The Story of Interpretation:
From the First Century to the Twenty First
Part II
Rev. Ilya Lizorkin
Stellenbosch University
M. Phil. in Bible Interpretation
To Avi Snider
who first taught me to interpret the Bible
The Christian theologian is one who has learned his or her craft through apprenticeship to biblical literature.
Kevin Vanhooser
CONTENTS
1) Introduction
i. Hermeneutics and the Garden
ii. Goals and structure
iii. Definitions and major issues
iv. Challenges
2) Apostolic Age
i. Jewishness
ii. Newness
iii. Eschatology
iv. Use of Jeremiah
3) Early Church
i. The perceived evil of allegory
ii. Alexandrian and Antiochian Schools
iii. Use of Jeremiah
4) Middle Ages
i. Period distinctives and key figures
ii. Jewish, Islamic and Christian interaction
iii. Use of Jeremiah
5) Reformation
i. Period distinctives and key figures
ii. Jeremiah in Calvin
iii. Jeremiah in Henry
6) Classics and Modernity
i. Period distinctives and key figures
ii. Use of Jeremiah
7) Modernity and Post-Modernity
i. Introduction:
ii. Author centered criticisms and the use of Jeremiah
iii. Text centered criticisms and the use of Jeremiah
iv. Audience centered criticisms and the use of Jeremiah
8) Conclusion
Reformation
Period distinctives and key figures
The philological advances of the Renaissance and the theological as well as ecclesiological developments of the Reformation is what at the core distinguishes the hermeneutics of 16th and 17th centuries from its medieval predecessor. The closer we move towards the Golden Age of Hermeneutics the more difficult it becomes to make a choice of which great exegetes and representatives of various schools should be covered in our study and which we are justified in overlooking.
The major players in Bible Interpretation are of course the Reformers[1] and the Christian humanists[2] of the time, Theodore Beza, Martin Bucer, Heinrich Bullinger, John Calvin, Miles Coverdale, Desiderius Erasmus, Matthias Flacius Illiricus, Matthew Henry, Richard Hooker, Jacques Lefevre d’Etaples, John Lightfoot, Martin Luther, Pilgram Marpeck, Philip Melanchthon, William Perkins, William Tyndale, Peter Martye Vermingli, Jerome Zanchi and Ulrich Zwingli.[3]
The first key distinctive characteristic of this period was this: the trend towards the appreciation of the literal-simple meaning of the text became a strong current in the sea of Bible Interpretation. Perhaps the greatest contribution of the Reformed Hermeneutic at this time was the contention that any text of the Bible has but one meaning. The suspicion and gentle suggestions of preceding generations that maybe, just maybe, the historical sense has some importance, was replaced by the full subscription to its supremacy and exclusivity. Melanchthon, Luther’s successor and popularizer of many of Luther’s teachings, proceeded on the sound principles that (a) the Scriptures must be understood grammatically before they can be understood theologically; and (b) the Scriptures have but one certain and simple sense. As was the case with early Antiochian interpreters, reformers did not abandon the use of allegory all together, but rather they gave it its proper place. Alistair McGrath comments on Melanchthon’s hermeneutic: “His biblical exegesis stressed the importance of the literal sense of Scripture. Although he used allegory at points (e.g. in his exposition of John’s Gospel), he clearly subordinated the allegorical to the literal or historical sense of Scripture… His most important contribution to 16th centaury biblical interpretation is the rhetorical foundation for the analysis of biblical texts put forward in his De Rhetorica libri tres (1519) and applied particularly well in the 1522 Romans Commentary - published by Luther without Melanchthon’s permission.”[4]
The second key characteristic of the protestant hermeneutic of the time was the return to the early apostolic way of thinking about Christ being the hermeneutical grid through which all of the Scriptures should be studied.[5] The two most influential leaders of the Reformation (Luther and Calvin) held different views when it came to hermeneutical practice. For Luther the chief interpretive concern in reading the Scriptures was to find Christ and His Gospel, for Calvin the chief interpretive concern was the glory of God and His sovereignty. This broader perspective enables Calvin to be satisfied with biblical messages about God, God’s redemptive history, and God’s covenant without the necessity focusing these messages on Jesus Christ.[6] It would be unfair to say that Calvin was not Christo-centric in his reading of the Bible, however his Christo-centricity was freed by the sense of God’s sovereignty. With regards to his high view of Christo-centricity, Calvin wrote: “We ought to read the Scripture with an expressed design of finding Christ in them. Whoever shall turn aside from this object, though he may weary himself through his whole life in learning, will never attain the knowledge of the truth; for what wisdom can we have without the wisdom of God.”[7]
