Figural Reading and the Old Testament

C. Collett Don

Description

Don Collett, an experienced Old Testament scholar, offers an account of Old Testament interpretation that capitalizes on recent research in figural exegesis. Collett examines the tension between figural and literal modes of exegesis as they developed in Christian thought, introduces ongoing debates and discussions concerning figural readings of Scripture, and offers theological readings of several significant Old Testament passages. This book will work well as a primer on figural exegesis for seminarians or as a capstone seminary text that ties together themes from courses in Bible, exegesis, and theology.

Sujets

• Lettres et linguistique

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 21 avril 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781493421626
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

Cover
Half Title Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 2020 by Don C. Collett
Published by Baker Academic
a division of Baker Publishing Group
PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www. bakeracademic.com
Ebook edition created 2020
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-2162-6
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture translation is the author’s own.
Scripture quotations labeled KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.
Dedication
To the Rt. Rev. Dr. Mouneer Hanna Anis and the faculty of Alexandria School of Theology, in the hope that figural reading will blossom anew in the land of Origen.
Contents
Cover i
Half Title Page ii
Title Page iii
Copyright Page iv
Dedication v
Abbreviations ix
Introduction
A World Well Lost: The Eclipse of Old Testament Consciousness 1
Part 1: Frameworks 7
1. Biblical Models for Figural Reading 9
2. Figural Reading and Scripture’s Literal Sense 25
Part 2: Exegesis 59
3. Figural Reading, Metaphor, and Theological Exegesis 61
Part 3: Assessment 111
4. Figural Reading and Modernity 113
5. Epilogue 161
Bibliography 167
Scripture and Ancient Writings Index 181
Author Index 185
Subject Index 189
Back Cover 195
Abbreviations
General bk. book ca. circa/about chap(s). chapter(s) esp. especially ET English Translation LXX Septuagint p(p). page(s) sec. section vol. volume v(v). verse(s)
Old Testament Apocrypha Bar. Baruch Sir. Sirach
Secondary Sources AARCRS American Academy of Religion Classics in Religious Studies BCOTWP Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms BIS Biblical Interpretation Series BTC Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible BZAW Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly CD Church Dogmatics FAT Forschungen zum Alten Testament IBC Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching IJST International Journal of Systematic Theology Int Interpretation JAAR Journal of the American Academy of Religion JBL Journal of Biblical Literature JECS Journal of Early Christian Studies JHS Journal of Hebrew Scriptures JLT Journal of Literature and Theology JPS Jewish Publication Society Tanakh JQR Jewish Quarterly Review JR Journal of Religion JTS Journal of Theological Studies LQ Lutheran Quarterly MT Modern Theology NICOT New International Commentary on the Old Testament NPNF 2 Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers , Series 2 OTL Old Testament Library ProEccl Pro Ecclesia PRSt Perspectives in Religious Studies PTMS Princeton Theological Monograph Series PTS Patristische Texte und Studien SJOT Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament SJT Scottish Journal of Theology TNK Tanakh TS Theological Studies TynBul Tyndale Bulletin VT Vetus Testamentum WBC Word Biblical Commentary WTJ Westminster Theological Journal ZAW Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft ZTK Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche
Introduction
A World Well Lost
The Eclipse of Old Testament Consciousness
In the classes I teach on Old Testament for first-year students, I often like to point out that “the Old Testament got there first.” Understood as a chronological claim about the Old Testament’s temporal priority in relation to the New Testament, this statement is little more than a truism. Yet it is a truism that typically underwrites approaches to the Old Testament—approaches this book intends to challenge. No shortage of introductions to the Old Testament view it as a historical introduction or prolegomena to the New Testament. In this approach, the New Testament is typically construed in terms of a theological witness that provides the exegetical underpinning for crucial doctrines in the Christian tradition, while the Old Testament serves as a sort of preparatio evangelica that never quite addresses these doctrines, let alone authorizes them in any unique or foundational sense.
