Symbolically mediated revelation and Cultural Change in Judaeo-Christian Scripture
In
the introduction to this international
seminar, Professor George Mclean wrote: “Symbolic expression is key to the
specifically human. . . . This seminar proposes to study the role of the
symbolic in establishing cultural identities and values, their ideological
manipulation, and their key role in negotiating transitions.“
We present in this paper an interpretation of how Judaeo-Christian
Scripture understands who God is through symbolic mediations.
Thus we show what Christians actually believe in this matter. This effort to
retrieve our belief in this matter may make it seem alien to many men and women
of our time, which means that it still must be shown how this view relates to
contemporary experience of history. How, for example, can God act in history?
As Christians we hold that Scripture
is normative for our belief. Not all Christians would accept Vatican II's
understanding of God and belief in him, but we can find common ground beyond our
differences by turning to Scripture for answers. We are not attempting to give a
full scriptural theology here, but to concentrate on some central ways in which
knowledge of God is understood to be mediated. We are not facing here
philosophical difficulties that can be raised against the scriptural
understanding of God and faith in him.1 But in our very treatment of Scripture,
we are using contemporary studies of Scripture that have in part already
addressed many of the difficulties that men and women of our time would find
with it. For example, through a recognition of different genres in Scripture, we
realize that we should not accept in a fundamentalist sense Genesis' account of
creation and the first human beings. Vatican II has a more modest view of the
truth of Scripture than fundamentalists do, for it teaches that "the books
of Scripture firmly, faithfully and without error teach that truth which God,
for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the sacred
Scriptures."2 There are two sections to this paper. In the first, we show
how Scripture is a witness to a symbolically mediated revelation of God. And in
the second, we survey briefly how the people to whom the books of the New
Testament were addressed were struggling to find meaning in a world in
transition.
We are using Scripture here in a way
appropriate to the manner in which it mediates Judaeo-Christian belief and the
revelation on which this is based. To be able to enter medias res rather
than to spend a great deal of time developing concepts at this point, we are
presupposing here that Scripture is not claimed by Christians to be of itself
revelation, but to be written by believers for believers to present what God has
revealed through words and deeds and done for his people, the grounds in human
experience on which this is asserted, and the implications for human life of
what he has done. Since it is Scripture as it is understood to mediate God's
revelation that we recall, it is the whole course of Scripture that we have to
be concerned with, rather than one part of it. Scripture is for Christians an
account of a continuing and evolving dialogue between God and his people. As the
Epistle to the Hebrews states: "In times past, God spoke in fragmentary and
varied ways to our fathers through the prophets; in this, the final age, he has
spoken to us through his Son" (1: 1-2).
We are attempting here only an introductory
presentation of what is central to our specific questions. We do not recall
specific Scripture texts as "proof-texts" in the way that earlier
manuals of theology frequently did, as in and of themselves ultimate
authorities. Rather we recall texts within the context of their mediation of
God's dialogue in love with his people and this people's response. We are not
attempting here to defend the proposition that there is a basis in history for
Israel's and early Christianity's claim that God has made revelation through
definite actions and words. Here we simply present the claim that there is such a
relationship, because that is essential to the Christian identity and belief in
God. And it is only that identity and belief that we are critically concerned
with at this point.
While acknowledging that are diverse
interpretations of what the religious meaning is that they mediate to us, in
this introductory answer we approach Scripture from the outside in. We can
acknowledge first of all that Scripture is a collection of signs, texts, and
different forms or genres of literature, such as narrative, poetry, wisdom
literature, prophecy, apocalypse, and letters. The authors or editors are in
different ways testifying to their beliefs and to those of the community of
which they are a part. The language they use testifies to what they believe.
These books, which were written, edited, and reedited over successive ages, were
later recognized by the Jewish and/or Christian community as expressing their
beliefs, and as normative for their beliefs.
