Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 178:710 (Apr 2021)
Article: Hermeneutics And Christology In The Epistle Of Barnabas
Author: Jeremiah Mutie

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Hermeneutics And Christology In The Epistle Of Barnabas

Jeremiah Mutie

Jeremiah Mutie serves as Professor of Theology and Church History at Southern California Seminary, El Cajon, California. A version of this paper was originally presented at the Patristics and Medieval Exegesis Session of the ETS Annual Meeting in San Diego, CA, November 20, 2019.

Abstract

Interpreting Old Testament texts nonliterally, the author of The Epistle of Barnabas saw Christ in places where he clearly was, and in other places where he was not. This influenced the church toward allegorical interpretation of Scripture, which dominated the church in Patristic and Medieval exegesis—and possibly affected her relationship with national Israel.

Introduction: Terminology And A Brief Introduction To The Epistle Of Barnabas

Terminology

Earliest Christian biblical exegetes employed the allegorical method of interpretation. This method, rooted in classical Greek (and eventually adopted by Jews), that “assumes that the text to be interpreted says or intends to say something more than and other than what literal wording suggests—that it contains hidden within it a deeper sense not directly disclosed in the words themselves.”1 As Annewies van den Hoek explains, allegory “is a Greek word that takes its roots from ἄλλα and ἀγορεύω (literally): to speak other things; in a technical sense ἀλληγορέω means: to speak or interpret

BSac 178:710 (April-June 2021) p. 186

allegorically.”2 The method made its inroads into Judaism especially through Philo of Alexandria (d. AD 45), who “adapted it to his own Platonic vision of reality and brought it to a climax in his Commentary on Torah, creating a hermeneutical model which would inspire Clement and Origen of Alexandria.”3 However, in its earliest use in both Judaism and early Christianity, the allegorical method was not clearly distinguished from what hermeneuticians today recognize as “typology.”

Typology has its origins in classical Greek, where the term “type” (τύπος) “originally meant a ‘blow’ (τύπος, percutio), as an oracle transmitted by Herodotus, Histories I 67, 4; or the ‘mark’ of a blow as in a Pythagorean rule repeated by Plutarch, De gloria Atheniensium 13,49 (583c).”4 The ter...