a history of lived responses to the historical and eternal realities to which it testifies.” The Swiss scholar Ulrich Luz, in his commentary on Matthew (Eng. trans., Hermeneia, 2007), depicts interpreters in this model as those who are “like people who have to examine the water of a stream while they are sitting in a boat that is carried along by that very stream” (63). So much for scientific objectivity, in which the interpreter is a scientist looking at a static text under a microscope.

Studying the reception of biblical texts has value in its own right, and so-called “encyclopedias of reception” are extremely helpful for understanding how various Church Fathers understood and applied the Scriptures. Entire commentary series are being written with a focus on reception history, including the Blackwell Bible Commentaries and The Church’s Bible series. Journal articles and monographs looking at the reception of individual books of the Bible or even individual verses are proliferating. Yet, as I will detail next time, Wirkungsgeschichte, particularly that of the first two centuries of the Christian era, holds out further promise for our actual understanding of the biblical text.

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Publication Update

Posted on January 18, 2013 by krhughes14

I’ve recently received the proofs of my L/PA article from Brill. Going through them one final time, I find it nothing short of incredible that I am still finding typos and other minor errors. In any event, it will appear in NovT 55.2, likely in April or May, so it’s probably too early to line up outside your local Wal-Mart. One neat fun fact: my faculty mentor here, Dan Wallace, recently told me that he too had his publishing debut in NovT. I figure if I publish a tenth of what he’s published over the years I’ll probably be doing okay.

I’ve also just submitted my article “Judas Remembered: The Betrayer of Jesus in Early Christian Memory” to the Journal for the Study of the New Testament. Dale Allison and Samuel Byrskog were kind enough to provide feedback on a draft of it, confirming something I’d discovered with my earlier paper: there is a real collegiality among scholars in this field. Why some of these senior, highly-respected, and no doubt incredibly busy professors would take time to read and comment on an article sent to them unsolicited from a random master’s student is beyond me, but I hope that I’ll be able to do the same for others some day (provided, of course, anyone is interested in my thoughts on anything!).

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Faith, History and Certainty

Posted on January 14, 2013 by krhughes14

What is the relationship between faith and historical certainty? In the conclusion of my thesis (on N. T. Wright’s historical method), I highlight a quotation from Beth M. Sheppard on this relationship. As Sheppard writes, “it is easy for historicism as a method to become conflated with issues of faith on a number of levels, perhaps not least of which is the unspoken assumption that known facts and an objective basis for faith would resolve conflicts of interpretation and result in a unified history, a unitary understanding of the Christ event, and, ultimately, a single faith tradition that would transcend denominationalism” (The Craft of History, 123-4).

In my thesis, I contrast the modernist view of history (historicism or positivism) with a more nuanced view that incorporates some (but not all) of the insights of postmodernism, exemplified by Wright’s critical realism (developed by the Jesuit philosopher Bernard Lonergan and NT scholar Ben F. Meyer). Whereas historicism viewed history as an objective, empirically verifiable science (that is, the scientific method could be used in history just as in biology or chemistry), critical realism insists on an element of subjectivism, especially insofar as every historian comes to the study of history with certain biases and presuppositions.

Historians and philosophers of history, as well scholars from most other fields, moved away from modernist historicism/positivism decades ago. Yet, in many of today’s conservative Christian circles, there is still a pronounced tendency to hold on to modernism’s black and white way of looking at things, especially when it comes to issues of history. “Truth” and “inerrancy” are defined in ways that would be unrecognizable to anyone in the first century (and many, many centuries before and after that).

What is ironic, however, is that despite seeming to offer certainty regarding historical matters important for Christianity, historicism is actually antithetical to Christian faith. Apart from the fact that historicism as a method has been demonstrated to be deeply flawed, even if historicism were able to follow through on its promise to provide objective certainty on matters of Christian history, what then would be the role of faith, central to the biblical understanding of what it means to follow God?

One of the most pervasive ways I have seen historicism manifested in my circles is the belief that by just following the right method (be it a naive inductive approach or a more sophisticated exegetical procedure), one can accurately (and objectively!) interpret the Bible. Just do a proper word study, validation, or background study, and viola! you’re on your way to a correct interpretation. And these are indeed all important, and good, things. I believe in these methods very much. But we are naive if we think that that’s all there is to it. What critical realism demands is an exegetical humility that recognizes the subjective factors involved in reading and interpretation, as they relate to both the text and the interpreter. As noted in my last post, theological interpretation is one means of taking the subjective element of interpretation into account. There are more.