That
is, eventually they were put together to constitute a canon. We can look at
these books as a whole, together with those who practice "canonical
criticism," in addition to using other critical methods. This means that we
can interpret a text in its original context, then in the context of its
acceptance and "resignification" in later generations, and still later
as it is accepted as part of the whole canon.3
We can say that as literature or literary forms, these texts depend on the creative imagination of their authors and editors in the context of their communities and circumstances.4 Poetry shows creative imagination; narrative takes creative imagination to structure a story with beginning, issue, and denouement. Similarly with the other forms of literature represented in Scripture. When we specify imagination as creative, we are distinguishing it from mimetic imagination that simply organizes what is given it. Immanuel Kant articulated the creative function of imagination - its function in synthesizing by giving a metaphor to a concept. What is central here is metaphor (and, analogous to it in narrative, the structuring of a story). As Ricoeur points out, metaphor is a form of enunciation, and not simply a word. It is the whole proposition, such as, "Old age is the evening of life." To use metaphor is to give an unexpected predication of a reality that shifts our view of it and opens up new perspectives on it. Initially this metaphor is destabilizing for our perception, because, for example, old age is obviously not an evening, and the kingdom of God is not a mustard seed. Metaphor is central to the creative imagination and thus to literature and how it means. We find it throughout Scripture - in the account of the first man and woman, in the epic story of the Exodus, and in the parables of Jesus. These metaphors involve the reader now as they involved the hearer initially, for in them logos and life come to juncture; and they, correlatively, appeal to both logos and life, reason and desire in the hearer or reader.
Scripture is specifically religious
literature, and thus has been compared with other religious literature of the
ancient Middle East. We do not give here a specifically philosophical reflection
on theological language; rather we restrict ourselves to the question of
scriptural language as Christians believe it to function. Ricoeur joins Eliade
in recognizing the reality of religious experience and of language as mediating
this experience. In this language the pre-conceptual is primary though it leads
to doxology and confession where conceptual language is evident. It is
particularly the preconceptual language and rite that is called symbolic. The
metaphors in Scripture can often be called symbols - religious symbols. Ricoeur
points out an analogical structure in such symbols: "By analogical
structure, we signify provisionally the structure of expressions with a double
meaning in which a first meaning sends us back to a second meaning which alone
is intended, without however it being able to be attained directly, that is,
other than through the first meaning. "5 For example, to say that the reign
of God is a wedding feast is to speak indirectly of the reign of God through
speaking of a wedding feast. To tell the story of Adam and Eve as a
'"narrative interpretation of the enigma of existence"6 that confers
on humanity the unity of a concrete universal and a direction is to speak
indirectly of God and our relation to him.
Symbols are not wholly translatable
into direct and literal language; by interpretation the plenitude of experience
that the myth designates only obscurely will not be restored. The secret of such
symbols is metaphor that comes from a creative imagination giving an image to a
concept, redescribing reality through a model or reconfiguring reality
inaccessible to direct description so that we are enabled to see it as.
The primary religious language in
Scripture thus seems to be not doctrinal but symbolic. It speaks of God not so
much directly as indirectly - through stories, poetry, prophecy, apocalyptic,
and other literary forms that make central use of symbol. Here, as in metaphor
more generally, we have an intersection of logos and life, reason and desire; we
have a language that engages the reader or, initially, the hearer. These
religious symbols, as Eliade and Ricoeur point out, present the Sacred to the
reader or hearer in an almost sacramental manner, making available the power of
the Sacred and participation in it, transforming, evoking a knowledge which is
participative.
This is language that cannot be
wholly translated into doctrinal statements. This is as true of Canaanite
religious myths and rites as it is of the stories in Scripture. People of
antiquity lived in a symbolic universe, a universe the reality and meaning of
which was mediated to them largely through religious symbols. One of the
problems people in our time have with faith is that many find living in a
universe mediated symbolically to them alien; yet, ironically, when they dismiss
religious symbols they frequently turn to other and less adequate symbols (e.g.,
those of a political movement or of popular culture).
However, scriptural language about
Yahweh or God cannot be simply equated with that of the Canaanites about their
gods, since the acts by which the Sacred is known differ for these different
peoples. H. Cazelles calls upon different studies of the religions surrounding
the emergence of Israel to understand how Israel's proclamation of God differed
from theirs.7
The Yahwist and Elohist documents of
the Pentateuch did use the Semitic designation for god or gods (El) for the God
of Israel. To avoid excessive assimilation of Yahweh and the Canaanite El, we
have to recall that the modes of action, comportment, and capacities of the gods
of the surrounding peoples are shown in their myths and rites. These gods seem,
or the symbols and myths by which these peoples speak of their gods seem, to be
associated with the powers on which or on whom these peoples' lives depend. Thus
H. Cazelles writes of these surrounding peoples: "Like his neighbors, the
Phoenician discerns in the cosmic, political, physiological and even moral or
intellectual forces an intelligence and a will more powerful than his own. But
when he tries a synthesis by lists or by myths, the inconsistency is apparent.
