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3. Interpreting the Old TestamentReading has never been as simple as it seems, especially when it comes to the Bible. The process of reading is always governed by a theory, conscious or unconscious, of how a text should be interpreted. When we approach a text we typically have a preliminary idea of its type, as in a bookstore where volumes are arranged in fiction, biography, travel, self-help, and other categories.
Categorizing the Bible is doubly difficult. Since it is a collection of books, it is like a bookstore that has a variety of types of books. But even when we think we know which type a particular biblical book is, we may not have it right. A book that appears to be history may be in fact be historicized fiction or myth, or a poetic text may tell us something important about history.
Consequently we need to develop a perceptual awareness of the literary, historical, and thematic qualities of all the texts we examine. We will apply a number of reading perspectives to the biblical text:
a literary perspective, looking for style, repetition, and cross-text allusion;
a linguistic perspective, to explain the meaning of names and terms;
a perspective from comparative literatures, using parallel ancient Middle Eastern documents;
an archaeological perspective, using artifacts that illuminate cultural and textual features;
an historical perspective, placing biblical events within their broader setting, and gleaning the history of Israel from the texts. |
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