Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture

This book challenges conventional accounts of biblical interpretation in the early Church.

Frances M. Young (Author)

9780521581530, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 April 1997

340 pages
23.5 x 16 x 2.7 cm, 0.64 kg

"This demanding and rewarding book explicates the enormous impact of biblical exegesis on early Christian culture. One should not approach that exegesis without it." Church History

This book challenges standard accounts of early Christian exegesis of the Bible. Professor Young sets the interpretation of the Bible in the context of the Graeco-Roman world - the dissemination of books and learning, the way texts were received and read, the function of literature in shaping not only a culture but a moral universe. For the earliest Christians, the adoption of the Jewish scriptures constituted a supersessionary claim in relation to Hellenism as well as Judaism. Yet the debt owed to the practice of exegesis in the grammatical and rhetorical schools is of overriding significance. Methods were philological and deductive, and the usual analysis according to 'literal', 'typological' and 'allegorical' is inadequate to describe questions of reference and issues of religious language. The biblical texts shaped a 'totalizing discourse' which by the fifth century was giving identity, morality and meaning to a new Christian culture.

Preface
List of abbreviations
Introduction
Part I. Exegesis and the Unity of the Scriptures: 1. Reception and appropriation
2. The mind of scripture
Part II. The Bible as Classic: 3. Cultures and literatures
4. The advent of scholarship
5. Bible and culture
Part III. Language and Reference: 6. Reference and cross-reference
7. The sacrament of language
8 All?goria and the?ria
9. The question of method
Part IV. The Bible and the Life of Faith: 10. The contexts of interpretation
11. The life of faith
12. The theologian as exegete
Conclusion and retrospect: towards an outline historical account
Bibliography
Index of biblical references
Index of modern scholars
Index of subjects.

Subject Areas: Biblical studies & exegesis [HRCG]