Introducing Medieval Biblical Interpretation

The Senses of Scripture in Premodern Exegesis

Levy, Ian Christopher

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781493413010
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblische Studien

Christianity Today 2019 Book Award Winner This introductory guide, written by a leading expert in medieval theology and church history, offers a thorough overview of medieval biblical interpretation. After an opening chapter sketching the necessary background in patristic exegesis (especially the hermeneutical teaching of Augustine), the book progresses through the Middle Ages from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries, examining all the major movements, developments, and historical figures of the period. Rich in primary text engagement and comprehensive in scope, it is the only current, compact introduction to the whole range of medieval exegesis.

1
The Age of the Fathers

“The Gospel is not located in the bare words [verbis] of the Scriptures but in their deeper meaning [in sensu], not in outward appearances but in the marrow, and not in the leaves of the sayings but in the root of their reason [non in sermonum foliis, sed in radice rationis].”1 So said Jerome in his commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians. Although there are many passages that one might draw from the fathers to this effect, none would convey any more concisely the patristic conception of Holy Scripture’s multifarious layers of meaning. If this saint wanted authorization for seeking mystical designations beneath the letter of the biblical text, he needed to look no further than the apostle Paul’s own momentous appeal to allegory when addressing the Galatians:

For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and the other by a free woman. One, the child of the slave, was born according to the flesh; the other, the child of the free woman, was born through the promise. Now this is an allegory [allēgoroumena]: these women are two covenants. One woman, in fact, is Hagar, from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the other woman corresponds to the Jerusalem above; she is free, and she is our mother. (4:22–26)

So it was that when Jerome reviewed this passage in his commentary, he observed that allegory properly belongs to the art of grammar and differs from metaphors and other tropes. Noting that allegory is an instance of one thing being signified in the words and another in the meaning, Jerome proceeded to point out that while allegories are to be found among the orators and poets, they are also employed in Holy Scripture.2 Trained in classical grammar by the esteemed master Donatus, Jerome recognized, as did so many of his contemporaries, that Scripture could be mined for its grammatical, rhetorical, and dialectical riches. Yet Scripture possesses a quality that none of the great texts of antiquity could boast; it has a divine author whose limitless gift for subtle discourse renders it an inexhaustible trove of sacred mystery. It is in this vein that our opening chapter on the patristic period seeks, however modestly, to establish the exegetical modus operandi that formed the foundation for centuries of biblical interpretation across the Middle Ages. To be sure, medieval scholars made great and original advances in the study of Scripture; there were brilliant thinkers among their ranks. Nevertheless, the church fathers remained their authorities; they showed the way and provided the warrant for the progress made in the monasteries and the schools of medieval Europe.

Writing in the final decades of the second century, Irenaeus of Lyons established an abiding exegetical principle: Scripture in its totality will be rendered coherent only when Christ the Word is understood to stand at the center of salvation history as it has been recorded across the Old and New Testaments. Both Testaments, in seamless continuity, relate the action of the divine Word throughout sacred time, culminating in the Word’s incarnation. Old Testament prophecies are to be adduced as proof of history’s fulfillment in the incarnate Word, who thereby confirms the unified work of the Triune God, and the revelation of his will, across both Testaments.3 Thus, as Irenaeus combated both gnostics and Marcionites, he insisted that there is only one God, whom the prophets proclaimed and Christ himself confessed to be his Father. Rather than severing the relationship between the God of the Old Testament and the Christ of the New, therefore, we ought to recognize that the Father and Son bear testimony to each other.4 For Christ the Word was already active in the law and the prophets, proclaiming the Father, and through the incarnation, the Father was thereby manifested in the visible Son.5 The principle of unity proves to be a divine person, the one author who is the eternal Word of God.6 As the final cause of the law (Rom. 10:4), Christ brought to culmination what he himself had brought into being in the first place.7

If a person stands at the center of salvation history and proves to be the axis on whom this history turns, then the authoritative interpretation of that history could be located in what Irenaeus designated the “rule of truth” (regula veritatis), that standard against which every reading of Scripture must be measured.8 It was in this same vein that Tertullian appealed to the “rule of faith” (regula fidei), which he ultimately traced back to Christ himself. This regula fidei was not a fixed formula, but rather a basic outline of orthodox doctrine.9 It came to serve as a hermeneutical key to Scripture that provided a coherent story line (hypothesis) reflecting the arrangement (oikonomia) of its divine author. So it was that Irenaeus could accuse the gnostics of substituting their own story for that of Scripture and thus distorting the meaning of the text in the process.10 Such appeals to a unifying theme were not unique to Irenaeus and Tertullian or even to Christian authors generally. The Neoplatonists also employed this hermeneutic when they determined that the dialogues of Plato must, like a living organism, have one purpose (telos), a single perspective (skopos).11 In the fourth century, for example, Athanasius argued against the Arians that his reading of Scripture was correct with regard to the divine status of the Son because it accorded with the rule of faith, which provided access to the mind (dianoia) of Scripture. Recent interpretations might therefore take precedence over older readings if they are found to cohere with this overarching dianoia.12

The Literal and the Allegorical

As we touched on above, to allegorize means most basically “to speak so as to imply other than what is said.”13 The Stoics allegorized many myths about the gods so as to make them suitable to their own sensibilities and philosophical system. Classical authors applied the method of allēgorēsis to their great ancient texts; the Neoplatonist Porphyry, for instance, provided an allegorical reading of Homer. Moreover, these Greek practitioners of allēgorēsis maintained that the deeper meaning was, in fact, the intended meaning of the myth and that mythical texts may indeed have more than one sense, such that there exists a hierarchy of meanings. Jewish exegetes also adopted this method as the philosopher Philo of Alexandria argued that the Torah was rich in philosophy beneath the surface of its various legal prescriptions. Philo did not discount the literal meaning of the Hebrew Bible, but it was for him of secondary importance. Elite readers searched out the hidden meanings, which revealed spiritual truths. The story of creation in Genesis, for i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Endorsements
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. The Age of the Fathers
• 2. The Early Middle Ages
• 3. The Schools of the Eleventh Century
• 4. The Monks of the Twelfth Century
• 5. The School of St. Victor
• 6. The Schools of the Twelfth Century
• 7. Exegesis in the Universities of the Later Middle Ages
• 8. Applied Exegesis
• Conclusion
• Index of Scripture and Other Ancient and Medieval Sources
• Index of Modern Authors
• Index of Subjects
• Back Cover