Sunday 9 November 2008

We want more OT exegesis

Halden's poll has been narrowed down to just two options: theological exegesis and biblical theology and ... something else. It's not important as the aforementioned option is the only one worth voting for. So please go here and vote: what should Halden blog on next!

Here are the comments I posted on his blog:

I’m delighted that theological exegesis is the clear leader! A while back Ben Myers said in one of threads that the best biblical theologians were all in Old Testament. I think there are good reasons for that. Reading the OT as a Christian forces you to deal with issues that NT scholars do not always feel too constrained to deal with: the function of Scripture as witness, the nature of referentiality, the nature of the substance of the text, the relation between community and text, the canonical process as part of revelation, the relation between the literal and spiritual senses, the relation between narrative and ontology etc. etc. A Christian specialising in the NT faces the danger of thinking that the NT has got it figured out, that when we read it we’ve somehow already arrived, that its witness to Christ is sufficent as it stands and that the OT simply serves as a hermeneutical matrix for the NT’s interpretation rather than an independent witness in its own right with its own voice - perhaps even over against the NT.
So, in short, I hope you’ll be posting a lot on the OT!

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