But my point here is merely that a historical method that does not claim absolute certainty, but instead only relative levels of more or less confidence, actually is better for a faith perspective. Whether I judge something on historical grounds to be very, somewhat, or not probable, faith provides the necessary bridge. Those thinking in a modernist paradigm might find this way of thinking frightening or threatening, but in my own experience I have found it to be liberating: I don’t feel like I have to cook the historical evidence to get the desired result at the end, because it’s not certainty I’m after; what I am after is faith.

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Textual Temptation

Posted on January 4, 2013 by krhughes14

imagesWe all want to be “objective” readers of the Bible, yes? But if postmodernism has one distinct advantage over modernism, it is its recognition that an “objective” reading is in reality impossible, because we all come to the text with certain presuppositions and points of view. Recently, some scholars from the “theological interpretation of Scripture” movement have argued that a Christian interpreter’s faith commitment is actually an asset, rather than something to be ignored or disavowed.

Markus Bockmuehl, in his thought-provoking Seeing the Word: Refocusing New Testament Study (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), illustrates this point with reference to the temptation stories of Eve and of Jesus. In both of these, he contends, “interpretation in each case reduces the divine address to an object for analysis as if from an Archimedean point outside, by staking a pseudoempirical claim to objectivity” (92).

Let’s start with Genesis 3: Bockmuehl sees a three-step hermeneutical temptation. Step One: “to eliminate the ecclesial reception of the word of God and to place interpretation in the hands of the autonomous reasoning subject, isolated from the worshiping community” (93). And so, the serpent asks Eve about God’s word apart from Adam or God’s “presence,” so to speak. “Thus the living word of God is rendered harmless as the object of solitary analysis, a mere cadaver except as energized by the expert’s alchemy of method” (93). Eve adopts a detached, individual perspective to God’s command. Step Two: relativize or eliminate the plain sense of Scripture. The serpent twists and caricatures what God had actually said concerning eating from the tree. “Reduced to autonomous reason, Eve finds the devices and desires of her own heart seductively co-opted by the serpent’s hermeneutics” (93). Similarly, the serpent reinterprets the promise of judgment in a more palatable fashion. Step Three: “move in for the hermeneutical kill” by appealing to human nature and its lust for the forbidden and for power (94). Despite her sincere belief that she is accurately, objectively interpreted God’s word, Eve ends up doing the precise opposite of what God had commanded, and Adam follows.

Note the parallel and contrast with the temptation of the Second Adam: Jesus is tempted by Satan to interpret Scripture as an autonomous reasoning subject (exhausted, hungry, and alone in the wilderness), to relativize what God has said (“If you really are the Son of God…”), and to give in to the lust for power (“All the kingdoms of this world…”). Jesus, unlike the First Adam, passes this test. And so “by this hermeneutical reversal of the fall, faithfully sustained through the depths of Gethsemane and the cross, the risen Jesus has become the key to Scripture itself” (96). By this, Bockmuehl means that “transformed reason and Spirit-given, Christ-centered wisdom are essential to the Christian interpreter’s task” (92).

Elsewhere, Bockmuehl makes clear that he believes that non-Christians can do incredible work in studying and teaching the biblical texts (77). Anyone who suggests otherwise (and I have heard it thus suggested) is incredibly naive. But Bockmuehl is correct, I believe, in arguing that Christian interpreters have a unique gift to offer the scholarly community by reading the biblical texts from the perspective of the texts’ implied exegete – that is, as a disciple. Christian or non-Christian, approaching the biblical text with an awareness of the strengths and limitations of one’s presuppositions is a far better method than to pretend to be “objective.”

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Pauline Hermeneutics (Part 2): Enter Cicero!

Posted on January 2, 2013 by krhughes14

Cicero is always a helpful ally in any argument. And in chapter 2 of her book, Mitchell grounds her argument in the standard techniques of ancient rhetoricians like Cicero. The primary text in question is 1 Cor 5:9-11, which Mitchell identifies as Paul’s first act of “self-exegesis.” In these verses, Paul writes, “I wrote you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. In no way did I mean the immoral people of this world, or the greedy and swindlers and idolaters, since you would then have to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who calls himself a Christian who is sexually immoral…” Whereas some of the Corinthians were misreading Paul by literally globalizing his instructions, Paul here defends one particular interpretation of his previous words on account of 1) the exact wording of the text, and 2) the logical meaning and practical result of the text.

