Back Cover Blurb
- Combining an interesting, refined writing style with profound theological insights and detailed, systematic scholarship, Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period provides a comprehensive study of the methods used by the earliest Christians to interpret Scripture.
- To understand first-century scriptural exegesis properly, the author believes, Christian writings must be compared with Jewish interpretative documents from the same period. And given the recent discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nag Hammadi texts, and additional Targumic material, biblical scholars have been increasingly concerned with the relationship between the New Testament and first-century Judaism. A comparison of the Christian and Jewish procedures in interpreting Scripture provides a key to this relationship, and serves as well to shed important light on some of the present-day differences between Christianity and Judaism.
- "A clear and illuminating analysis of the facts of biblical interpretation in the New Testament .... I welcome this scholarly and judicious book as a useful contribution."
- C.F.D. Moule, Clare College, Cambridge
- "Dr. Longenecker is to be commended for a well informed and engagingly written introduction to the subject, one that will find a useful place in both the classroom and the study."
- E. Earle Ellis, New Brunswick Theological Seminary
- "Longenecker writes with clarity and a certain grace. His argument is conducted in a thorough and comprehensive manner, and his conclusions seem to be sound and balanced.”
- Bruce Metzger, Princeton Theological Seminary
- Richard N. Longenecker is Professor of New Testament at Wycliff College, Toronto. He has contributed to a number of reference works and theological journals, and is the author of three published monographs on Paul and the early Christian Church.
ContentsAcknowledgments – 7
Abbreviations – 8
Introduction – 11
- JEWISH HERMENEUTICS IN THE FIRST CENTURY – 19
|.|Sources
|.|Literalist Interpretation
|.|Midrashic Interpretation
|.|Pesher Interpretation
|.|Allegorical Interpretation
|.|Summation
- JESUS AND THE OLD TESTAMENT – 51
|.|A Realistic Appraisal of the Documents
|.|The Phenomena of the Quotations
|.|Literalist and Midrashic Treatments
|.|Pesher Interpretations
|.|A Paradigm for Continued Study
- EARLY CHRISTIAN PREACHING AND THE OLD TESTAMENT – 79
|.|Sermonic and Catechetical Materials
|.|The Phenomena of the Quotations
|.|Testimonia Portions and Collections
|.|Exegetical Presuppositions
|.|Exegetical Practices and Patterns
- PAUL AND THE OLD TESTAMENT – 104
|.|The Letters of Paul
|.|The Phenomena of the Quotations
|.|Literalist and Midrashic Treatments
|.|Allegorical Interpretations
|.|Pesher Interpretations
- THE EVANGELISTS AND THE OLD TESTAMENT – 133
|.|The Phenomena of the Quotations
|.|The Quotations of Mark and Luke
|.|The Quotations of Matthew
|.|The Quotations of John
- HEBREWS AND THE OLD TESTAMENT – 158
|.|The Provenance of the Letter
|.|The Phenomena of the Quotations
|.|Exegetical Presuppositions and Practices
|.|The Biblical Argument
- JEWISH CHRISTIAN TRACTATES AND THE OLD TESTAMENT – 186
|.|The Nature of the Materials
|.|The Phenomena of the Quotations
|.|Literalist Treatments
|.|Pesher Interpretations
- THE NATURE OF NEW TESTAMENT EXEGESIS – 205
|.|Christocentric Interpretation
|.|Common, Diverse and Developed Exegetical Patterns
|.|The Descriptive and the Normative in Exegesis
A Selected Bibliography – 221
Index of Authors – 231
Index of References – 234
Introduction
- The New Testament’s use of the Old Testament is a subject of perennial interest and vast dimensions. It involves a number of important theological issues as to the relation of the two testaments, the development of biblical religion, the nature of prophecy, and the meaning of fulfilment. And it encompasses a number of significant critical questions as to:-
- the provenance of the various writings,
- their purposes and theological perspectives,
- the nature of their literary structures,
- the identification of quotations and allusions within them,
- the specification of particular text-forms used by them,
- their procedures of interpretation,
- their development of biblical themes, and
- their employment of biblical phraseology.
