Deep Exegesis: The Mystery of Reading Scripture

Written by Peter Leithart Reviewed By Bret Saunders

In this lively and learned volume, American Presbyterian theologian Peter Leithart points beyond the reductionistic, historico-grammatical exegesis of modern hermeneutics toward a hermeneutics that is at once apostolic, patristic, medieval, and interdisciplinary. Drawing widely on literary studies, film, music, philosophy, and history, as well as close readings of various biblical texts, Leithart proposes and exemplifies a “hermeneutics of the letter,” an apostolic-patristic way of reading that celebrates the richness of the Bible’s “letters”—their literary tropes, allusions, and structures.

In his first chapter, “The Text Is a Husk,” Leithart criticizes the grammatical-historical exegesis that has dominated biblical hermeneutics since early modernity and, despite some signs of improvement, continues to prevail. In Spinoza and his modernist heirs, this predominantly “ethical” focus not only eclipsed the literal, allegorical, and anagogical concerns that had been included in patristic and medieval exegesis but also led to the development of a “hermeneutical method that detache[d] the truth and meaning of Scripture from its verbal expression” (p. 10). According to the “husk-kernel” image of Scripture, the reader must strip away mytho-poetic expression and scientifically false accretions in order to reveal an inner moral teaching. This dualistic image of Scripture and the method it inspired goes astray, he concludes, chiefly because “the Bible’s message … comes to us in a particular form, using particular categories, introducing a particular language. It is the power of salvation for whole humans—for their languages and institutions, their imaginations and poetry, their art and architecture—as much as for their souls” (p. 34).

Chapter Two, “Texts Are Events,” stresses the importance of time in the reading of texts. In the first place, drawing on apostolic example and recent philosophy of history, Leithart points out that just as an historical event changes when “brought into relation with subsequent events” (p. 43), likewise a text “becomes more meaningful, differently meaningful, as it is reread in new circumstances” (p. 49). He then considers the event of reading itself, showing how the meaning of a novel or a film is largely constituted by the “movement of hope and despair,” that is, the reader’s movement from the development of expectation to its fulfillment or disappointment (p. 56). In short, textual “meaning is temporally unfolded” (p. 53) within the “event” of interpretation.

In “Words Are Players,” Leithart points out the metaphorical depth of language and the role it ought to play in interpretation. Against the excessive caution of Biblical semanticists, Leithart calls attention to the capacity of words to “link” with one another and “surprise” us with new meaning “because they do not conform to our expectations” (p. 80). Examples from Jane Austen, Dylan Thomas, Homer, and Heidegger show that “[e]ach word has its particular history, sense, and normal contexts of use, but putting them in the same beaker creates a new compound” (p. 81). Although some kinds of texts call for precise interpretation, many others call for readers to “examine context not mainly to pare away meanings but to enrich them” (p. 85). Finally, a close reading of John 9 finds the apostle himself practicing the semantics of “deep exegesis:” commenting on the latter’s “translation” of the word Siloam in 9:7, Leithart demonstrates that for John, “ ‘Translated’ does not mean translated, but interpreted or etymologized” (p. 101).

Leithart titles his next chapter, which is concerned with intertextuality, “The Text Is a Joke,” since texts, like jokes, allude to sources, places, and others texts. Although contemporary biblical exegetes usually sternly warned against “eisegesis,” Leithart points out that “[a] good reader not only brings knowledge of historical information and the vocabulary and grammar of the language to his reading but also brings knowledge of earlier portions of the text he is interpreting, as well as knowledge of other texts, and these also shed light on the particular text he is studying.” Such “eisegesis” is appropriate, indeed necessary, because “every great writer, and many lesser ones, knew of other texts in that tradition and wrote against the background of that tradition” (p. 118). This latter point is aptly demonstrated by numerous examples drawn from the Western literature and the NT.

In “Texts Are Music” Leithart argues that texts can tell multiple stories at the same time with the same words reading according to different but equally valid structures. Glancing briefly at examples from jokes, film, and literature, he demonstrates the important ways by which “non-identical repetition” of syntactical or verbal elements contributes to the meaning of texts. For instance, many jokes work by building up anticipation through repeated structure, only to surprise us by deviating from that structure. However, the chapter centers upon explorations of structure in musical works by Bach and Mozart. It concludes with a summary of several different structural analyses of John 9 and its surrounding context and how this textual “music” deepens John’s meaning by indicating typological significance.

In his final chapter, “Text Are about Christ: Application,” Leithart returns to the very issue of tropologicalfocus for which he indicted modern theology in chapter one. Only now the “ethical” meaning of Scripture becomes richer when set against the background afforded by typological, semantic, and structural analyses. Focusing again on John 9, Leithart argues that it concerns not only the power of Jesus to forgive sins but also the Church (the totus Christus), individual faith, infant baptism, a warning to would-be Pharisees and bystanders (such as the blind man’s parents), and much more.

Despite several weaknesses—the sometimes abrupt veering between subtopics and the tendency to ignore distinctions between biblical and other literature or between written and other media—Deep Exegesisoffers a welcome expansion of typical hermeneutical resources and of what it means to “read” Scripture or indeed any text.


Bret Saunders

University of Dallas

Dallas, Texas, USA

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