Hermeneutics as Apprenticeship

How the Bible Shapes Our Interpretive Habits and Practices

Starling, David I.

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781493405756
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

A Fresh Approach to the Art of Biblical Interpretation This book offers a fresh approach to the art of biblical interpretation, focusing on the ways Scripture itself forms its readers as wise and faithful interpreters. David Starling shows that apprenticing ourselves to the interpretive practices of the biblical writers and engaging closely with texts from all parts of the Bible help us to develop the habits and practices required to be good readers of Scripture. After introducing the principles, Starling works through the canon, providing inductive case studies in interpretive method and drawing out implications for contemporary readers. Offering a fresh contribution to hermeneutical discussions, this book will be an ideal supplement to traditional hermeneutics textbooks for seminarians. It includes a foreword by Peter O'Brien.

1
“Who Meditates on His Law”

The Psalter and the Hermeneutics of Delight

A Pathway into the Holy Scripture

Sometime between 1525 and 1532, William Tyndale published a pamphlet (based on the prologue to his 1525 translation of the New Testament) under the title A Pathway into the Holy Scripture. Its content deliberately focused on the controversial issues of the day—“above all, to put you in remembrance of certain points, which are, that ye well understand what these words mean; the Old Testament; the New Testament; the law; the gospel; Moses; Christ; nature; grace; working and believing; deeds and faith.”1 For Tyndale and his intended readers, blazing a pathway into Scripture involved the polemical task of hacking away the tangle of vines and brambles that had previously impaired their access—or, to change the metaphor, ripping away the “veil of false glosses on Moses’ face” that had been nailed up by the prelates of the church.2

Tyndale’s controversy with the church’s “false teachers and blind leaders” over the specific issues of grace, faith, and works—along with the very act of translating the New Testament and putting it into the hands of the proverbial plowboy—raised the broader issue of the relationship between the Bible and the church, which became the topic of a heated debate between Tyndale and England’s Lord Chancellor, Thomas More. For More, Scripture was the church’s book, and the only proper way to “wade” into the Scriptures was via the authoritative teachings of the church.3

Amid the many fierce and noisy disagreements between Tyndale and More, there was at least one point of implicit agreement: readers of Scripture do not begin within the text but approach the text via a pathway of expectations and preunderstandings. This much is true for all readers of Scripture, at all times and in all places. For some, the journey into Scripture begins in infancy, when they are inducted into the practices of Bible reading by parents and grandparents, within the fellowship of the church; others are introduced to Scripture as adolescent or adult converts, or make their first approaches to Scripture along a path of skeptical or curious inquiry. None of us is born within the pages of the Bible.

The fact that we approach the Scriptures with expectations and preunderstandings of our own does not mean that our reading of Scripture is imprisoned in the cage of our own subjectivity or trapped incorrigibly in the traditions in which we were raised. Scripture itself offers “pathways” of its own, inviting us into the text—pathways that variously confirm and challenge the ways in which we approach it. Those who come seeking find, but not always exactly the thing that they thought they would.

The convergence of all such paths is in the person of Christ—he himself is the “one Instructor” of his people (Matt. 23:10) and the single “way” to the Father (John 14:6). But the presence of Christ at the junction of all the scriptural paths does not do away with the necessity of the paths themselves; there is no true knowledge of Christ that is not “according to the Scriptures,” just as there is no true knowledge of the Scriptures that does not accord with Christ. Our approach to the Scriptures—not just our first approach but the whole set of purposes and expectations with which we return to the Scriptures each day—needs to be tested and renewed by Scripture itself, so that our feet walk along the pathways that Scripture opens up to us.

Psalter as Torah

Within the Old Testament, one of the most spacious and well-traveled pathways into Scripture is to be found in the Psalter. The praises of Israel, as they were offered up in the earliest shrines, in the first and second temples, and in the synagogues of the exile and diaspora, played a crucial role in teaching those who worshiped how they were to regard and receive the various words of law, prophecy, narrative, poetry, and wisdom that came to be collected as the Scriptures of Israel. Among the disciples of Jesus and the members of the early church, too, the psalms continued to be read, sung, and remembered as a means by which believers were encouraged to “teach and admonish one another” when they gathered (Col. 3:16; cf. Eph. 5:19; 1 Cor. 14:26; Heb. 3:7–4:13). Within the psalms they found both a prophetic testimony to Jesus and a liturgy of prayers and praises which Jesus himself had used; when they prayed and sang the psalms, they were teaching one another to trust in Christ, and to join their prayers and praises with his.

