Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture

by Frances M. Young

• ISBN13: 9780521045131
• ISBN10: 0521045134
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-12-03
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book challenges standard accounts of early Christian exegesis of the Bible. Professor Young sets the interpretation of the Bible in the context of the Graeco-Roman world - the dissemination of books and learning, the way texts were received and read, the function of literature in shaping not only a culture but a moral universe. For the earliest Christians, the adoption of the Jewish scriptures constituted a supersessionary claim in relation to Hellenism as well as Judaism. Yet the debt owed to the practice of exegesis in the grammatical and rhetorical schools is of over-riding significance. Methods were philological and deductive, and the usual analysis according to 'literal', 'typological' and 'allegorical' is inadequate to describe questions of reference and issues of religious language. The biblical texts shaped a 'totalising discourse' which by the fifth century was giving identity, morality and meaning to a new Christian culture.

Table of Contents

Preface

List of abbreviations

Introduction

Exegesis and the Unity of the Scriptures

Reception and appropriation

The mind of scripture

The Bible as Classic

Cultures and literatures

The advent of scholarship

Bible and culture

Language and Reference

Reference and cross-reference

The sacrament of language

All+¿goria and theoria

The question of method

The Bible and the Life of Faith

The contexts of interpretation

The life of faith

The theologian as exegete

Conclusion and retrospect: towards an outline historical account

Bibliography

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