The Literary Approach To The Study Of The Old Testament: Promise And Pitfalls -- By: Tremper Longman III

Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 28:4 (Dec 1985)
Article: The Literary Approach To The Study Of The Old Testament: Promise And Pitfalls
Author: Tremper Longman III


The Literary Approach To The Study Of The Old
Testament:
Promise And Pitfalls

Tremper Longman, III*

Many scholars claim that we are undergoing a paradigm shift in interpretive methodology today. The predominant historical paradigm is being replaced by a literary approach to the study of the Bible. Source, form and redaction criticism are assailed as inadequate or even unnecessary tools for the study of the Biblical text. As one reads the secondary literature, one feels an almost revolutionary attitude toward traditional modes of studying the Bible—a breaking of the shackles of history and also a feeling of freedom to approach the texts as wholes again rather than a need to divide them up.1

On the other hand it is very easy to find words of warning from all sides of the theological spectrum:

There is something artificial in the idea of “the Bible as literature.” Or rather, it can be artificial and contrary to the perception of both most believers and most unbelievers.2

Those who talk of reading the Bible as literature sometimes mean, I think, reading it without attending to the main thing it is about.3

Whoever turns a gospel of Christ into a novel has wounded my heart.4

The persons who enjoy these writings solely because of their literary merit are essentially parasites; and we know that parasites, when they become too numerous, are pests. I could easily fulminate for a whole hour against the men of letters who have gone into ecstasies over “the Bible as literature.”5

The literary approach to the study of the Bible is both an old and a new phenomenon. It is old in that many ancient examples can be evoked of Biblical scholars applying principles from broader literary studies to the study of the Bible. The Church fathers frequently applied to the elucidation of Biblical texts

*Tremper Longman is associate professor of Old Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.

tools, concepts and techniques that they had learned in the study of classical literature. To substantiate this claim one might mention Jerome’s scansion of Biblical poems into iambic pentameters6 and Augustine’s negative literary evaluation of the Biblical texts over against classical literature.7 However, the literary ap...

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