T&T Clark Theology, History, and Biblical Interpretation: Modern Readings

There is at present a ferment over theological interpretation, some backlash against this seemingly new development, and a bit of unsettlement in the state of historical approaches to the Bible. But students and scholars are not always clear about what the differences and similarities are between historical and theological approaches to the Bible.According to literary critic Northrop Frye's work The Great Code: The Bible and Literature,"There have always been two directions in Biblical scholarship, the critical and the traditional, though often they have merged." What is the nature of this contrast? What is the rationale for each approach? Do the approaches conflict,or can they be reconciled? How should the approaches be assessed by believers and academics? To what extent are today's debates about theological exegesis revisiting an old, perhaps even a perennial, issue, and to what extent do they deal with a new topic? This reader encourages students and scholars to explore these important questions by bringing together some of history's most influential discussions of the issues as well as some of the present day's most distinguished attempts to weigh in on the debate. Review These extensive readings provide a wonderful resource for engaging biblical hermeneutics. Darren Sarisky’s introductions are clear and concise, gently helping the reader to keep central questions in mind. Whatever one’s inevitable quibbles over a text getting left out, these selections represent important moments of the modern conversation about theology and interpretation. Sarisky is one of the young scholars who can advance that conversation to a new stage, and here he does so by helping us attend to its historical context. ― Daniel J. Treier, Wheaton College, USA Theology, History and Biblical Interpretation is a collection of twenty seminal essays that, taken together, reflect the ebb and flow of historical vs. theological interests over the past two hundred years of biblical interpretation. Darren Sarisky provides a helpful editorial introduction and offers a broader perspective from which to see present-day controversies for what they are, namely, the latest chapter in the long story of the Bible, history, and theology in the modern world. This is a helpful collection of essays that convincingly demonstrates the importance of coming to grips with the meaning and relationship of historical and theological biblical interpretation. ― Kevin Vanhoozer, Trinity Evangelical Divinty School, USA Darren Sarisky’s well-chosen and diverse collection of readings in the modern history of biblical interpretation shows that this is not the case. Biblical interpreters have engaged intensively with the history/theology problem for over three centuries, and Sarisky has done students and their teachers a great service by making such a broad range of major contributions to this debate available within a single volume ― Francis Watson, University of Durham, UK Since the Enlightenment, thoughtful readers of the Jewish and Christian Bibles have asked whether and how ancient scriptural texts, for all their historical particularity, might be or become the divine word. In this judicious selection of key voices in this debate, Darren Sarisky ushers the reader into this lively and ongoing conversation. The masters are all here, from Spinoza and Kierkegaard to Troeltsch and Ricoeur. Careful attention to these readings might save historical criticism from its thoughtless historicism, and theological interpretation from its ahistorical weightlessness, and resource a sophisticated dialogue between history and theology in the reading of the Bible today. ― David Lincicum, University of Oxford, UK About the Author Darren Sarisky received his PhD from King's College Aberdeen, UK. He was previously a Junior Research Fellow at Homerton College, University of Cambridge, and is now a Lecturer in Systematic Theology at King s College Lond