Mitchell argues that what Paul is doing here was common in ancient rhetoric. The ancients realized that texts could be interpreted different ways, which led to the need for Mitchell’s “agonistic paradigm.” As her chief example, Mitchell analyzes Cicero’s De 220px-CiceroBustinventione, which offered a list of criteria and rhetorical strategies by which to argue if a text should be understood literally or figuratively. This was not an invention of Cicero but rather a traditional set of commonplaces known throughout the ancient world. For instance, the interpreter might appeal to everyday speech, literary context, the character of the author, or the consequences of the opponent’s reading to support either a literal or a figurative reading. And this is precisely what Paul is doing in 1 Cor 5:9-11. As it would be impossible to comply with the misunderstood command (utter separation from the entire world), this could not have been what Paul meant.

Here’s the upshot: the ancients did not universally practice literal or figurative interpretation. Rather, they drew from a common set of rhetorical criteria to argue for or against their case. As Mitchell puts it, “The agonistic paradigm is inherently dualistic and combative” (26). And, to summarize, these rhetorical strategies “are not linguistic or hermeneutical theories that represent an absolute commitment or a systematic philosophical engagement with the relationship between text and meaning; they are fragments of linguistic theories used to buttress a particular interpretation on well-known terms” (27). This shatters the myth of the absolute wall between the schools of Alexandria and Antioch and is equally challenging to today’s Bible teachers (and Seminary professors!) dead-set against allegorical interpretation (especially when it comes to eschatological imagery…).

Of course, in evaluating this chapter we find ourselves back in the well-known place of wondering just how thorough Paul’s classical education would have been. I suspect he was indeed trained in the best of Greco-Roman rhetoric, but the extent to which he consciously drew on that remains up for debate. Did he read Cicero? Probably. But even if he did not, I suspect certain rhetorical conventions were familiar enough in the ancient world that we shouldn’t be surprised to see them in his writings.

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Pauline Hermeneutics (Part 1)

Posted on December 31, 2012 by krhughes14

Paul would have made a poor evangelical. As it is commonly described, the early church was divided between those who interpreted the Bible literally and those who interpreted it allegorically. In their day, and even more in ours (poor Augustine gets routinely thrashed for his interpretation of the Good Samaritan in most conservative circles), the allegorists have suffered a fair amount of abuse. But what has always made me uncomfortable is that Paul himself used allegory: Gal 4.20-31 is a clear enough example of that. What do we do with this? A (relatively) new book promises to shed light on this issue.51y-A51BNnL._SL500_AA300_

When Ben Witherington described Margaret Mitchell’s new book Paul, the Corinthians, and the Birth of Christian Hermeneutics (Cambridge: CUP, 2010) as a “gold mine” and perhaps even a “vital visionary text,” I knew this was something that I wanted to read and read carefully. And given my interest in early Christian hermeneutics, this book quickly found its way to the top of my reading pile. Though its six chapters (corresponding to a series of lectures Mitchell gave at Oxford in 2008) amount to only 115 pages, there is indeed more gold to be extracted from this book than almost every book I was required to read for Seminary. This is the first of a series of posts in which I walk through the argument of the book and evaluate or highlight points of particular interest.

Mitchell represents a growing movement in patristic studies to tear down the dividing wall, the hostility, between the two camps of interpretation. As is increasingly recognized, many Fathers utilized both methods at different times. But did they merely switch from one to the other in a purely arbitrary fashion? Mitchell’s thesis in this book is that early Christian exegesis was primarily in the service of “utility to the purpose at hand, however contextually defined” (x). And not only this, but this utilitarian hermeneutic began with Paul himself, specifically in his letters to the Corinthians.

Chapter 1 lays the groundwork for the book as a whole. Mitchell begins by quoting and analyzing Gregory of Nyssa’s prologue to his Commentary on the Song of Songs, in which she argues that Gregory sought the “useful” reading above all, whether that was found in the literal or the figurative reading, and defended this with reference to Paul (Gal 4.24; 1 Cor 9.9; 10.11; 13.12; 2 Cor 3.6; 3.16). Thus, as Mitchell observes, Gregory’s defense of allegory comes primarily from Paul’s Corinthian correspondence. Mitchell spends much of the rest of the chapter arguing her point that the Corinthian letters represent the example par excellence of Paul’s hermeneutical method. 1 and 2 Corinthians, of course, allude to other, non-extant Pauline writings to the church at Corinth, but further negotiation of Paul’s meaning can be seen if 2 Corinthians itself is broken into its composite sources (a position I slightly favor, but who can say for sure?). Here’s Mitchell’s conclusion:

“Back and forth over these six (surviving) letters, in the course of his sometimes tortured correspondence with the Corinthians, Paul negotiated and renegotiated the meanings of his prior utterances. As he did so, Paul was, as it turns out, not only honing arguments for later use in Galatians and Romans and beyond, but was in effect fashioning the building blocks of Christian hermeneutics” (8).