Here we have three Elohim, of whom one is El-father, there we have two: we have
seven Baals of whom only one is defined (by the cult of Saphon). The role
enjoyed by Mot in one myth is held by Yam in another. Ashtart can replace Anath.
. . . The identifications are fluid."8 The powers shown in the yearly cycle
of death and rebirth of vegetation are certainly important in the Canaanite
religion, and this is one sense in which their symbols and myths are bonded to
the cosmos and not fully translatable into doctrine or the conceptual. In a
somewhat similar manner, the God of Israel is known as the power behind the
actions ascribed to him. But this God is initially identified through very
specific historical actions, such as the call of Abraham and the Exodus. Thus,
though God is presented as an "elusive presence." he is known as a
definite personality through the initiatives he freely adopts with his people.
The world in front of the text into which people are invited by the scriptural
message is presented as a revelation initiated by this personal God.
What seems central in Scripture is
the witness to the faith of the Jews and then of the Christian community. The
message is largely a proclamation of God's offer of salvation and his call for
the response of the obedience of faith. This offer and call are reactualized in
generation after generation, as is shown by the way that traditions were
proclaimed in new ways or reinterpreted to make God's salvation actual for
changed circumstances. The prophets proclaimed God's message to the people of
succeeding centuries by reflecting on the Exodus event. The New Testament is
called the good news ("Gospel" means "the good news"); this
is what the apostles proclaimed before it was written. Paul spoke of his gospel
which he preached to Jews and Gentiles alike; and this is reactualized as it is
proclaimed to succeeding generations, even down to our own time, e.g., through
its use in the liturgy. The proclamation makes this offer of salvation present
and calls for the response of faith. Though there are quite different messages
given at different times, and a growth and correction with time, God has an
identity manifested by these actions, and the one called to believe has identity
through the call to believe.
Thus the metaphors and creative
imaginations of the human community and of the individual authors and editors
are understood to be responses to and mediations of this divine revelation. We
can say then that the ultimate "creative imagination" at work here
is understood by these scriptural authors and by the community of believers to
be God's. The action, e.g., of the Exodus, has him as its author. Thus by
his words and deeds God performs symbolic actions that give his people access to
the Sacred, participation in his saving power, transforming knowledge, etc.
Similarly the resurrection and exaltation of
Jesus is understood to be God's act
by which, as this act is understood through passages of the Old Testament, he
vindicates Jesus and declares him to be Lord and Messiah (Acts 2:36). In many
different metaphors the authors of Scripture mediate God's saving presence and
revelation.
What interpretations of Scripture
does this oppose? It opposes those who take Scripture too objectively and too
subjectively, e.g., many Neo-Scholastics and Rudolf Bultmann. It opposes those
who diffuse Christian identity excessively by assimilating it to that of the
other religions of the Middle East in antiquity, excluding those characteristics
that most distinguish it. It opposes those who will not speak of God with the
personal pronoun, as though this would be to make an idol of or over-objectify
the Sacred. It opposes those who interpret the language of Christian doctrine,
also found in Scripture, as stipulating rules for the Christian use of language
rather than having ontological reference. We are not here reflecting on the
validity of the Jewish or Christian claim concerning the bases for their faith,
e.g.. God's action in the Exodus or in the
resurrection of Jesus. Here we simply assert that their claim should not
be diluted, even though modern naturalism and many philosophical interpretations
of human knowledge and horizon of values find these claims as such
unintelligible or unacceptable. We note also that it is important for a
theologian to present the Christian belief in the form Scripture does, and not
only in the more conceptual form of theology; to do otherwise does not do
justice to the meaning of this belief.
