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Reader Response: Demythologising the Text

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Schuyler Brown
Schuyler Brown
Affiliation:
Toronto, Canada
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Extract

The Greek word έξήγησις means ‘explanation’ or ‘interpretation’. When applied to the Bible, it would appear to mean ‘explication de texte’. However, Biblical exegetes are often in the habit of contrasting what they do with ‘eisegesis’, i.e. the imposition of ‘subjective’ meanings onto the text. This contrast suggests that the meaning derived by exegesis is gotten ‘out of’ the text, where it is thought to reside, by means of the ‘correct’ exegetical methods, of which the exegete is the master. Like Philip the Evangelist, the exegete responds to the plea for help implied in the reader's befuddled question, ‘How can I [understand], unless someone guides me?’ (Acts 8.31).

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Articles
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New Testament Studies , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , April 1988 , pp. 232 - 237
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

NOTES

[1] This is the second meaning given in Liddell, H. G. and Scott, R., A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968) 593Google Scholar. The first meaning is given as ‘statement’, ‘narrative’.

[2] The Greek word εισήγησις means ‘proposing’, ‘advising’, ‘introduction’, or ‘a motion’ (Liddell, and Scott, , 495).Google Scholar

[3] Cf. Frei, H. W., The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974).Google Scholar

[4] Biblical exegetes seem strangely unconcerned about the problem of ‘the intentional fallacy’. See Wimsatt, W. K. Jr, and Beardsley, M. C., The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1954) 3–18.Google Scholar

[5] The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (Toronto: Academic Press, 1982) 57–8.Google Scholar

[6] Cf. Boadt, L., Reading the Old Testament (New York: Paulist Press, 1984) 143Google Scholar: ‘The patri-archal stories of Abraham were preserved by the Jews themselves as a true promise and prelude to the deeper covenant and promise of Mount Sinai, and can be read in no other way, certainly not as in opposition to Moses’’ (emphasis mine).

[7] Cf. Cahill, P. J., ‘Hermeneutical Implications of Typology’, CBQ 44 (1982) 266–81.Google Scholar

[8] Cf. Culler, J., Saussure (Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1976) 105.Google Scholar

[9] The Great Code, 57: ‘At other times there seems to be no such secondary structure of mean- outside the words, and this in turn is a sign that what we are reading is “literary”, which means provisionally a verbal structure existing for its own sake.’’ However, the quality which Frye thus attributes to the text attaches, in my position, to the interest of the reader.

[10] Hermeneutik, ed. Kimmerle, H. (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, Universitätsverlag, 1959) 109.Google Scholar

[11] Nicholson, G., Seeing and Reading (Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1984) 26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

[12] Hermeneutik, 109: ‘Die divinatorische ist die welche indem man sich selbst gleichsam in den andern verwandelt, das individuelle unmittelbar aufzufassen sucht. Die comparative sezt erst den zu verstehenden als ein allgemeines, und findet dann das Eigenthümliche indem mit andern unter dem-selben allgemeinen befassten verglichen wird. Jenes ist die weibliche Stärke in der Menschenkenntniss, dieses die männliche.’

[13] Cf. Steiner, G., ‘“Critic”/“Reader”’, New Literary History 10 (1979) 423–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

[14] Confessions, tr. Pine-Coffin, R. S. (Penguin Books, 1975) 178.Google Scholar

[15] Cf. my book, The Origins of Christianity: A Historical Introduction to the New Testament (Oxford University Press, 1984) 2–3Google Scholar: ‘For people today, all understanding, religious understanding included, is rooted in history, both the present historical situation in which we seek to understand and the past historical situation of that which we seek to understand.’

[16] Nicholson, , op. cit. 136.Google Scholar

[17] Ibid. 29. So also Heidegger, M., Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1957) 145Google Scholar: ‘Warum dringt das Verstehen nach allen wesenhaften Dimensionen des in ihm Erschliessbaren immer in die Möglichkeiten? Weil das Verstehen an ihm selbst die existenziale Struktur hat, die wir den Entwurf nennen.’

[18] Texts of Terror: Literary Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984) 9–35.Google Scholar

[19] Schüssler-Fiorenza, E., In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1984) xvii.Google Scholar

[20] This issue of the ‘morality of consciousness’ is expressed in Jesus' saying to a man whom he sees working on the Sabbath: ‘If indeed you know what you are doing, you are blessed; but if you do not know, you are cursed and a transgressor of the law’ (Lk 6. 5 D).

[21] The Great Code, 230.Google Scholar

[22] Cf. Ferguson, M., The Aquarian Conspiracy: Personal and Social Transformation in the 1980s (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1980)Google Scholar. Chapter 10 is entitled ‘Spiritual Adventure: Connection to the Source’.

[23] Cf. Jeffrey, D. L., ‘John Wyclif and the Hermeneutics of Reader Response’, Interpretation 39 (1985) 272–87.Google Scholar