Hermeneutics, the Bible and Literary Criticism

HERMENEUTICS, 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 Foreword Notes on the Contributors vii viii 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 PART THREE Contents 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 discussion, 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 figure, the Oxford philosophical theologian and biblical critic Austin Farrer, whose acute insights into the task of scriptural interpretation 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 interpretations are properly rooted in what that tradition calls 'understanding'. 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 theology. 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 communication. Farrer singled out imagination and its images as the focus of such communication, and developed a unique method for interpreting those images. Ingolf Dalferth and Gerard Loughlin assess viii

Foreword ix Farrer's success, and offer constructive correctives to his weaknesses. Then Hans Hauge (Ch. 6) addresses the literary-critical debate over Farrer's method of interpretation. His careful examination of the analysis of Farrer by Helen Gardner and Frank Kermode focuses beautifully what is at stake in the debate between structuralist 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 adduce 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 'authoritative 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 interpretation. 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 Philosophy 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 Kombinatorische 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 publications 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

Notes on the Contributors xi Gerard Loughlin lectures in Religious Studies at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, where he teaches Christian Theology and Philosophy of Religion. He studied at both the University of Wales and the University of Cambridge, and has published in a number of leading journals. Brayton Polka is Professor of Humanities and History at York University, Toronto, and is a former Director of York's Graduate Programme in Social and Political Thought. He is author of The Dialectic of Biblical Critique: Interpretation and Existence and Truth and Interpretation: An Essay in Thinking, plus articles involving hermeneutical issues in law, literature, philosophy, psychoanalysis and religion. John Rogerson is Professor and Head of the Department of Biblical Studies at the University of Sheffield. One of his research interests is the history and presuppositions of critical Old Testament scholarship, as explored in his Myth in Old Testament Interpretation, Anthropology and the Old Testament and Old Testament Criticism in the Nineteenth Century: England and Germany. Rachel Salmon is Senior Lecturer in the English Department of Bar-llan University. She has published on literary theory, Henry James, Gerard Manley Hopkins, biblical hermeneutics and Midrash. Bernard Zelechow received his doctorate from Harvard University, where he studied the history of modem France and the history of ideas. He teaches in the Department of History, the Division of Humanities and the Programme in Religious Studies at York University, Toronto. His recent research interests have been Jewish biblical theology and its relation to modernism; problems of interpretation; and the role of opera in nineteenth-century European culture.