>
> On Mon, 25 Mar 1996, Glenn Morton proposed an interesting "exegetical
> experiment":
> > The test. Can anyone show that a sizeable minority of commentators prior to
> > the year 500 A.D. viewed Genesis 1-2 as non-historical? I would propose the
> > sizeable minority as being 15% of the commentators. I suggest this value for
> > a reason. It is big enough to avoid the single crackpot and big enough to say
> > that if 15% of the people read the original languages in 33-500 A.D. and read
> > everything as non-historical then it is clear that it is the LANGUAGE and not
> > the SCIENCE which is driving their interpretation. . .
> > This type of experimental test clearly
> > allows me as the non-expert in hermeneutics to know that I am not being driven
> > by those who have an ax to grind either way.
> >
> While such an experiment might be an interesting study in the history of
> exegesis, it ignores the fact that in manmy ways we have a better
> understanding of the text than did those living in the second-sixth
> centuries, due to the results of linguistic studies of the cognate
> semitic languages, better understanding of the literary forms that were
> current at the time the OT texts were being written, better
> understanding of the ancient near eastern cultural millieu in which the
> texts were originally intended to communicate, etc. To seek to do away
> with these results would be something like trying to establish if
> absolute simultaneity is possible by ignoring all work done since
> Einstein's STR and studying only those who accepted a Newtonian system
> and thus "had no ax to grind." It also ignores the fact that not all
> interpreters were of equal skill and insight.
>
> Nevertheless, it is clear that one of the most able and influential early
> exegetes did on fact take a moderately symbolic view of Genesis:
> Augustine, of course.
>
> Garry
>
Garry,
I agree with you here. Many of the early church fathers used a hermeneutic
of allegory and sometimes came up with some outrageous interpretations.
I for one would be wary of some of Origin's interpretations, for
example. I think we should be wary of touting the interpretations of the
early church fathers as justification for our interpretations. It is
good to check our interpretations versus what other able exegetes come up
with as a check on idiosyncrasy or theological bias, however, someone
today who is knowledgeable in the original languages, culture, literary
forms, and a correct literal hermeneutical technique can do as good a job
as anyone in history, and probably better, by going directly to the
Biblical text. Today we also have archeological finds and scientific
knowledge (such as the earth is round and goes round the sun and not
vice-versa) to guide us towards a correct understanding of the text of
Scripture.
Jeff