This teaching function of the psalms is emphasized by the way in which they are gathered together and given canonical shape within the Psalter. The five-book structure of the Psalter mimics the five-book structure of the Pentateuch, hinting at its function as a kind of “Torah of David.”4 The songs which are sung by day within the assembly are to be meditated upon alone, in the night (Ps. 77:6, 12; cf. Pss. 16:7; 42:8; 63:2–6); a maskil of Asaph, reciting the ancient story of YHWH’s works, is presented as “teaching [tôrâ]” for God’s people (Ps. 78:1), suggesting a similar function for the other historical psalms;5 a string of wisdom psalms, scattered across the Psalter (e.g., Pss. 1; 32; 34; 37; 49; 112; 127; 128; 133), seek to inculcate in those who read them a sense of the blessedness of fearing YHWH and shunning evil. Within the canonical structure of the Psalter, the categories of private and public, liturgical and instructive, overlap and interpenetrate: “One cannot distinguish absolutely the liturgical psalms from the wisdom or didactic poems. . . . Private prayers were adapted for public use; liturgical songs became a personal prayer.”6

The instructive function of the Psalter does not overwhelm or displace its liturgical form; it is precisely as a collection of prayers and praises that it does its teaching. The worshipers who hear and speak its words are invited to learn not only from its precepts and propositions but also from its practices—when we pray the psalms we are being taught how to sing, how to give thanks, how to lament, how to protest, and how to praise, along with the psalmist and in company with the whole people of God.

Psalter and Torah

While the Psalter’s language and structure suggest its use as a book of instruction, it does not present itself as a self-contained curriculum, encapsulating within its 150 psalms all that its readers need to learn; the “Torah of David” directs its readers’ attention not away from but toward the “Torah of Moses” and the other various oral and written conduits of the word of YHWH to Israel.

The encouragement in Psalm 1:2 to meditate day and night on the law echoes the charge to Joshua in Joshua 1:8 to meditate on the law of Moses, and is emphatically reinforced in the other two “Torah psalms” that occupy such a prominent place in the collection—Psalm 19, sitting at the center of the first book, and Psalm 119, acting as a kind of hinge between the Egyptian Hallel (Pss. 113–18) and the Songs of Ascent (Pss. 120–34) and dominating the whole fifth book by its sheer size. These three psalms and their placing in the Psalter powerfully express the importance of biblical law for editors of the collection.7

But it is not only in the “Torah psalms” that readers’ attention is directed beyond the Psalter toward the rest of Scripture and its constituent traditions, or toward the living voice of YHWH encountered in the oracles of the prophets. The commandments and statutes of YHWH are celebrated throughout the psalms as a way for the worshipers to walk in (e.g., Pss. 17:4–5; 18:21–22; 37:30–31; 111:10), in imagery that closely parallels the language in which the psalmists ask for God to guide their steps (e.g., Pss. 5:8; 25:5; 27:11; 86:11) or express their confidence that this is what he does (e.g., Pss. 16:11; 23:3; 25:8–10). The contents of particular, individual commandments are also specifically drawn upon in the Psalter’s ethical teaching and in the psalmists’ protests of innocence.8

The psalmists also appeal frequently to the covenant of YHWH with the nation, with Abraham, and with David the king as the basis for petitions and laments (e.g., Pss. 44:18; 89:19–37; 132:10–12), and they celebrate the covenant as the framework within which the faithfulness of YHWH is experienced (e.g., Pss. 103:7–18; 105:8–11; 111:5, 9). They refer to the saving deeds of YHWH for the individual and the nation over and over again; in some cases they retell the story of YHWH’s dealings with Israel at length (e.g., Pss. 78; 105; 106; 107), but in others they make fleeting allusions to the narratives of the Pentateuch (e.g., Ps. 95:8, alluding to Exod. 17:1–7 and Num. 20:1–13; Ps. 103:7–12, alluding to Exod. 32–34) that presuppose a readership familiar with a fuller version to be found elsewhere.

Finally, there is the “voice” of YHWH, which is frequently referred to within the Psalter (e.g., Pss. 18:13; 29:3–9; 46:6; 68:33)—sometimes with echoes of the theophany at Sinai and apparent reference to the rumblings of a thunderstorm, and sometimes in a way that represents YHWH as speaking, or as having spoken, within the sanctuary, in a form that enabled his words to be heard and preserved (e.g., Pss. 60:6–8; 81:5–16; 108:7–9). The prophetic oracle spoken in the name of YHWH in Psalm 95:7 urges its hearers to open their hearts to receive his voice, not only in the words of the psalm itself but also “if [they] . . . hear his voice” through some other vehicle of revelation.9

More broadly—behind and beneath all of these explicit references in the Psalter to the voice of YHWH, his laws and covenants, the story of his saving deeds, and the oracles of the prophets—the categories of relationship in which the Psalter frames Israel’s dealings with YHWH imply experiences of speech and story, reading and remembering. The praises of YHWH for his faithfulness and steadfast love imply covenant and promise, even where the words “covenant” and “promise” are not used;10 the categories of “righteous” and “wicked” imply a distinction that is defined, at least in part, by the differing stances that people take toward the laws of YHWH, even where those laws are not mentioned; the appeal to YHWH’s name and the decision to hope in him, trust in him, and wait fo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Endorsements
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. “Who Meditates on His Law”
• 2. “In Your Mouth and in Your Heart”
• 3. “This Kindness”
• 4. “To Fulfill the Word of the LORD”
• 5. “More Than for Hidden Treasure”
• 6. “The Word of the LORD Came”
• 7. “Everything I Have Commanded You”
• 8. “Fulfilled in Your Hearing”
• 9. “That You May Believe”
• 10. “Beyond What Is Written”?
• 11. “Taken Figuratively”
• 12. “Today, If You Hear His Voice”
• 13. “She Who Is in Babylon”
• 14. “Take It and Eat”
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index of Subjects
• Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Literature
• Back Cover