It is further complicated by a paucity of primary materials in certain areas of importance to the discussion and frustrated by uncertainties as to the exact nature of the biblical text in its various traditions during the first Christian century. Nevertheless, the subject is a vitally important one. Historically, differences between Judaism and Christianity can in large measure be traced back to and understood in light of differing exegetical presuppositions and practices. And personally, it is of greatest importance to appreciate something of how the Old Testament was interpreted during the apostolic period of the Church and to ask regarding the significance of this upon one’s own convictions, exegesis and life today.
- With such an all-encompassing and involved subject, some controls must be exercised if the work of investigation and presentation is to be kept within reasonable and workable bounds. And it is well here to indicate the limitations we have imposed in what follows. To speak of “Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period” is to suggest, of course, something of our concerns and limitations. But more particularly it must be said that,
- in the first place, our interest is primarily with exegetical procedures — that is, with specific exegetical practices, the presuppositions that underlie these practices, and the manner itself in which biblical exegesis was carried on in the apostolic period — and only secondarily and as derived from such an inquiry will we concern ourselves with the broader issues of the relation between the testaments and the development of biblical religion.
- Secondly, the focus of our attention will be on the biblical quotations employed by the various writers of the New Testament, and less directly upon their development of biblical themes, the structure of their compositions, their allusive use of biblical materials, or their employment of biblical language.
- And thirdly, our desire is to trace out distinguishable patterns of usage and development that appear in the various strata of the biblical citations within the New Testament, particularly as seen when compared with Jewish exegetical practices and patterns of roughly contemporaneous times.
All the theological and critical considerations to which we have alluded above will, of course, need to be dealt with to some extent at various places in the presentation that follows, for they are inseparably related to the data of our interest. But our discussion will be structured along the lines of these three primary concerns, believing that a proper understanding of these matters will illumine a path through the maze of many more important and tangled issues.
- As for our manner of treatment, it need hardly be argued at any length here that for an understanding of the New Testament one must seek to determine as far as possible the circumstances, influences, modes of conceptualization, and ways of expression of the people among whom it came to birth. That, by now, is surely an axiom of scholarship1. But in carrying out such an historico-grammatical endeavor with regard to the biblical citations of the New Testament, a number of methods could be followed — and each has its own contribution to make to the discussion. Analysis could be done, for example,
- Of the exegetical presuppositions and practices of any one group within either Judaism or Christianity,
- Of any particular exegetical procedure employed by any of these groups,
- Of the exegetical patterns that arise from a study of a particular writing or group of writings stemming from any of these groups, or
- Of the exegetical phenomena that occur within a particular passage or cluster of passages within these writings.
All these investigations are of great significance, for only as the individual units of a question are understood can anything approaching an adequate comprehension of the whole be attained. On the other hand, research could be undertaken along more comprehensive lines, attempting to integrate the knowledge gained from the more restricted investigations into something of a portrayal of relationships and patterns on a broader scale. Here one could work either “vertically,” tracing relationships and patterns from perhaps as early as the Pentateuch through the Church Fathers, or “horizontally,” dealing with such relationships and patterns as they appear during the span of one epoch or more limited period. Of course, if the mind doesn’t boggle and time, energy or space permit, one could work both vertically and horizontally in the development of a more complete picture. Yet with the ever increasing amount of data available and the resultant growing complexity of the subject, probably no one person will ever be able to deal with all the issues at hand. Each can offer only what he is able, and must leave the rest to others.
- It is my purpose in the pages that follow to treat the biblical quotations that occur in the New Testament in a more comprehensive and horizontal fashion, studying the relationships that exist between Jewish and Christian exegetical procedures during the first Christian century and tracing out the development of exegetical patterns in the New Testament. As a Christian, I am, of course, vitally interested in the exegetical phenomena of the New Testament. But as an historian, I am concerned to have an accurate understanding of both Jewish and Christian hermeneutics during the period under study, believing that each must be seen in its relation to the other. In addition to the New Testament, therefore, we must give close attention to the Talmud, the Jewish apocryphal (particularly apocalyptic) writings, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Targums, and Philo. While fuller introductions to each of these bodies of literature will appear at the appropriate places in the discussion, it can at least be said here that:
- the Talmud (broadly consisting of the Mishnah, Palestinian and Babylonian Gemaras, Midrashim, Tosephta, and the various “Sayings” collections from individual rabbis) represents the Pharisaic schools and later rabbinic explications,
- the apocalyptic writings of the Jewish apocryphal materials represent speculative authors living on the margin of ordinary Jewish life,
- the Dead Sea Scrolls represent one sectarian movement within Judaism,
- the Targums represent various interpretive traditions from the synagogues, and
- Philo represents a Jew heavily indebted to the categories of Grecian philosophy.