More provocative and controversial is the claim that the Old Testament “got there first,” not merely in the chronological or historical sense I’ve just described but also in a theological sense. The Old Testament provides the basic theological grammar for the church’s confession on creation, providence, figuration, the nature of biblical inspiration, authorship, Trinity, Christology, soteriology, and ecclesiology. The Old Testament’s unique contribution to these doctrines does not simply anticipate or duplicate the New Testament’s own witness to the same. Rather, the Old Testament renders its witness to these teachings in its own language and on its own terms. These Old Testament terms shape the New Testament’s exegetical grammar and theological outlook, rather than themselves being derived either from the New Testament in the first instance or from an external imposition and “hard reading” of the New Testament’s historical experiences, theological concepts, and semantics back into the Old Testament. 1
The operative premise of this book is that the loss of an Old Testament consciousness with respect to the theological issues just mentioned lies at the heart of many of the Christian church’s problems in our day, in both its mainline and evangelical expressions, especially the culture of Bible reading that is deeply embedded within these groups. With a few notable exceptions, the interpretive implications of the character and identity of God, creation, providence, and figural logic in the Old Testament have been eclipsed in the name of a so-called biblical theology of the two testaments that is little more than New Testament theology. 2 The irony involved in this top-heavy view of the New Testament is all too evident when one considers the fact that the New Testament simply assumes the Old Testament’s doctrine of God, creation, and providence, rather than reinventing the wheel on these issues.
Of particular interest is the relation between figural reading and the Old Testament’s literal sense, or sensus literalis . Figure is the term chosen in this book to express Scripture’s ongoing theological significance through the changing contexts of history, though allegory might also have been chosen. Contrary to the popular stereotypes of modernity, figural reading is not a non-historical strategy for reading Scripture but a species of historical reading rooted in the Scripture’s literal sense. 3 Although the church has not always been consistent in practice, in principle it is fair to say that Scripture’s literal sense has been the privileged context for hearing Scripture’s theological voice. 4 At the same time, the church has also recognized that in all dimensions—authorial, grammatical, and figural—the literal sense did not deliver its meaning in isolation from but in connection with God’s ordering of things in creation and providence, as witnessed to in the scriptures of Israel we now call the Old Testament. Isolating the literal sense from the interpretive framework provided by the Old Testament’s witness to creation and providence directly undercuts its ability to speak figurally to Israel and the church regarding its christo-trinitarian subject matter. One main aim of this book will be to argue that Scripture’s literal sense is not merely an authorial or historical sense but fully embedded within a creational and providential “rule” for reading Scripture’s canonical, final, or “full” form. 5 For this reason Aquinas and others in the premodern church did not conceive of the literal sense as a brute fact—and still less as raw historical source material to be reconstructed for critical “truth-telling” purposes—but as a “meditation” on God’s providence situated within Scripture’s witness to creation. 6 It is here that the loss of Old Testament consciousness makes itself felt in the largely Christ-less Old Testament of modernity, in both its evangelical and mainline denominational forms.
The Old Testament’s figural witness to Christ depends on the doctrine of providence inherent to its self-witness. As the Author of time who also orders time, God establishes the end from the beginning and the “latter things” in terms of “former things” (Isa. 41:22; 42:9; 43:9, 18; 46:9; 48:3, 6). The L O R D ’s providential ordering of history is the authorizing context in which Old Testament prophecy speaks a word to the future generations, as well as to the people of its own day. Its christological efficacy depends not on human cognition but on the providential and figural links the L O R D establishes between the Word of Old Testament promise and the Word made flesh in time. 7 Compared with the Old Testament, the New Testament offers a rather compressed space, temporally speaking, for learning about life lived under God’s providence. As George Adam Smith once observed, in the Old Testament the providence of God is illustrated “to an extent for which the brief space of the New Testament leaves no room.” 8 This brief space is due not so much to the tem poral compression of the New Testament’s witness in comparison with the Old’s but to the fact that the New Testament simply presupposes the Old Testament’s account of history as a providentially constructed reality, just as it presupposes the Old Testament’s doctrines of creation and God’s character.
One reason the late modern church does not recognize the significance of creation and providence for the Old Testament’s figural ordering of history is because its approach to biblical theology virtually equates biblical theology and New Testament theology. If biblical theology is essentially New Testament theology, then we can see why the Old Testament’s providential model for understanding history has no exegetical impact on