The Interpretation of the Bible. The International Symposium in Slovenia

Written by Joze Krasovec (ed.) Reviewed By Richard S. Briggs

This epic and handsomely produced volume, ‘printed on Bible paper’, is a collection of over 80 articles containing, at its core, papers presented to an international symposium held in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in September 1996 on the occasion of the publication of a new Slovenian version of the Bible. The editor. Jose Krasovec, who also oversaw the Slovenian Bible translation and organised the symposium, and who is recorded here as receiving the freedom of the republic of Slovenia for his services to Bible studies (107), is to be congratulated on drawing together this extraordinary mine of information on a broad range of hermeneutical topics with all manner of inter-disciplinary emphases; and Sheffield are to be congratulated on adding the resulting Slovenian volume to their JSOTS series to guarantee its wider dissemination and recognition.

The volume begins with 115 pages of introductory material comprising no fewer than 27 different addresses from various interested parties at the symposium. The sense of achievement, justifiable pride, and historical perspective here set a helpful tone for what follows. There are also 19 full page colour plates with superb reproductions of significant historical title pages and illustrations from Bibles, from works kept in the National and University Library in Ljubljana. The papers themselves fall into three parts: 82 articles in all (51 in English; 26 in German and 5 in French) each with helpful summary introductions and abstracts at the end.

Section I comprises 24 articles on ‘Ancient Translations and Hermeneutics of the Bible’, including a valuable 111-page article from Michel van Esbroek consisting of bibliographical orientation to Eastern versions of the Bible. Along with several more specialised studies, this amply fulfils the editor’s stated aim of helping to bring non-Western scholarship into long-overdue focus for those unfamiliar with it.

Section II, also with 24 articles and the most specialised of the three sections, concerns itself with ‘Slavonic and Other Translations of the Bible’. A monograph-length contribution from Francis J. Thomson, provides the first non-Slavic language survey of the field, and several other Eastern European language traditions in biblical studies receive their own articles. The value of this section for another of the editor’s aims, providing ecumenical understanding especially across Western and Orthodox boundaries, makes this section more than just a series of specialised technical studies, and its inclusion in this volume will bring such concerns to a wider audience than might otherwise have been the case.

Section III collects together 34 articles under the heading ‘Interpretation of the Bible in Various Fields’. This will doubtless be the most widely consulted part of the volume, and boasts some excellent studies across a disparate range of topics. Historical considerations are again prominent, with articles on ‘Matthias Flacius Illyricus, Father and Creator of Modern Biblical Hermeneutics’, and various studies of the history of reception of the Bible for instance in Slovenian literature, in Ukrainian literature; in Croatian culture; and on a theoretical level a helpful introduction to such approaches in Joachim Gnilka’s ‘Zur Interpretation der Bible—Die Wirkungsgeschichte.’ Problems of translation in the Orthodox tradition; aesthetic and literary hermeneutics; even discussions of statistical mechanics and miracles; and the use of the Bible in New Religious Movements in Nigeria; indicate the remarkable diversity of this section, but one recurrent theme is the interaction of hermeneutical theory with philosophical concerns. Some of these essays are among the best in the volume, and could be widely consulted in contemporary hermeneutical debate with some profit. Joze Plevnik draws on Lonergan’s philosophical hermeneutics to challenge Form Criticism (a successful, if not entirely novel, challenge). James H. Charlesworth brings together Polanyi, Merleau-Ponty and Arendt with the delightful aim of showing how it is that people manage to understand texts regardless of their own hermeneutical theories, and therefore seeks to illuminate how it must in fact be the case that hermeneutics is creatively efficacious. His sober defence of modesty and historical-critical method is well-judged. Andreas Wagner applies speech act theory to three OT texts to show how the text performs acts as well as informs (e.g. Ps. 2:7 ‘You are/have become my son’ is read as a declarative that creates its state of affairs rather than presupposing it; although this is also not new, being originally argued by Tryggve N.D. Mettinger in King and Messiah, 1976). John M. Rist draws on Donald Davidson’s seminal article ‘On the very idea of a conceptual scheme’ to give us a Maclntyre-type study of ‘On the very idea of Translating Sacred Scripture’, demonstrating again the fruitfulness of utilising the best of contemporary analytic philosophy in biblical studies. David J.A. Clines provides his own inimitable perspective on ‘The Postmodern Adventure in Biblical Studies’ (also available in Sheffield’s 50th anniversary Auguries volume), which contains some stimulating thoughts on pedagogy in particular; and Anthony C. Thiselton also addresses the changing contexts of contemporary biblical interpretation in a helpful survey article of his own work in hermeneutics over the past 30 years. Since he has been one of the major thinkers to combine hermeneutical theory with a serious desire to interpret God’s word across cultural and historical traditions, Thiselton’s article is particularly valuable for its broader view of the way he has seen the different challenges of existentialism; pragmatism and postmodernism. His comments about ‘political correctness’ are particularly judicious.

A full review of this weighty volume would take an entire issue of Themelios. It will certainly be a valuable addition to any library. One thought in particular struck me repeatedly as I perused this book. The strong sense of standing in a hard-won historical tradition, particularly from those who have worked on translation and interpretive issues across both linguistically and politically complex boundaries, gives this volume a depth and value which offers a salutary challenge to those who engage in academic pursuits of a less exacting nature. Some of the more postmodern contributions, both here and especially in the broader arena, look suspiciously like a mess of hermeneutical pottage in comparison. We stand, however inauspiciously, in a great tradition entrusted with the most academically demanding of tasks: the faithful interpretation of the Bible. This volume is adequate to that calling. Are we?


Richard S. Briggs

Cranmer Hall, Durham