Table Of ContentHERMENEUTICS, THE BIBLE AND
LITERARY CRITICISM
Hermeneutics,
the Bible and
Literary Criticism
Edited by
Ann Loades
Reader in Theology, University of Durham
and
Michael McLain
R. A. Webb Professor of Religious Studies, Rhodes College
Memphis, Tennessee
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-1-349-21988-9 ISBN 978-1-349-21986-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-21986-5
© Ann Loades and Michael McLain 1992
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1992 978-0-333-53959-0
All rights reserved. For information, write:
Scholarly and Reference Division,
St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth A venue,
New York, N.Y. 10010
First published in the United States of America in 1992
ISBN 978-0-312-06881-3
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hermeneutics, the Bible and literary criticism I edited by Ann Loades
and Michael McLain.
p. em.
Papers originally presented at a conference on "Interpretation and
Belief' held in 1989.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-06881-3
1. Bible-Hermeneutics-Congresses. I. Loades, Ann. II. McLain,
Michael.
BS476.H473 1992
220.6'01-dc20 91-24686
CIP
Contents
General Editor's Preface vii
Foreword viii
Notes on the Contributors X
PART ONE PHILOSOPHICAL ACCOUNTS OF
INTERPRETATION
1 The Autonomous Text, the Hermeneutical Self, and
Divine Rhetoric 3
David Klemm
2 Interpretation and the Bible: The Dialectic of Concept
and Content in Interpretative Practice 27
Brayton Polka
3 Revelation and Understanding: A Defence of
Tradition 46
Rodger Forsman
PART TWO THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE WITH
PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO THE WORK OF
AUSTIN FARRER
4 The Stuff of Revelation: Austin Farrer's Doctrine of
Inspired Images 71
Ingolf Dalferth
5 Making it Plain: Austin Farrer and the Inspiration of
Scripture 96
Gerard Loughlin
6 The Sin of Reading: Austin Farrer, Helen Gardner
and Frank Kermode on the Poetry of St Mark 113
Hans Hauge
v
vi Contents
PART THREE INTERPRETATIVE PRACTICE: BIBLICAL
TEXTS AND THEMES
7 Wrestling with the Angel: A Study in Historical and
Literary Interpretation 131
John Rogerson
8 The Dialogic Discourse of Psalms 145
Herbert Levine
9 God's Presence and the Paradox of Freedom 162
Benulrd Zelechow
10 Retracing a Writerly Text: In the Footsteps of a
Midrashic Sequence on the Creation of the Male and
the Female 177
Rachel Salmon and Gerda Elata-Alster
Index 198
General Editor's Preface
Friedrich Schleiermacher maintained that the hermeneutical task
moves constantly. Its work is endless and subject to endless
self-scrutiny. It is, furthermore, an art which seeks to understand
artful speaking.
The three phases of this book move through philosophical dis
cussion, to one critic's method of scriptural interpretation, and
finally to particular attention to biblical texts. It imparts a sense of
the restlessness of hermeneutical inquiry, and, through Christian
and Jewish critics, presents a range of notions of textuality and
textual understanding. It is a strength of the collection that it draws
upon a wide spectrum of authors in the history of ideas, from
Hegel to Heidegger and Tillich, from Frank Kermode to Mikhail
Bakhtin. Above all, it represents an important and neglected fig
ure, the Oxford philosophical theologian and biblical critic Austin
Farrer, whose acute insights into the task of scriptural interpreta
tion have never been given their proper due.
In their serious concern with sacred texts, these essays advance
both hermeneutics, the theory of interpretation and theology.
They return biblical criticism to the philosophical and theological
realm, and at the same time recognise the immense significance of
contemporary literary theory. In their interdisciplinarity they form
a major contribution to this series of books, and offer challenging
insights to all who may be engaged in the literary and religious arts
of biblical interpretation.
DAVID }ASPER
vii
Foreword
The essays in this volume are a selection from a conference held in
1989 on the theme of 'Interpretation and Belief: Hermeneutics, the
Bible and Literary Criticism'.
