Whither Biblical Theology? An Assessment of the Theological Hermeneutics of John J. Collins, Walter Brueggemann, and Michael Fishbane Open Access
Barbour, Kevin James (2014)
Abstract
This study addresses the contemporary status and practice of biblical theology within academic biblical studies. Chapter one assesses the persisting vague relationship between theology and biblical studies, and highlights the fact that biblical theology (in particular) has been seen as a subject in severe decline over the past few decades within some scholarly quarters. In part, this is due to an apparent impasse over what sort of activity "biblical theology" entails within the increasingly pluralistic and diverse field of academic biblical studies.
As a way forward through this apparent impasse, this study turns toward an examination of the hermeneutical strategies of three prominent and influential scholars in the field: John J. Collins (chapter two), Walter Brueggemann (chapter three), and Michael Fishbane (chapter four). The bulk of this study is devoted to some of the major works of these scholars over the course of their respective careers, with particular attention to how their thoughts on biblical theology--or the relationship between theological discourse and the Bible--developed over the years. The goal of these chapters is to discern, describe, and offer some critique of their respective interpretive strategies and their conceptualizations of the task of biblical theology.
Table of Contents
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
ONE INTRODUCTION: AN OVERVIEW OF THE
CONTEMPORARY RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN
BIBLICAL THEOLOGY AND ACADEMIC
BIBLICAL STUDIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
What do We Mean By "Biblical Theology?" 5
Biblical Theology: Passe or Impasse? 7
Biblical Theology v. Scholarly Commentary for the
Sake of Theological Appropriation 10
An Analytical Assessment of Contemporary
Approaches to Theological Interpretation 12
TWO "BIBLICAL THEOLOGY," HISTORICAL CRITICISM,
AND THE WORK OF JOHN J. COLLINS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
The Early Work of John J. Collins 17
Critical v. Confessional Scholarship 19
Critical Scholarship and a Common Ground for
Dialogue and Debate 21
The Bible not as History, but as "History-Like" Myth
or Paradigmatic Story 23
Collins in the Intervening Years: 1980s and 1990s 25
The Four Principles of Historical Criticism 25
The Inconsistency of the "Biblical Theology Movement:"
Critical v. Confessional 27
The Need for a Common Ground for Dialogue and Debate 28
The Practice of Biblical Theology:
Analyzing God-language and Determining Genre 30
Collins in the Early Twenty-First Century:
Accounting for the Postmodern 33
A Critique of Collins' Approach to Biblical Theology 37
An Under-theorized Concept:
What do we Mean by "Context?" 39
Collins and Ecclesiastes? 47
Theoretical Over-Abstractionism:
The Argument for "Common Ground" 53
Conclusion 61
THREE: THE BIBLICAL THEOLOGY OF
WALTER BRUEGGEMANN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Brueggemann's Early Work: A Theological
"Tract for the Times" in the 1970s 65
The Early 1970s: In Man We Trust 66
The Vitality of Old Testament Traditions 69
The Land 75
The Prophetic Imagination 80
Conclusion: Brueggemann at the End of the 1970s 84
Development and Nuancing:
Brueggemann in the 1980s 86
Genesis 86
The Message of the Psalms 90
Moving Toward the 1990s: Sociological and
Literary Approaches to "Truth" 94
David's Truth in Israel's Imagination and Memory 94
Hope Within History 96
Israel's Praise 99
Conclusion: Brueggemann at the Close of the 1990s 100
The 1990s and Brueggemann's Own
Postmodern "Linguistic Turn" 101
The Early 1990s: Old Testament Theology:
Essays on Structure, Theme, and Text 104
The Late 1990s: Theology of the Old Testament:
Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy 117
The Indictment of Enlightenment Epistemology 121
Brueggemann's own "Il n'y a pas de hors-texte" 128
Brueggemann's Courtroom Metaphor 133
Biblical Theology In Question:
Addressing the Naysayers 146
Brueggemann in the 1990s: A Summary 147
Describing Brueggemann's Hermeneutic
in Six Steps 150
Assessing and Critiquing Walter
Brueggemann's Contribution 153
Is Brueggemann a "Postmodernist?" Are We All? 155
Revisiting Collins and Critiquing
"Postmodernist" Views of Language 158
To the "Postmodernists:"
Language is Not a System of Difference 162
Brueggemann the Modernist in a Supposedly
Postmodern World? 165
The Enlightenment Dilemma: Brueggeman's
Modernist Dialectics and Discourse 167
The Issue of Reductionism:
Unexamined Problems of Quality 172
Brueggemann and Ecclesiaste 175
Conclusion 178
FOUR MICHAEL FISHBANE, "INNER-BIBLICAL EXEGESIS"
AND JEWISH THEOLOGY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
Jewish Scholarship and the
Enterprise of "Biblical Theology" 182
Fishbane's Early Literary Approach to the Hebrew Bible 186
Fishbane's Inner-Biblical Exegesis 193
Fishbane and Explicit Hermeneutical Reflections 197
The Exegetical Imagination and
Second-Order Theological Scholarship 204
Fishbane's Jewish Theology 207
Fishbane and Ecclesiastes 216
Final Observations and Critique 219
Conclusion 226
FIVE A SYNTHESIS OF COLLINS, BRUEGGEMANN,
AND FISHBANE: DIALOGISM AND IMAGINATION FOR
THE SAKE OF THEOLOGICAL APPROPRIATION . . . . . . . . . . 228
Is Theological Interpretation and Appropriation
of the Bible Still Relevant? 234
If There is "Serious" Biblical Scholarship,
What Constitutes the "Unserious?" 240
Imagination and Creativity Within
"Serious" Biblical Scholarship 243
Dialogism 246
Dialogism In Relation to the Work of
Brueggemann and Fishbane 256
Dialogism and Biblical Theology:
A Tentative Synthesis of the Workof Collins,
Brueggemann, and Fishbane 261
Illustrating Biblical Theology According to an
Understanding of Dialogism:
Biblical Theology in Ecclesiastes 265
Qohelet and Historical Criticism:
What Ecclesiastes "Meant" 266
A Brief Sketch of Qohelet and Its
History of Interpretation and Reception:
What Ecclesiastes Has "Been Meaning"
Over the Course of History 273
Qohelet in Contemporary Biblical Scholarship:
What Ecclesiastes "Means" 283
The Potential of the Potential To Mean:
Imagination and Creativity for the
Future of Biblical Theology 287
The Future of Qohelet: Imagining What
Ecclesiastes "Potentially Means" 296
Ecclesiastes and Moving Beyond
the "Monologic Assumption" 299
Imagining Ecclesiastes as an
Internally Dialogized Monologue 301
Imagining Qohelet as Both
Orthodox and Unorthodox 304
Imagining Qohelet's Discourse as Hybrid Speech 307
Further Textual Evidence: Examples of
Ecclesiastes as an Internally Dialogized Monologue 309
The Inevitability of Qohelet's Contradictions
And The Inevitable Attempt to Finalize 317
The Superaddressee Within Ecclesiastes 320
Ecclesiastes: Construing the
Book as Biblical Theology 325
Qohelet, the Reality of God, and Death 327
The Theological Appropriation of Ecclesiastes 333
Biblical Theology or a "Bakhtinian" Biblical Theology?" 337
A Provisional Conclusion 341
BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356
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