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The Revelatory Text: Interpreting the New Testament as Sacred Scripture
This major contribution to the study of the Bible shows that interpretation of the New Testament as religious literature is vital to understanding the authentic nature of the texts.
206 pages, Paperback
First published December 31, 1991
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 30, 2024
Really good book that I disagree with much in! Scheiders does a wonderful job applying the ideas of Ricouer to the process of biblical interpretation. It was a refreshing approach.
However, she tends to refer to the fundamentalists bogeyman a bit too often while offering no examples. Another issue is that she often will say the Bible is factually incorrect and then not give examples. I’m aware of the kind of inaccuracies she is describing but would like to see her work through how it fits in her hermeneutic. She kind of does this by locating history in different time but I feel like this can leads to problems of what I want to take as truthful no matter how one honest is with the text. It just falls into endlessly subjectivity which is fine in her model because that is what true interpretation should lead to. Another big issue is that her concepts of revelation don’t really engage with previous conceptualizations, it is just “they aren’t a self-gift of God” therefore they are incorrect. But this lacks nuance and theologians who both saw propositional, truth revealing and self giving in revelation. They are fundamentalistic or her conception but again there are theologians of nuance even back in 1961 see Ramm.
I’m also unsure of her conclusions that only a faithful person can read Scripture because of her own divisions between text and text and Scripture and Scripture. Unless we take a subjective approach of the necessity of change when reading a text then how can a text remain a text?
A more egregious error is her conflation that because God is infinite he cannot speak through language that is finite. God is incommensurable and cannot therefore speak, also that God cannot speak because he doesn’t have vocal cords I hate to say is laughable…
Also I’m unconvinced by Ricouer’s idea of a text creating a world when it could be describing the world.
However, she tends to refer to the fundamentalists bogeyman a bit too often while offering no examples. Another issue is that she often will say the Bible is factually incorrect and then not give examples. I’m aware of the kind of inaccuracies she is describing but would like to see her work through how it fits in her hermeneutic. She kind of does this by locating history in different time but I feel like this can leads to problems of what I want to take as truthful no matter how one honest is with the text. It just falls into endlessly subjectivity which is fine in her model because that is what true interpretation should lead to. Another big issue is that her concepts of revelation don’t really engage with previous conceptualizations, it is just “they aren’t a self-gift of God” therefore they are incorrect. But this lacks nuance and theologians who both saw propositional, truth revealing and self giving in revelation. They are fundamentalistic or her conception but again there are theologians of nuance even back in 1961 see Ramm.
I’m also unsure of her conclusions that only a faithful person can read Scripture because of her own divisions between text and text and Scripture and Scripture. Unless we take a subjective approach of the necessity of change when reading a text then how can a text remain a text?
A more egregious error is her conflation that because God is infinite he cannot speak through language that is finite. God is incommensurable and cannot therefore speak, also that God cannot speak because he doesn’t have vocal cords I hate to say is laughable…
Also I’m unconvinced by Ricouer’s idea of a text creating a world when it could be describing the world.
July 18, 2017
Quite old now but still a very good read. Dense but worth the effort.
June 24, 2009
Great resource on hermeneutics! Dense reading but a must for any bible scholar!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews