Biblical Interpretation

The first section of the course will begin with a study of the unity of the Bible as a whole. Is this
unity to be viewed in terms of two unique witnesses to a single theological subject matter, or as a
single story-line or metanarrative running from Genesis to Revelation? Are history, story, and
narrative the basic categories by which Scripture is framed, or is the category of canon
hermeneutically basic? What difference, if any, does our answer to this question make for our
understanding of the Old Testament’s witness to Christ? We will then turn to a discussion of
premodern, modern, and postmodern approaches to the unity of Scripture, with special emphasis
on the understanding of authorial intention, historical context, and Scripture’s theological sense
at work in these approaches. The middle and final sections of the course will discuss the study of
biblical words and texts, the place of literary genre, the NT use of the OT, as well as its relation
to the hermeneutics of Second Temple Judaism. Case studies of biblical texts drawn from both
the Old and New Testament will provide opportunities to illuminate these issues in the concrete
context of exegesis and interpretation.

Taught Online by the Rev. Dr. Don Collett