Precise dating of the materials, especially with regard to the Talmud and the Targums, is a major issue that must be faced in each instance. But assuming for the moment the presence of certain traditional elements even in later codifications, the very range of material available for comparative study provides a number of intriguing possibilities for tracing out relationships and patterns in the area of biblical interpretation.
- Raphael Loewe has warned that “the historical study of biblical exegesis, both Jewish and Christian, is a field in which generalisation is perilous, and any patterns that the investigator may discern he will, if he is wise, postulate but tentatively2.” The warning is pertinent, and certainly must be seriously heeded. The evidence relating to first-century Jewish and Christian exegetical procedures is both voluminous and partial, requiring on the one hand a mastery of subject matter such as no one person can accomplish fully, and on the other, a realization that further evidence (as the discovery of the Dead Sea texts illustrates) will undoubtedly be forthcoming. Furthermore, later developments in the history of thought have often colored the data, thereby imposing extraneous nuances upon earlier ideas and terminology. And every interpreter, whether ancient or modem, tends to view earlier circumstances and practices in terms of his own situation and perspectives, no matter how hard he may try to divorce himself from his own understanding in his historical research.
- There is, nevertheless, a need for a more comprehensive treatment of the exegetical procedures of the earliest Christians during the apostolic period of the Church, which will seek to relate itself to the presuppositions and practices of the various elements of Judaism then roughly contemporaneous and is prepared to deal seriously with both similarities and differences. And though there are difficulties regarding provenance and interpretation, there is a sufficient body of material available to draw up something of a precis of the evidence to date and the conclusions to which that evidence points. Geza Vermes has rightly insisted:
In inter-testamental Judaism there existed a fundamental unity of exegetical tradition. This tradition, the basis of religious faith and life, was adopted and modified by its constituent groups, the Pharisees, the Qumran sectaries and the Judeo-Christians. We have, as a result, three cognate schools of exegesis of the one message recorded in the Bible, and it is the duty of the historian to emphasize that none of them can properly be understood independently of the others3.
And Vermes is right again when he says, “for those neither too timid to venture into these unknown fields, nor too gullible, there is promise of wider horizons and a denser background against which to set the message of the New Testament.”
- In the following pages, we therefore intend first of all to deal with “Jewish Hermeneutics in the First Century” (Chapter I), then to explicate the exegetical procedures and patterns in the various strata of the biblical quotations in the New Testament (Chapters II-VII), and finally to speak to the question of “The Nature of New Testament Exegesis” (Chapter VIII). The treatment of these matters will be essentially descriptive, though their significance for personal faith, theology and proclamation will be suggested at times and should be obvious throughout.
In-Page Footnotes ("Longenecker (Richard) - Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period")
Footnote 1:
- J. W. Doeve has formulated the axiom as follows: “The possibilities of coming to a proper understanding of an antique document accrue according to the degree in which one knows the milieu whence it came” (Jewish Hermeneutics in the Synoptic Gospels and Acts [1954], p. 1).
Footnote 2:
- R. Loewe, “The ‘Plain’ Meaning of Scripture in Early Jewish Exegesis,” PIJSL, I (1964), p. 140.
Footnote 3:
- Geza Vermes, “The Qumran Interpretation of Scripture in its Historical Setting,” ALUOS, VI (1966-68), p. 94-5
Book Comment
- William B. Eerdmans, USA, 1975 (March 1983 Reprint. Paperback.
- There is a second edition (30 March 1999) which allegedly 'brought the work up to date with current research'.
Text Colour Conventions (see disclaimer)- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2025
- Mauve: Text by correspondent(s) or other author(s); © the author(s)