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The sisyphean task of biblical transformation1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

R. P. Carroll
Affiliation:
Dept of O.T. Language and LiteratureThe University of Glasgow3 Southpark Terrace Glasgow G12 8LG

Extract

The task of interpreting the Bible has two main phases— the understanding of the text and the transformation or making relevant of its meaning for modern readers. The steady decline of monolithic religious structures and the growth of pluralism in modern society have produced multivariant forms of intellectual activity embracing the Bible as part of their subject matter. Thus the Bible is embedded in the given of European culture and functions as part of the hermeneutical processes of Jewish, Christian, Muslim and secular traditions. The quest for understanding may be common to all the traditions but the task of transformation can take one of two forms. From within the religious tradition transformation is the attempt to reinterpret the text so as to make it meaningful in contemporary terms but always controlled by the tradition. This form may simply be termed transformation from within or controlled transformation. The alternative form is transformation without limits or control. In this form fidelity to a tradition is not paramount and the real concern is to see how far the material may be transformed so as to constitute an independent entity itself.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1977

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References

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page 518 note 2 Published in 1947; Penguin edition 1962. Day, D., Malcolm Lowry (New York, 1975 ed., p. 326)Google Scholar, describes it as ‘the greatest religious novel of this century’. As the novel is also a ‘forest of symbols’ (p. 260) my treatment of it may be a precarious one=

page 519 note 1 cf. Berkovits, , Faith after the Holocaust, p. 126Google Scholar. There is a vast Jewish literature on this subject which, perhaps, should be prescribed reading for commentators on the suffering servant motif in biblical studies.

page 519 note 2 cf. Aulen, G., Christus Victor (London, 1931)Google Scholar. Although Aulen's book may be a fair account of elements in the New Testament and the classical ideas of atonement it also illustrates the fact that New Testament transformations of some Old Testament elements are not necessarily a progressive step. Thus Yahweh's triumph over evil and chaos at creation means ‘the whole earth is full of his glory’ (Is. 6:3), a feature of the world which awaits the future in the New Testament. However, the reality of evil in the world today would appear to discredit both the Old Testament view and the Christus Victor motif= For a serious statement about the tragic nature of evil see MacKinnon, D. M., The Problem of Metaphysics (London, 1974)Google Scholar; also Borderlands of Theology and Other Essays (London, 1968).Google Scholar

page 519 note 3 cf. Gardner, H., ‘The Drunkenness of Noah’, The Business of Criticism (Oxford, 1963). PP. 79100.Google Scholar

page 519 note 4 C.D. II/2, pp. 346ff.

page 519 note 5 Pensées 219 (Penguin, ed., London, 1966), p. 313.Google Scholar

page 519 note 6 Quoted in Day, op. cit., pp. 247f.

page 519 note 7 See Epstein, P., The Private Labyrinth of Malcolm Lowry (New York, 1969)Google Scholar; cf. Day, op. cit., pp. 293ff.

page 520 note 1 For transformation within the tradition cf. ‘The task of structural theology in relation to the human senses of God is to uncover precisely those transformation rules or laws which have generated, constituted, and governed particular theistic universes of meaning’, Bowker, J., The Sense of God (Oxford, 1973), p. 109Google Scholar. For transformation that goes beyond the tradition I have not yet worked out the methodological procedures. This article is only a preliminary statement about this aspect of biblical hermeneutics.

page 520 note 2 Dogmatics in Outline (London, 1960), p. 12.Google Scholar

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page 520 note 4 Against Method, p. 49. The Sisyphean nature of much of modern scientific method is apparent from a reading of Popper, Karl, esp. his The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London, 1959) and Conjectures and Refutations (London, 1963), pp. 215ffGoogle Scholar. This possibility of perpetual scientific theorising has been questioned by Kneale, W., ‘Scientific Revolution for Ever?’, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 19 (1969), pp. 2742.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 520 note 5 cf. Camus, A., ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (New York, 1955), p. 91Google Scholar. cf. the poet Garioch's, Robert more materialistic Sisyphus in Selected Poems (Edinburgh, 1966), p. 79.Google Scholar

page 521 note 1 , Rabbi Tarphon in 2:21.