Jeremiah in Calvin
The reformers seemed to take more interest in the book of Jeremiah and especially in the life of the prophet than their medieval predecessors. As we read Calvin it would serve us well to recall that he was writing in the midst of fierce persecution in many parts of Europe. Often times news of his disciples being tried for heresy and executed would reach Geneva. Those were the people into whom Calvin poured his heart and life. They were his sons who were slain in the battle. Calvin…compared the Catholic threat against his own Geneva during the Reformation to the life of Jeremiah, noting that both he and the prophet were struggling for the glory of God against the enemies of the faith.[8]
Calvin in his views on the Sabbath is somewhat different from many of his Reformation counterparts. On July 27, 1549 Calvin preached a sermon on Jeremiah 17:19: “It is true that this symbol was abolished with the coming of Christ, as St. Paul declares to the Colossians and to the Romans. If we are locked into this custom it is by lack of intelligence… St. Paul states that we must abandon these symbols, for we are no longer children and these symbols were our ABCs.”[9]
Jeremiah by Henry
Matthew Henry writing on the heels, as it were of Luther’s “Magisterial Reformation” does not hesitate to call our attention to the fact that the leaders of Jerusalem were admonished first and separately from the common people as indicated in the phrase “the gate…whereby the Kings of Judah come in”: “Let them be told their duty first; for, if the Sabbaths be not sanctified the rulers of Judah are to be contended with, for they are certainly wanting in their duty.” Today the Christian church has largely given up the idea of Christian government, so the scholars of today do not normally concentrate their interpretive attention on this matter at all, rather they are more concerned with the precise name of the gate as will be seen later in the paper. Once again it is clear that the context of the text is crucial for its meaning and perception by the reader.
Matthew Henry then continues: “The church shall flourish: Meat-offerings, and incense, and sacrifices of praise, shall be brought to the house of the Lord. A people truly flourish when religion flourishes among them… The streams of all religion run either deep or shallow according as the banks of the Sabbath are kept up or neglected.”[10] The commentator under discussion does not hesitate to apply what was said of Ancient Israel to the church in his day. This is due not only to his covenant theology, but also to also to the highly pastoral and applicatory nature of this commentary that in a sense typifies the concerns of the time[11].
Classics and Modernity
Period distinctives and key figures
The 18th and 19th century came to be known in many disciplines as the age of Classics and the age of Modernity respectively. Rapid changes or rather paradigm shifts were taking place in Western Europe, more particularly in German institutions of higher learning. The Bible did not escape the impact of these changes. Scholar sought to approach the Bible through scientific means similar to those used in other areas of study. Thus was born the approach known as the historical-critical method, an interpretive method guided by several crucial philosophical presuppositions. It inherited the rationalistic assumption from its seventeenth-century intellectual ancestors, that the use of human reason, free from theological limitations, is the best tool with which to study the Bible.[12]
John Rogerson argues that even though the 18th and 19th centuries could be lumped together into one period, there was a clear difference between them: “… by the close of the eighteenth century, critical German scholarship had already achieved much. It had gained freedom to investigate questions of authorships of books, unity of books, sources of underlying books, without the restraints imposed by traditional opinions on these matters deriving from the narrow views of the nature of inspiration. In had began to look at prophetic literature in its original and historic setting… Yet, arguably, it did not achieve the breakthrough… That breakthrough was, however, only a few years away as the eighteenth century came to an end.”[13]
As in any period there were many key interpreters that played important roles during this time. Some of the key representatives that I will seek to make reference to are Ernesti, Charles Hodge, Baur, Schleiermacher, De Wette, Strauss, Von Hofmann and Wellhausen.
