Turning Jordan

At the SBL conference last week one of the plenary speakers presented a paper on the dangers of pseudo-historicism in academia.  In attempting to provide a “proper historical context” for various biblical passages, he argued that many in his field do not practice sound historical methods.  There was much merit in his comments, and many in the evangelical community would have done well to listen to what he had to say.  Yet, while I wholeheartedly agree that sound practices and methods must be used in seeking a historical context, sometimes (read: nearly all the time) that context either obscures or disintegrates what valuable work the final editor of a biblical book had done.  In other words, we must view the work of the final author of a book as a historical event in making a text.  The final book transcends what may have been a prehistory for a text.   It is one thing to use linguistic evidence to date a book of the  bible (or a passage) to a certain time period, and it is yet another thing to use that for interpretation of the text in its final form.

Brevard Childs offers great words of caution from his Isaiah commentary (2001):

“Some of these critical observations may well be right.  The style of the passage appears expansive and there are striking parallels with late biblical literature.  Yet I would argue that the interpretation of these factors has been badly misconstrued, largely because of the assumption that a reconstructed historical context provides the only access to the passage’s meaning.  [His] analysis not only historicizes the the passage, but then alters the text’s eschatological orientation into an etiological commentary on the past.” (35)

He then goes on to note:

“The chief exegetical issue at stake again turns on the question of context.  Crucial to correct interpretation is the recognition of the element of intertextuality.  The passage has chosen words and themes from Israel’s tradition that provide a resonance for the informed reader.” (35)

Food for thought.

Andy