Third, in view of the differing
theologies present in Scripture and its antiquity, how can one find an answer to
questions we have in our time and a center in Scripture? With many scriptural
scholars, we must say that although the critical historical method of studying
Scripture is essential to contemporary biblical interpretation, by itself it is
not adequate. That approach investigates the origin of the text in such matters
as relation to previous themes, the circumstances of the time, the language
used, and the intention of the author. But if we restrictedly study the
languages that Scripture uses, the history behind the text, or the literary
genres used by the author, then, as important as these are, they seem to leave a
great gap between what we learn and our present questions. There seems to be
such a gap between biblical anthropology or the biblical world and the world of
the late twentieth century that we may experience its strangeness rather than
its relevance when considering the problems we have with faith or the
understanding of God. There are aspects of Scripture that share in the
strangeness of other pre-modern religions.
It is here that the whole development
of hermeneutics in recent times has been such an aid. Against Adolf von Harnack,
Barth and Bultmann showed that the scientific study of Scripture that tried to
find out what really happened and was said was not sufficient; and after
Bultmann there has been more and more attention given to questions of
hermeneutics. Theoretical analyses of what is involved in interpreting ancient
texts have been given from the time of Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834),
Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911), and Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) till our own time
with the important contributions of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur. and
others.
Studies of this can be found
elsewhere,9 but at this point we shall simply show something of how we can gain
an understanding of the meaning of biblical texts that relates to our present
question of the meaning of faith in God. We cannot achieve this meaning by
excluding critical helps that show us what the text meant at the time of its
first use or later when it was reedited and included in the context of a larger
literary work. However, we primarily want to know the kind of world or universe
of meaning that is projected in front of the text. What relationship of God to
humankind and of humankind to God does the text project? And what bases for such
a relationship does the text offer? The meaning that the text projects can both
affirm and challenge us in our understanding of life and the subject matter of
the text. For many in our time and in the time when these texts were written,
they are counter to the horizon of meaning and the human search; for others they
largely affirm their horizon of meaning.
Perhaps the primary basis by which we
can understand the meaning of the text in the sense of the kind of world that it
projects is to take it as expressing and interpreting actions and words as
God's. Using a recent book's analysis of some ways in which this meaning can be
conveyed to us through the text, we can list several such ways.10 The witnesses
to faith that Scripture gives us are frequently testimonies to the divine acts
by
which God offers his saving
intervention for his people. These testimonies point not only to the events but
to their meaning by giving narrative accounts of such things as how the
Israelites came to be a people and how the Christians came to be a people
distinct from Judaism of the first century. (Of course, in the process they give
accounts of events that transcend our normal expectation. And this raises
difficulties for a naturalistic historical consciousness in our time that must
be addressed at some point.) Thus meaning is frequently conveyed in Scripture in
narrative form. Hence the meaning of an action or statement is not exclusively
known through its relation to the intention of the author, but also by its
consequences in the narrative. Again, the meaning of a statement is known in
part through supposing that it conforms to the rules of the language, as human
behavior is in part understood through supposing that the agent performed it in
accordance with rules of behavior in a certain society (e.g., the meaning of
Solomon's building of a temple, Samuel's anointing of David). Both language and
action can have a meaning in what they signify and in what they seek to bring
about (e.g., commands, admonitions, healings, forgiving).
Still further we may have access to
the meaning of a document, event, or statement by how it was received at the
time and at later times. In some circumstances it goes against the expectations
of the period and transforms these expectations or is rejected, but in any case
it is always significant. Something similar is true of the way people of a later
time may receive the earlier text or statement. Much of the prophetic discourse
in the Old Testament shows how the founding event of Israel was interpreted in
later times; and this is part of the meaning of the original event for Israel.
As this process of resignification took place constantly in the reactualization
of the proclamation of God's salvation through the biblical period, so too it
has continued to occur through the Christian era. So we in our own time
recognize larger meanings in the divine events and words to which the scriptural
authors give witness, even to the point of finding there some answers to our
questions about the meaning and foundations of belief in God that are proper to
the Christian identity.
How can we from the diversity of theologies in
Scripture claim to find an answer to our questions that is valid for all
Christians? We are not attempting here a biblical theology. That has its own
problems in our time, because the difficulty of finding one center in Scripture
is more evident now than early in the twentieth century.11
And
yet we cannot be satisfied with simply a history of the viewpoints of those who formed Israel's traditions and writings in succeeding ages. We
acknowledge
differences of theology, of course, among the writings in the Old Testament and
in the New Testament, but these writings have been gathered into one canon. This
shows that the Christian community has a conviction that there is no basic
contradiction between them, even though the parts should be interpreted
ultimately within the context of the whole and in view of the development of the
dialogue between God and Israel that revelation represents. The theologies had
to be different if they were to be appropriate to differing circumstances, and
the same is true for our time. But this kind of pluralism is consistent with a
common faith. The center of our theology here is found in part in the questions
we address to Scripture from the vantage point of our time and circumstances.
