Summary of Biblical Interpretation

Lightkeeper · #1 (**permalink**) 15th August 2008, 08:14 PM

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A Brief Summary of Some of the Major Developments in Biblical Interpretation:
A detached note about intellectual history:

It is important to realize that it is people who keep ideas alive; ideas do not exist on their own. Ideas can be described as viruses of the mind – entities that depend upon a living host to nourish them. Thus, individual thinkers give their own spin even to the most common of ideas and, therefore, while generalizations are useful, of themselves they can be misleading – such as the uniformity of common purpose implied in a term like “The Enlightenment project” mentioned above. Bearing in mind this warning, here are a few useful, if incomplete, generalizations about developments in biblical interpretation in the modern period.

The Renaissance:

Renaissance Humanism represented the careful study of language and the examination of the various meanings and usages of words. As part of this, humanists were interested in collecting manuscripts and in using the new technology of printing to make biblical texts of a standard form readily available.
In particular, for the Christian church, this meant a better knowledge of Greek as well as a recovery from Jewish teachers of Hebrew and Aramaic. Furthermore, medieval Jewish scholarly exegesis on difficulties in the Hebrew Bible had a great influence on the Christian scholars.
The study of language revealed that the precise meanings of words can change with time, and Valla showed how the Bible’s meaning could be falsified by reading biblical words as if they had the same meaning in the fifteenth century as they did in the first.
By the end of the sixteenth century, the careful examination of texts was having unexpected results. Masius argued that the Pentateuch was not the work of a single author, and Scaliger recognized that some problems of biblical chronology were possibly insoluble.
The Enlightenment Period (mid-seventeenth century until end of the eighteenth century):

La PeyrËre argued that some books of the Bible betrayed the narrow interests of the Israelites who were far from being the most important people in the ancient Near East.
The importance of history was recognized in the development of ideas; the first histories of philosophy (as opposed to biographies of philosophers) began to be written, and the possibility of development of ideas in the Bible added the term “historico” to the traditional term “criticism” to produce a name for the emerging historico-critical approach to the Bible in the eighteenth century.
Vico, Burnet, and others recognized that not all people think the same way; this led to interpretations of some parts of the Bible, such as the creation stories as myths (though this did not mean deliberate falsehoods). Other intellectual investigations into the nature and origin of language (and languages) spilled over into biblical exegesis even as did discussions of the nature of the state and its laws. Culture as a matter different from philosophical truth made its appearance.
Even the evidence from the contemporary ancient Near East became a subject for study as a means of understanding the Bible, and Michaelis was the driving force behind sending out a scientific expedition to answer specific questions.
The Nineteenth Century:

The emergence of “science” as an undertaking distinct from philosophy represented a significant shift in intellectual endeavour and discussion. The determination of clergy to defend the indefensible in the Bible meant religion was reduced to a matter of blind faith as the insights of the eighteenth century were lost to much theology.
The recovery of the meaning of ancient writing systems meant that documents from Egypt and Mesopotamia could show the cultural context of many biblical stories and concepts.
In New Testament studies, attention shifted from a priori dogmatic approach to asking what Jesus was like as a human being.

History of Biblical Interpretation in the Christian Church - By John Sandys-Wunsch

gluadys · #2 (**permalink**) 28th October 2008, 08:22 PM

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Originally Posted by Lightkeeper

History of Biblical Interpretation in the Christian Church - By John Sandys-Wunsch

My first impression of the article is that it seems to stop too soon. Where is the presentation of the exciting new developments in interpretation of the 20th and early 21st century. Why no mention of the important impact of feminist studies of the bible, for example.

I am glad to see the web site as a whole is not so mired in the past. I enjoyed this autobiographical article by Walter Wink.

The Bible and Interpretation

**metis** · #3 (**permalink**) 28th October 2008, 10:21 PM

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Originally Posted by gluadys

Why no mention of the important impact of feminist studies of the bible, for example.

But what do women know anyway?

BTW, nice to see you again. Been busy?

gluadys · #4 (**permalink**) 30th October 2008, 04:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by metis

But what do women know anyway?

BTW, nice to see you again. Been busy?

Yep. Retired last year and busier than ever. Doing much the same as when I was working, but now without getting paid for it.

**metis** · #5 (**permalink**) 30th October 2008, 02:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gluadys

Yep. Retired last year and busier than ever. Doing much the same as when I was working, but now without getting paid for it.

Well, mazel tov! I didn't know you retired then. I've been retired (or is it retarded?

) for five years now, and you're right, somehow the time just gets filled in. But when one has six grandchildren, that shouldn't be a surprise.

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