Grammatical Historical Exegesis is good as far as it goes. We want to seek to work out what Amos probably meant to his first audience and what Paul probably meant in writing his letters to the Corinthians. Our interpretation should pay careful attention to what the text actually says and we mustn’t leap to conclusions or to applications. The thought associations in my brain, which may be provoked in part by the biblical text, must be weighed against the Scriptures, not unreflectively prefaced with “thus says the LORD”.
“The interior sense of the Bible is not behind, beyond, or even before the word, but in the word.” (p91)
Consequently, our exegesis, as well as our critical disposition toward the Bible, is moulded, to a large degree, by our presuppositions. Conscious or unconscious, this pre-understanding shapes the criteria we use to adjudicate questions of meaning, historicity, and authorship. Every method of interpretation, therefore, is rooted in assumptions which often depend more on faith than on demonstration. Nevin was on solid ground, then, in rejecting many of the presuppositions that have been superstitiously appended to the historical-critical method in favour of the Apostles’ Creed and the catholic tradition.” (p111)
1 comment:
Excellent. I shall steal this.
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