But the unity of our view of God and of faith, its meaning and foundations,
depends upon the basic unity found in Scripture itself. What is central here is
the initiative of God through his saving presence and revelation and the
response of his people or of individuals to him.
2. An Overview of Religious Searches at the Time of the
Writing of the New Testament
There is, it seems to me, an interesting parallel between
the first century and the present century in reference to the context for coming
to belief or to a more critical belief as Christians. A new culture has emerged
in the Western world and, indeed, in the whole world in the last century or so
with the Enlightenment, science, historical consciousness, and awareness of the
worlds of many peoples. Many who were previously Christian have embraced this
larger culture to the point of a near total erosion of their Christian belief,
while many from this larger culture are now experiencing an emptiness in it and
are examining Christianity anew. But many from a strong Christian background
resist a great deal in this culture and keep to an earlier cultural expression
of their Christian belief. All of us face the question of the interface of our
Christian belief with our contemporary culture.
The Gospels (and books of the New Testament more
generally) present themselves as an experientially based witness to God's
symbolically mediated offer of revelation and salvation through Jesus Christ and
the Spirit to a people concerned for themselves and their societies in a period
when many people were searching, disappointed by the emptiness of the dominant
culture of their time. Still others were being uprooted from a past into
confrontation with a world empire and culture that challenged their traditional
symbolic worlds and were adjusting their traditions in varied ways to these
changed circumstances.
The texts of the New Testament are religious texts in the
sense that they proclaim to people a religious world or God's relation to them
that is symbolically mediated, and they address Christians who have accepted the
Christian message in the midst of the pluralism of that time. They are addressed
to Christians who came from this first-century
world,
and so it is helpful to say a word about some aspects of the world in which
these texts were written. The interpretation of the texts is aided by some
reference to the search of people at that time as a religious search, so
different from, and yet analogous to, our own period of change. We will recall
aspects of that time from the perspective of people's religious search - a
search related to or inclusive of their economic, political, or social concerns
but one that cannot be reduced to these concerns. The data relevant to this
question can be found in the texts themselves (e.g., in the implied reader, or
the kind of reader the text supposes is open to its message) and also in what
other texts of the period witness.
We direct readers to other books where they can find
analyses of the world of the New Testament.12 Here we simply recall
schematically that it was a world in transition. This was true for the Jewish
world but also for the larger Mediterranean world of Roman power and Hellenistic
culture. In fact, these two worlds were profoundly interconnected, because a
central factor in Judaism's experience at the time was how to face this larger
world that impacted them so severely and how to face it in a way faithful to
their past. We shall first recall something of the larger Mediterranean world
and then of Judaism's situation in the first century.
Hellenism had spread through the Mediterranean world from
the time Alexander the Great had conquered so much of it and sought to spread
Greek culture. This culture was initially centered in the city states of Greece;
after Alexander, the cities became too large for citizen participation, and they
were not free but were included in empire, eventually that of Rome. This Roman
rule was preoccupied with power and its efficient use to ensure a peace of
sorts; along with the benefits it brought to many peoples, it also imposed heavy
taxes and caused a sense of deracination. Inclusion within empire gave people
opportunity for a new identity, but it also led to a breakdown of local roots
and, not infrequently, to alienation and despair.
Religious syncretisms developed from this enlarged
political context, some of which led toward monotheism. But many people sensed
that their lives were ruled by an alternation of chance and fate. Since
individuals sensed so often that they did not have control over their lives,
both religion and philosophy gave increased attention to the individual. Popular
Hellenistic religion tended to emphasize personal religious experience and to
feed a hunger for revelation, for transformation, and for personal allegiance
that would give a sense of identity in an alienating world (e.g., through the
mystery religions). Hellenistic philosophy was now dedicated more to the art of
living than to metaphysics. The Stoics taught that the universe was rational and
that events were governed by divine providence. Cynics were individualistic and
stressed freedom. Pythagoreans stressed community. Much philosophy called people
to the virtuous life as the good life and fostered a religious view of the
calling human beings had.