Frederick Baur held professorship positions in several prestigious universities in Germany. He was “a mover and a shaker” of hermeneutics pushing the envelope and opposing orthodoxy in any shape or form. He was opposed to orthodoxy to such a degree that he attacked Frederick Schleiermacher with a charge of duplicity, since Schleiermacher did not categorically deny the historicity of the events in the Bible, he was simply saying that historicity is irrelevant and unimportant. S. J. Hofeman states emphatically that “…with the rise of Baur, a purely historical and critical investigation of the Bible established itself as orthodoxy in the world of Biblical Scholarship.”[14]
At this time there was an effort to begin formulating actual rules of biblical hermeneutics. Johann August Ernesti perhaps deserves recognition as the foremost contributor to the reformulation of classical hermeneutical rules for the clarification of texts, setting explicative practices of interpretation apart from efforts to apply biblical texts to contemporary life.[15]
Charles Hodge was a Presbyterian theologian who like many others did not escape all of the traps of logical positivism that developed some time before. Vanhoozer states: “With regard to theology and interpretation of Scripture, then, Princetonians resembled the logical positivists, though their primary source of data was not empirical experience but biblical propositions. As Hodge stated: ‘The Bible is to the theologian what nature is to the man of science.’”[16]
David Friedrich Strauss continued the school of thought, which propagated that the things taught in the Scripture are eternal truths regardless of their actual historicity. In this, one sees a clear Kantian connection. H. Boers quotes Strauss: “The author is aware that the essence of the Christian faith is perfectly independent of his criticism. The supernatural birth of Christ, his miracles, his resurrection and ascension, remain eternal truths, whatever doubts may be cast to their reality as historical facts.”[17]
There were people who criticized the current critical approach to the Scriptures and argued that the Bible is God’s Word and, therefore, its reading-hermeneutic needs to be proceeded by faith in its Author. Johann Christian Konrad von Hofmann…calls for “trust” in its (Biblical) message. Interpretation must begin “with trust, not with doubt and criticism). It is as if Hofmann glimpsed in advance the next 125 years of theological and hermeneutical developments.[18]
No doubt one of the most important interpreters of this period was F. Schleiermacher. He is frequently credited with having founded modern Biblical hermeneutics. Prior to Schleiermacher, however, several other scholars wrote normative and technical theories of interpretation, including J. Dannahauer, J. Chladenius, and G. Meier.
For Schleiermacher the hermeneutics was the art of translating the intentions of the original author into terms familiar to the present day reader[19]. Schleiermacher[20] although routinely disliked by the conservatives must nevertheless be credited for his accomplishments in raising the importance of literary and historical criticism to a level that is accepted and appreciated by them. Ferguson makes that clear in his Introduction to Biblical Hermeneutics: “It was Schleiermacher particularly who objected that more was needed to understand the contents of the Bible, than the methods of this scientific kind of exegesis. He believed that in order to understand the biblical texts fully the interpreter must join literary and historical analysis with intuition and imagination.”[21]
Louis Jonker of Stellenbosch University does not doubt for a moment that Wellhausen was the greatest scholar of the period discussed here. He puts it the following way: “The greatest scholar of the nineteenth century was Julius Wellhausen (born 1844). He portrayed the religious development of Israel in His masterpiece “Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels” (published for the first time in 1878). According to Wellhausen, this development can be described as three epochs reflected in the Pentateuchal sources JE[22], D and P. In every epoch the religion and cult of Israel were in different developmental levels. He therefore commenced his monumental work by presenting description of certain cult elements after the analogy of three epochs.”[23]
Even though Wellhausen had several evangelical followers such as Robertson Smith, who sought to combine his evangelical beliefs with many profound critical insights, it is hard to see how Wellhausen could be widely accepted by conservative evangelicals as an ally. For Wellhausen the subjective experience of faith was decisive, not the historical fact: “Jesus was dead. Christ lived.” Jesus’ preaching involved the highest ethical conceptuality.” This cannot be destroyed through historical criticism. We have basis for faith beyond the realm of history: “In the core of my soul I lay hold of eternity.”[24]
Use of Jeremiah
Bishop Robert Lowth is credited with identifying the literary structures of Jeremiah. He discovered that the mix between poetry and prose in Jeremiah was roughly half and half. He introduced this academic news in his Oxford lectures in commencing in 1741. He wrote: “As an example, I need only refer to that remarkable vision, in which the impending slaughter and destruction of Judea is exhibited with wonderful force and enthusiasm: ‘Oh, my anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain. Oh, the agony of my heart! My heart pounds within me, I cannot keep silent. For I have heard the sound of the trumpet; I have heard the battle cry.’”[25] Yet in another place Bishop Lowth remarks: “On the same principle the sublimity of those passages is founded, in which the image is taken from the roaring of a lion, the clamour of rustic laborers, and the rage of the wild beasts: 'The LORD will roar from on high; he will thunder from his holy dwelling and roar mightily against his land. He will shout like those who tread the grapes, shout against all who live on the earth.’”[26] It was Kittle, however, that…was the first one to print major portions of MT as poetry, including much of the prophets… Kittle himself edited Jeremiah for HB and is largely responsible for the way (Biblical) poetry is read today.[27]