The Context of Theology and Exegesis
Comments (5) We want to start the discussion back up after a winter break with a couple of quotes and questions:
1. The first quote is from Desmond Alexander’s From Eden to the New Jerusalem: An Introduction to Biblical Theology – “The Anthology (the Bible) itself, which abounds in intertextual references, provides most of the literary context within which its contents may be understood. There is not a book within the whole collection that can be interpreted satisfactorily in isolation from the rest. Each book contributes something special to the meta-story and, in turn, the meta-story offers a framework within which each book may be best interpreted. In this regard, the long standing principle of interpreting Scripture by Scripture makes considerable practical sense” (10).
-Here’s the question: Which word doesn’t fit in this paragraph, given a compositional approach to authorship?
2. The second quote comes from Charles Scobie, The Ways of Our God – “Studies of individual books of the Bible or of biblical authors (the Deuteronomist, Second Isaiah, Paul, John, and so on) are often regarded as studies in ‘biblical theology’. Such studies are not really ‘biblical’ unless the study of the book or author concerned is related to the total biblical context; in practice this is rarely the case” (79).
Taken together with the Alexander quote, the second question is this: is it legitimate to consider a book’s message independent of any relationship or association with the rest of the canon?