Mitchell identifies two areas of Pauline interpretation. First, there is Paul the interpreter of Israel’s Scriptures, in which Paul “interprets or invokes scripture that were to provide both exegetical terminology and exegetical precedent for early Christian interpretation” of both Testaments (9). Second, there is Paul the interpreter of his own correspondence, defending his writings from misunderstanding, misinterpretation, or abuse. This latter point is Mitchell’s real concern, as it is here that we can see how misunderstanding of Paul’s writings led to Paul’s efforts to clarify his meaning; “the process of writing, reading, rewriting, renegotiating words and reality unfold before our very eyes” (10). Mitchell’s contention is that these efforts required both literal and allegorical interpretation, and that (following rhetorical conventions of the day) Paul selected the interpretation that best advanced his argument. Mitchell calls this the “agonistic [from the Greek ἀγών, “competition, contest”] paradigm of interpretation” in which “texts are treated as witnesses for or against one’s own case, and employed as witnesses” (16). This agonistic paradigm is the thesis which will be unpacked in the following chapters.

One interesting aside: Mitchell references a fourth-century work by “Adamantius” called “Concerning Right Faith in God,” and remarks that she is not aware of any English translation. This is mostly true: while the Greek περι της εις θεον ορθης πιστεως is untranslated in English, Robert A. Pretty has translated Rufinus’ Latin version of the text into English. In any event, it shows how much translating work still needs to be done concerning the ante-Nicene writers!

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Jesus’ Exodus: Christological Exegesis in Jude

Posted on December 21, 2012 by krhughes14

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The new edition of the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament that came out this fall features a major revision of the apparatus in the Catholic epistles as the result of intensive text-critical research on those letters in recent years. Accordingly, there are a few places that the reading of the text has changed. One of these of particular interest to me is at Jude 5.

NA27, along with most English translations (NIV, NRSV, NASB, NKJV), describes how at the time of the Exodus “the Lord (κύριος), having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, later destroyed those who did not believe.” Yet NA28 (as ESV and NET had already printed) instead reads that “Jesus (Ἰησοῦς), having saved the people out of the land…” Why the change?

The manuscript evidence has always been on the side of Ἰησοῦς, with support from some of the earliest and best Alexandrian witnesses, including Codex Vaticanus. But many text critics simply found this reading too difficult: how could Jude have written that Jesus acted in the early history of Israel? Reports eminent text critic Bruce Metzger, concerning the earlier decision in favor of κύριος: “a majority of the Committee was of the opinion that the reading [Ἰησοῦς] was difficult to the point of impossibility, and explained its origin in terms of transcriptional oversight,” likely because of the “strange and unparalleled mention of Jesus in a statement about the redemption out of Egypt” (Textual Commentary, 657). Metzger does, however, note 1 Cor 10:4 as a possible parallel (the rock from which the Israelites drank during the Exodus was in fact Christ).

The fact is, as 1 Cor 10:4 demonstrates, Christological exegesis is not a later, patristic development, but a very early one. After all, 1 Corinthians is one of our earliest works in the entire NT (A.D. 55?). We should not, therefore, be so surprised to see it in a later NT writing such as Jude. The NA28 is correct in making this change, and hopefully other English translations will follow. For more, see the published article by another of Dan Wallace’s students: Philipp Bartholoma, “Did Jesus Save the People out of Egypt? A Re-examination of a Textual Problem in Jude 5,” NovT 50 (2008): 143–58.

Picture: Marc Chagall, Exodus (1952)

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In Layman’s Terms: Christological Exegesis

Posted on December 18, 2012 by krhughes14

Previously on this page, I referenced a famous passage from early Christian literature in which Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, describes a debate he had with some members of a Judaizing party who refused to accept Ignatius’ teaching regarding Jesus because this teaching was not found in the Old Testament (“the archives”). Ignatius responded that Jesus was in fact found in the Jewish Scriptures, and that the only proper way of interpreting Scripture is in light of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection (Phil. 8.2).

