In an article in the Review of Metaphysics (1997), David Weberman argues for the “nonfixity of the historical past.” He starts from Arthur Danto’s argument that historical inquiry and writing cannot be a reconstruction available to an “ideal chronicler” who knows everything that happens the moment it happens and sets it down as it happens in just the way it happens. Historians can’t do this because they use “narrative sentences” like “The Thirty Years War began in 1618,” a sentence... Read more
E. Miner wrote, that “the ability to declare typology absent is a kind of proof of sound modern critical method.” Which translated means, Skepticism about typology is the union card of serious biblical scholarship. Read more
A. K. A. Adam offers a useful critique of what he calls “brick hermeneutics.” Taking a cue from George Herriman’s early 20th-century comic strip Krazy Kat, he describes brick hermeneutics as follows: “Most of our discourses take for granted the premise that we communicate by infusing ‘meaning’ into some expression, then throwing that meaning-laden word toward others, whose job it is to extract the meaning from what we wrote or said.” He also suggests “bubble hermeneutics”: “we blow meaning into... Read more
Ephesians 2:13-14: But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one, and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall. Why can’t we all just get along? Why can’t everyone just sit down at the same table and be friendly? We have been so deeply shaped by the gospel, and by the bastard gospel of toleration, that... Read more
Ephesians 4:4-6: There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all. After Paul describes how Jesus unites Jew and Gentile as one new man, he exhorts the Ephesians to live in a worthy of the calling they have received. That exhortation continues on into Ephesians 4, and this... Read more
In a volume on Philo’s etymology of Hebrew names, Lester Grabbe notes that allegory and etymology played an important role in Greek interpretation of myths: ” In the physical types of allegory the gods were related directly and baldly to the nature elements by etymology, so that Hera was air ( aer ); Cronus, time ( chronos) ; Apollo, the sun (because he was unique: a-polloi , ‘not many’); and so on . . . . especially the Stoics etymologized... Read more
The inventive Calum Carmichael ( The Story of Creation ) argues that “John, in an imaginative, allusive approach to the text of Genesis that is akin to Philo’s approach before him does indeed lay out the equivalent of the seven days of creation. The elements of each day in Genesis have their historical counterparts in John such that these echo in allegorical fashion the details of the creation story. In the first five chapters of his Gospel Johannine historical reporting... Read more
Anthony Thiselton ( New Horizons in Hermeneutics ) notes that “It may readily be granted, without any difficulty that some (or even in principle many) biblical texts do function in ways which invite a reader-oriented hermeneutic.” A very wise statement, that. Wise, first, in acknowledging the strength of reader-oriented modes of interpretation; wise, second, in recognizing that text differs from text, and that imposing a single hermeneutical grid or method on all is ideology not interpretation. Hence: Joyce and many... Read more
Eco is not uncritical of Derrida, but he disagrees with Searle’s claim that “Derrida has a distressing penchant for saying things that are obviously false,” insisting instead that “Derrida has a fascinating penchant for saying things that are nonobviously true, or true in a nonobvious way.” He elaborates: “When he says that the concept of communication cannot be reduced to the idea of transport of a unified meaning, that the notion of literal meaning is problematic, that the current concept... Read more
Umberto Eco ( Limits of Interpretation ) criticizes Barthes’s notion that connotation occurs when “a sign function (Expression plus Content) becomes in turn the expression of a further content.” He argues that “in order to have a connotation, that is, a second meaning of a sign, the whole underlying first sign is required – Expression plus content.” “Pig” can mean “filthy person” only “because the first, literal meaning of this word contains semantic markers such as ‘stinky’ and ‘dirty.’ The... Read more
Leithart
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In