The essays fall into three groups. The first group consists of
philosophical accounts of interpretation and the knowledge it may
yield. David Klemm's essay (Ch. 1) argues in the tradition of
post-Heideggerian hermeneutics that our beliefs and interpreta
tions are properly rooted in what that tradition calls 'understand
ing'. He asks how we are to 'understand' self, world and God -
Kant's famous trio-in the light of the hermeneutical tradition. His
essay is both an overview of the tradition from Schleiermacher to
Levinas, and a sustained constructive effort in philosophical the
ology. Brayton Polka (Ch. 2) takes up Tillich's idea of correlation
between human questions and divine answers, and from his
Hegelian perspective finds a dialectical path between a merely
rational assessment of the biblical text and an a-rational treatment
of it as news from the divine. To conclude this first group, Rodger
Forsman's essay (Ch. 3), written by a representative of the Anglo
American analytic philosophical tradition, provides balance to
David Klemm's and Brayton Polka's reflections from their bases in
Continental European philosophy. Rodger Forsman argues that,
whatever one's theory of interpretation, epistemological questions
arise in asserting knowledge of the deity through Scripture. He
discusses these questions displaying indebtedness both to Roderick
Chisholm and Austin Farrer, and thus links the first group of
essays to the second.
In this second group, fundamental issues in the interpretation of
Scripture are focused especially on Austin Farrer's work. From
quite different approaches both Ingolf Dalferth (Ch. 4) and Gerard
Loughlin (Ch. 5) find in Farrer's literary approach to Scripture a
profound effort to develop a specifically theological hermeneutic.
Farrer was convinced that, if we take the idea of revelation seriously,
we must reflect on the proper way to interpret divine communica
tion. Farrer singled out imagination and its images as the focus of
such communication, and developed a unique method for inter
preting those images. Ingolf Dalferth and Gerard Loughlin assess
viii
Foreword ix
Farrer's success, and offer constructive correctives to his weak
nesses. Then Hans Hauge (Ch. 6) addresses the literary-critical
debate over Farrer's method of interpretation. His careful examina
tion of the analysis of Farrer by Helen Gardner and Frank Kermode
focuses beautifully what is at stake in the debate between structur
alist and hermeneutical accounts of interpretation.
The third group includes four essays which apply interpretative
practice to biblical texts and themes. John Rogerson (Ch. 7) looks at
Genesis and Jacob's wrestling with the angel. Refusing to accept
the dichotomy of either the historical-critical approach to Scripture
or a literary approach, John Rogerson shows us how to apply both.
In the same spirit of moving beyond the impasse of the either/or
which can paralyse biblical studies, the three other essayists ad
duce textual meaning which respects but goes beyond standard
historical-critical analysis of the Bible. Herbert Levine (Ch. 8)
employs Bakhtin's reader-response theory to interpret 'authoritat
ive discourse' in the Psalms. Bernard Zelechow (Ch. 9) shows us in
his discussion of Adam, Eve and the Garden how the biblical
representation of God's manifestation to us as indirect, and the
ambiguities of divine discourse invite the 'uncertain act' of inter
pretation. Finally, rabbinic scholars Rachel Salmon and Gerda
Elata-Alster (Ch. 10) offer a penetrating account of midrashic
interpretation of the two creation stories in Genesis, and argue for
the importance of keeping conflicting readings alive. This essay
especially reminds us of traditions of reading and exegesis which
have flourished alongside those which deem themselves to be
'rationalist'.
ANN LOADES
MICHAEL MCLAIN
Notes on the Contributors
Ingolf Dalferth is Professor of Systematic Theology and Phil
osophy of Religion at the University of Frankfurt. He has taught at
Tiibingen, Durham, Uppsala and Cambridge. His publications
include Sprachlogik des Glauben, Religiose Rede von Gott, Existenz
Gottes under christlicher Glaube, Theology and Philosophy, and Kombi
natorische Theologie (forthcoming).
Gerda Elata-Alster is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Foreign
Literatures and Linguistics of the Ben-Gurion University of the
Negev. She has published on classical literature, Dante, literary
theory, psychoanalysis and literature, biblical hermeneutics and
Midrash. She is working with Rachel Salmon on a book-length
study of the theoretical implications of midrashic interpretations.
Rodger Forsman obtained his doctorate from the University of
Toronto. He is currently researching the nature of theism. He
teaches in the Departments of Philosophy and Religious Studies at
Acadia University, Wolfville, Nova Scotia, and amongst his publi
cations are contributions to volumes on the work of Austin Farrer.
Hans Hauge is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of
Aarhus, and Research Fellow at the Centre for Cultural Research,
Aarhus. He has published books and articles on English and
Canadian literature, cultural theory, theology and philosophy.
David Klemm is Associate Professor of Theology and Ethics at the
School of Religion, University of Iowa. He has written several
works on theological hermeneutics, including The Hermeneutical
Theory of Paul Ricoeur and Hermeneutical Inquiry. His published
essays have appeared in many journals.
Herbert Levine is Associate Professor of English at Franklin and
Marshall College, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and is writing a book
situating the Psalms in the ritual practice of ancient Israel. He is
author of Yeats's Daimonic Renewal.
X
