Book Reviews -- By: Matthew S. DeMoss

Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 172:686 (Apr 2015)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Matthew S. DeMoss


Book Reviews

By The Faculty of Dallas Theological Seminary

Matthew S. DeMoss,

Editor

The Lost World of Scripture: Ancient Literary Culture and Biblical Authority. By John Walton and Brent Sandy. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2013. 320 pp. $24.00.

John Walton and Brent Sandy combine their expertise in Old and New Testament to craft a detailed study of ancient literary culture and its impact on biblical interpretation. “Our specific objective is to understand better how both the Old and New Testaments were spoken, written and passed on, especially with an eye to possible implications for the Bible’s inspiration and authority” (p. 9). They examine traditional expressions of inerrancy and offer a theologically and hermeneutically nuanced restatement of this important doctrine.

Walton and Sandy structure their work in twenty-one detailed propositions that sequentially build upon each other. In all, the book has four parts focusing on Old Testament composition culture (Walton), New Testament composition culture (Sandy), literary genres, and concluding affirmations on the origins and authority of Scripture (both). At the outset, we acknowledge the breadth of this work and its usefulness for a number of audiences, both seminary-trained and otherwise. The issues raised are pertinent, the discussions are sound, the tone irenic, and the ideas stimulating. The authors push readers to reevaluate how to think and talk about Scripture.

Walton and Sandy affirm a “very high view of Scripture” and inerrancy; they subscribe to the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. Their affirmation of inerrancy, however, does not stop them from offering sound critiques of traditional expressions of inerrancy. For one, they specifically emphasize that the Bible is free from error only when read “in light of the culture and communications developed by the time of its composition” (p. 12).

Early in the work the authors explain that communication requires culturally sensitive accommodation (Proposition 3). In describing accommodation, Walton employs speech-act theory to assert that what is inerrant is the illocution of a text—the author’s intention, affirmation, or claim in/through the text (pp. 41-48). The accuracy of an author’s illocution is what must be judged, not that of the locution itself, which might often be an accommodation to the cultural and scientific understandings of the author’s time. “God accommodates human culture and limitations in the locutions that he inspires in the human communicator, but he does not accommodate erroneous illocution and meaning” (p. 47). This emphasis on the illocution (perhaps better: what the author i...

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