Customer Reviews

Introduction to Biblical Interpretation: Revised and Expanded

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All in all, very good. From a conservative perspective the authors discuss the major issues of biblical interpretation, including applying hisorical criticism and modern hermeneutical theories to the Scriptural text. Though conservative, it is not fundamentalistic. The authors provide a balanced treatment of most subjects and give good principles and examples of doing careful exegesis. This would be an excellent work to use in an intro. to biblical literature class. My one reservation is that not enough attention was given to Patristic and medieval exegesis and its modern day application to Scripture. Also, the Treatment of the Deutero-Canonical books and the question of the Canonicity of Scripture was superficial and inaccurate. Catholic and Orthodox readers should keep this in mind when reviewing this book. To conclude, though it has the deficiencies mentioned above and could not serve as a standard for Catholic and Orthodox exegesis, it is a refreshing work that shows that not all evangelical protestants are biblical obscurantists who are unable to engage in dialogue with modern biblical scholarship and present well-reasoned opinions.

Klein, Blomberg, and Hubbard, Jr., have created an extremely well-informed, easily understood volume on the hairy topic of Biblical Hermeneutics. I truly believe that every Biblical exegete should have this book in their library.

In a very general sense this is a good book. However, the authors suffer from a lack of good philosophy. Let me explain. I agree with the author's assertion that meaning is derived from the text and we should not try to figure out what the author intended when he wrote (this is next to impossible to do since all the authors of the Bible are dead). However, the authors of this book give lip service to that idea but seem to stray from it in their overall philosophy. This book also smacks of "postmodernism." For example, on page 116, the authors declare via D.S. Ferguson that "all knowledge is elusive, and to grasp it demands a great deal of effort on our part . . ." If all knowledge is elusive then what about the knowledge of the statement "all knowledge is elusive?" Is that elusive? And if so, then how do we know this for certain. There are dozen of statements throughout this text that are very similar to the one I mentioned. I was also confused as to whether these authors were in favor of the "sensus plenoir" or opposed to it. This was yet another downfall to the text. Moreover, the authors were sympathetic to the reader-approach method of interpretation (another sign of postmodernism - ala Derrida.) The reader does not "give" the text meaning and this definitely runs in diametric opposition to the author's assertion that meaning is found in the text (and not the reader). Therefore, this was an apparent inconsistency on the part of the authors. It seemed to me that the authors lacked a strong foundation in logic and metaphysics which hurt this otherwise good text. But I must confess, compared to some of the other Hermeneutics texts I have read, this one is in several ways fairly solid.

It's not often that I completely hate a book, let alone a book on a subject I am as interested in as Hermeneutics. However, this is one that I can honestly say I completely hate. The authors articulate a wonderfully predictable conservative account of hermeneutics, never attempting to question the fundamentalist party line by considering any of the major philosophical voices in contemporary philosopy and theology. The best they do is cite E.D. Hirsch to claim that we can verify that we have recovered the "original meaning" of the text.

Perhaps the part of this book that bothered me the most was the author's treatment of presuppositions. First they acknowledge that we cannot get rid of our presuppositions, but then the proceed for the rest of the book as if they have done exactly that. This is so characterisic of evangelical hermeneutics that it isn't even funny anymore. On this issue, readers that want a good treatment of presuppositions in hermeneutics should read James K.A. Smith's "The Fall of Interpretation."

Frankly, it seems that the authors of this book simply are unaware of what is really going on in the field of hermeneutics today, and thus have written a book that might have been helpful 30 years ago but was dated the moment it was published.

There is certainly some educational material in the book. The discussions of biblical genres are ok, if pretty artificial. On the whole, however this book is an exercise in wasting time. This is not to say that there is not good stuff on hermeneutics being done by evangelicals. Grant Osborne's "The Hermeneutical Spiral" is an excellent book that far surpasses this one, while still covering all the same material. Also, the works of Kevin Vanhoozer on Hermeneutics are among the most cutting edge works being done today in the field. Those inerested in Hermeneutics should consult these authors and forget about this book.