Thus Hellenism was characterized by a reinterpretation of
its earlier symbols to make them suitable for a new age in which the acts of
gods in Homeric stories did not accord with the ideals of virtue, and the
virtues needed were no longer those of the archaic nobleman. The witness of the
lives and words of the Hellenistic Jews of the Diaspora was not without its
impact in this confused world. There were Gentiles who attached themselves to
the synagogues and accepted monotheism and the moral code of the Torah, though
they did not accept circumcision. It was among these that Christian missionaries
first gained Gentile converts.
Judaism too was in a period of transition. It offered a
consistent framework for self-definition but was not uniform. The Torah and the
Temple were central for the Jews. The synagogue services were one central place
of reinterpretation of the Torah. Both Torah and Temple implied that they were
one with the people of old. God had made a
covenant
with them, had made them his people, was faithful to his covenant, and called
them to be holy. But what did being holy mean? On this there was diversity. The
Jews, and in a special way those in Palestine, were divided among themselves
over the issue of Hellenism and Rome. The presence to them of Hellenistic
culture and Roman power challenged them to interpret anew their inherited
tradition concerning the relation between religious and sociopolitical-economic
realities. The tax collectors and the Zealots had radically different reactions
to Roman hegemony. Between these extremes there were also very marked
differences among the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the Essenes, and the people of
the land (am-ha-aretz). They had different interpretations concerning
what it was to be God's people, and they transformed their traditional religious
symbols in different ways through their experiences and convictions. This had
been in process for a long time.
Here we recall a few traditional Jewish symbols to show
diversity in the Judaism of the first century. Messianism, the expectation of
God's promise of a Son of David to liberate them and fulfill God's promises, was
one of these symbols central to many Jews' hope in their conflicted world.
Another was strongly developed during the time of the persecution of the Jews
about 165 B.C. at the time of Antiochus Epiphanes IV in his attempt to
assimilate the Jews into Greek culture. Apocalyptic literature, in this instance
the book of Daniel, was a specifically religious response to the persecution
experienced by those faithful to Torah and their need for a deep conviction that
God was faithful. In symbolic language this literature (e.g., Daniel 7) assured
the people that God would soon come and liberate them; that in the age to come
as distinct from the present age dominated by forces of evil, God's reign would
be given to the people of God symbolized by "one like a Son of Man";
and that the just would experience a resurrection from the dead. Thus it led to
a new interpretation of history.
The Rabbinic tradition, in contrast, did not give an analysis of history
but rather of the Torah to apply what had earlier been written in a simpler
society to a people in such changed circumstances. The Torah "is God's
eternal blueprint for creation and for righteous human behavior," and the
Pharisees sought to "put a hedge around the Torah" for the people
(56). While these emphasized the development of the Torah and separatism, the
Sadducees restricted the Torah to the Pentateuch, sought accommodation with the
Romans, and contributed to the economic exploitation of the people. The Essenes,
made known to us particularly through the manuscripts discovered at Qumran, had
reacted to the imposition of a high priest not of the Zadokite line (ca. 152
B.C.) and other factors by a separatism more severe than that of the Pharisees,
and so they interpreted the Torah and its prophecies as applying specifically to
their group and its future. All these groups were interpreting the Torah, its
promises, and the meaning of holiness for the new circumstances posed by
Hellenistic culture and Roman power and the Jewish factions these changed
conditions occasioned.
The Jews of the Diaspora, over twice as numerous as those
within Palestine, also faced the issue of assimilation or separatism, but they
did so "in a setting less colored by religious persecution and political
oppression" (67). Rome gave the Jews certain rights and privileges to abide
by their religious traditions. The Jews were admired by some Gentiles for their
monotheism, the high moral code of the Torah, and their attractive claim to be
God's people; but they were also under suspicion by others for their separatism.
Though as attached to the Torah as the Palestinian Jews, they interpreted the
Jewish
tradition differently because they were in a different cultural setting.