This method of interpreting Scripture is called christological exegesis, and it was a common form of interpretation in the early church. According to this view, all of the Old Testament points to and foreshadows Jesus of Nazareth. Irenaeus of Lyons, a second century bishop and apologist, summarizes this hermeneutic well: “If any one, therefore, reads the Scriptures with attention, he will find in them an account of Christ, and a foreshadowing of the new calling. For Christ is the treasure which was hid in the field, that is, in this world (for “the field is this world”); but the treasure hid in the Scriptures is Christ, since He was pointed out by means of types and parables” (Adv. Haer. 4.26.1). The OT, therefore, is only read correctly when it points to Christ – and not just OT prophecies of Messiah, but all of the Old Testament. In effect, the NT is read back into all of the OT, as later Christian perspective provides a “hermeneutical key” for unlocking the “true meaning” of OT texts. In modern times, this approach to Scripture has fallen out of favor as readers instead pursue authorial intent and the single “original” meaning of a given text. But, given that the direct descendants of the apostles found this hermeneutic to be meaningful (if not necessary for Christians), I think it’s worthy of more attention than the usual scorn we tend to heap on it.

Before we can ever get to questions of how this method of reading works and whether it is a violation of the canons of valid interpretation, two examples will suffice to show how christological exegesis worked in the early church. The first example comes from Clement  of Rome, writing sometime in the second half of the first century. In a discussion on examples of faithfulness in the OT (1 Clem. 9-12), Clement retells the story of Rahab, the prostitute who helped Joshua take Jericho (1 Clem. 12:1-7; cf. Josh 2). Clement concludes his summary of the story with the following note regarding the scarlet cord that Rahab tied to her window to guarantee her protection from the invading Israelites: “And in addition they [the Israelite spies] gave her a sign, that she should hang from her house something scarlet – making clear that through the blood of the Lord redemption will come to all who believe and hope in God” (1 Clem. 12:7). Clearly, the “original meaning” or “authorial intent” of the writer of Joshua did not have Christ’s bloody death on the cross in mind, so this is a clear example of the early Christians reading their faith back into the OT through typology.

A second example is found in the Epistle of Barnabas, another early Christian document that likely originated in Alexandria in the late first or early second century. “Barnabas” devotes a large portion of his letter (Barn. 6:8-16:10) to allegorical interpretation of the OT along these lines. Barnabas interprets much of the OT Levitical law in light of God’s salvation in Christ, going so far to criticize the Jews for interpreting the food laws of the OT literally, when they were instead originally meant to have strictly a spiritual sense. Thus, to eat an animal that has a divided hoof in fact means to associate with a righteous person who “not only lives in this world but also looks forward to the holy age to come” (Barn. 10:11). In contrast to these ancient Jews who misunderstood the true force of the Law, Barnabas argues, “we, having rightly understood the commandments, explain them as the Lord intended. He circumcised our ears and hearts for this very purpose, so that we might understand these things” (Barn. 10:12).

Poor Clement and Barnabas: these texts are met with little more than laughter when I’ve heard them read in classes, an example of the worst kind of exegesis. And indeed, they do flagrantly violate the basic rules of historical-grammatical or historical-critical exegesis, the approaches that characterize almost all biblical studies today. The fact that Paul uses exactly the same method of interpretation (Gal 4:21-31, re: Sarah and Hagar) is something of an embarrassment to many scholars of a more conservative stripe, who twist themselves into hermeneutical contortions by arguing that such interpretation was acceptable for the Apostle Paul only (the fact that his disciples and the disciples of the other apostles continued to use the same method of interpretation, presumably with their blessing, seems to be completely ignored), whereas it is forbidden for all other interpreters, ancient or contemporary. Thus, if the NT writers don’t specifically identify a point of typology, it’s off-limits for us today, merely a case of “crass allegory” and a futile exercise in creative eisegesis.

What if, however, in selling ourselves to be placed under the yoke of a modernist hermeneutic, we Christians are missing out on an aspect of what it means to truly read Scripture as a Christian? But are there any limits on christological exegesis (that is, allegorical interpretation)? Was there any rhyme or reason for its practice in the early church, or was it completely arbitrary? With these questions in mind, in the coming weeks I’d like to share some insights on this matter that a new book from Margaret Mitchell has provided.

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