A History of Biblical Interpretation. Volume 1: The Ancient Period

A History of Biblical Interpretation. Volume 1: The Ancient Period. Edited by Alan J. Hauser and Duane F. Watson. Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans, 2003. 536 pages. Cloth. $45.00.

This volume explores biblical interpreters and their rich variety of methods in the ancient period. Fifteen chapters by a renowned team of scholars examine inner-biblical exegesis in the Tanak, translation as interpretation in the Septuagint and the Targumim, and the exegetical approach of Philo of Alexandria, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Rabbinic Midrash, Jewish Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, the New Testament, and subsequent Christian literature through the closing of the canon.

Although the essays are independent from one another, the editors have carefully assigned topics and arranged them in a way that attempts to avoid duplication. It is a reader-friendly work including chapter bibliographies and three comprehensive indices comprising 79 pages. The authors include a 54-page introduction and overview that provides a thorough summary of each chapter and links between the insights of these separate works.

One clear message that comes across in the entire work is that the biblical texts themselves present a multilayered richness and open-endedness that in turn encouraged the communities and individuals who sought to make the Scriptures vital and relevant to bring with them their own differences in worldview and approach to interpretation.

In a thought-provoking essay on inner-biblical exegesis that lays the groundwork for the remaining articles in the book, Esther Menn notes that biblical interpretation begins long before the completion of the written Tanak. Rather "one must look even earlier, to the centuries that witnessed the composition of the biblical books themselves." She describes how a preoccupation with written texts is projected back into Israelite history in references to depositing the Mosaic Law and in calling attention to professional scribes to chronicle the history of the kings. Yet those responsible for the transmission of texts treated them with a lively and creative freedom to adapt these traditions for their own time. This can be seen by analysis of legal material, such as laws concerning the sabbatical year, which vary in different strata of Israelite history. It also is evident from the adaptation of the prophetic oracles of Jeremiah, for example, that are reinterpreted by later prophets. Scribal glosses, explanatory interpolations, and rewriting of scripture demonstrates that Tanak was seen as a living document. This openness provided a model for later interpreters.

While the theme of biblical interpretation has been treated extensively for decades of biblical scholarship, this volume is not simply a rehash of well-worn views. A number of traditional ideas are challenged. Leonard Greenspoon questions the traditional view that the Septuagint played a considerable role in the formation of the New Testament. With new insights into Hebrew textual history from the Dead Sea Scrolls, it may well be that New Testament writers had access to a Palestinian Hebrew text closely related to the Septuagint's source. Frances Young cautions against an oversimplification of characterizing Christian methodology in Antioch and Alexandria as literalist vs. allegorical. Rather, both schools valued the literal wording of the text and sought a deeper meaning. The differences must be finessed by an understanding of the ancient schools of grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy, with the Alexandrians emphasizing the philosophical aspects of their education and the Antiochenes emphasizing the grammatical and rhetorical aspects.

In short, this volume provides a wealth of the latest research on interpretation among Jews and Christians in the ancient world. Bringing it all together in one volume is commendable.

In a multi-author work like this, there are bound to be conflicting views. Traditionally it has been held concerning the canon of Hebrew writings that the Prophets had achieved a fixed form by 200 B.C.E., several centuries after Torah. While James Sanders pushes the date for the Prophets back to 400 B.C.E. so that Torah and Prophets were seen in tandem. James Charlesworth believes that the Prophets were not defined canonically until the second century C.E. With regard to the third section, "The Writings," both Sanders and Charlesworth part from the traditional date at Jamnia in 90 C.E. Rather, this third section was not seen as canonical until the mid-second century C.E., after apocalyptical thinking waned following the failure of the Bar Kochba revolt. With regard to the canon of Christian Scriptures, Harry Gamble argues for a rather late date: "only in the fourth century did efforts begin in earnest to determine a canon" (p. 410)--at the very end of the ancient period.

Some might question whether the organization of the book is completely consistent with the message of the fifteen authors that Scripture remained an open, lively collection throughout the ancient period. The title of Sanders' article points not to the closing of canon but to "The Stabilization of the Tanak." Yet a chapter on Hebrew apocryphal and pseudepigraphic works is placed only after that chapter on canon, separate from Philo and the Qumran writers. Likewise the chapter on New Testament apocrypha occurs at the very end of the book after chapters on Jerome and Augustine. On this point, the structure of the book seems to be more in tune with post-Reformation Protestant thinking than that of the ancient world. Likewise one might expect to find Donald Juel's article, "Interpreting Israel's Scriptures in the New Testament," occurring earlier than chapter 10, perhaps prior to the discussion of Targum and Rabbinic Midrash so that the reader is encouraged to see the methodology of New Testament writers not separate from but in the context of the variety of Jewish interpretation from Philo of Alexandria to Rabbinic Midrash to the Dead Sea Scrolls.