Thus the Hellenistic Jews of the Diaspora - as distinct,
for example, from those in Mesopotamia - read the Torah in the Septuagint
translation and had done so for generations, since their native language was
Greek. And in the efforts of many of them, particularly those in Alexandria, to
make themselves understood favorably by outsiders, they reflected on their
history and its main figures (e.g., Moses) by some use of Hellenistic
categories. For example, Philo of Alexandria used allegory to interpret the
Torah and wrote of Moses as the ideal philosopher-king. The book of Wisdom
reflected on Wisdom, an emanation from God, as guiding his people, on the
virtues that came from Wisdom, on immortality that was its reward, on God's
philanthropy, and on the way God makes himself known by his works in creation
that manifest him analogically.
We have reflected on the problem of hermeneutics and the gap between
texts of the first century and interpreters of our century. We have also
reflected on initial ways of bridging this gap. The texts of the New Testament
were addressed to Christians - those who had responded to the Christ-event with
faith and who had come from Palestinian and Diaspora Jews seeking fidelity to
their tradition while facing the larger world of Hellenistic culture and Roman
hegemony, and to Gentiles living in a world culture and empire marked by
deracination and by religious and philosophical pluralism. That world bears some
resemblance to our own. Some of us come from a strong Christian tradition and
yet face a larger cultural world with its categories and its questions - a world
that evokes assimilation or separatism from many Christians. Many come from this
larger world and, while acclaiming its accomplishments, no longer find its
presuppositions and symbols sufficient to give meaning to their lives.
The present article includes, with the permission of the publisher,
edited sections of two books, Farrelly, “Belief in God in Our Time,”
(Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992) 73-84, and
Farrelly, “Faith in God through Jesus
Christ” (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1997) 54-58.
4.
See earlier in this volume, David Power, “The Imagination in the
Post-Kantian Philosophy of Paul
Ricoeur.” Also see Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1977); and Paul Ricoeur, "Poetique et
symbolique," in B. Lauret and F. Refoule, eds., Initiation a la Pratique
de la Theologie. Tome I: Introduction (Paris: Cerf, 1982) 37-61. Also
see my report on a seminar relevant to this matter, "An Evaluation of Paul
Ricoeur's Interpretation of God-Talk in Scripture," Proceedings. Catholic
Theological Society of America, vol. 42 (1987) 165-167.
5. Ricoeur.
"Poetique," 44.
6. Ibid., 46.
7.
See H. Cazelles, "Le Dieu du Yahviste et de l'Elohiste ou le Dieu du
Patriarche et
de Moise et de David avant les
Prophetes," in J. Coppens, ed., La Notion bib/ique de
Dieu. Le Dieu de la Bible et Ie Dieu des Philosophes
(Louvain: Louvain Univ. Press,
1976) 77-89.
8. Ibid., 79.
9.
See Richard Palmer, Hermeneutics.
Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher.
Dilthey, Heidegger and Gadamer (Evanston,
Ill.: Northwestern Univ. Press, 1979);
David Tracy, The Analogical
Imagination. Christian Theology and the Culture of
Pluralism (New York: 1981); David Klemm.
ed., Hermeneutical Inquiry. 2 vols.
(Baltimore:
Scholars Press, 1986); and Werner Jenrond, Theological Hermeneutics.
Development and Significance (New York: Crossroad, 1991).
10.
See Francis Schussler Fiorenza, Foundational Theology. Jesus and the
Church
(New York: Crossroad, 1984) 29-33,
108-122.
11.
See Gerhard
Hasel, "Biblical Theology: Then, Now and Tomorrow,"Horizons
in Biblical Theology 4
(1982) 61-93; Rolf Knierim, "The Task of Old Testament
Theology," ibid.. 6 (1984)
25-57; and Roland Murphy, "A Response to 'The Task of
Old Testament Theology ibid., 65-71.
12. In this I am largely following Luke T. Johnson. The Writings of the New Testament: An Interpretation (Philadelphia: Fortress Press. 1986). See also, for example, Sean Freyne, The World of the New Testament (Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazier, 1980); Hans J. Schultz. ed., Jesus in His Time (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971); Bruce Malina. The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1981); M. Hengel. Judaism and Hellenism, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974); Richard Horsley and John Hanson, Bandits, Prophets, and Messiahs: Popular Movements at the Time of Jesus (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988); Raymond Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament (New York: Doubleday, 1997) 55-93. The citations in the text at this point are to Johnson's book.