Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 23:2 (Summer 2019)
Article: A Preliminary Evaluation And Critique Of Prosopological Exegesis
Author: Peter J. Gentry

SBJT 23:2 (Summer 2019) p. 105

A Preliminary Evaluation And Critique Of Prosopological Exegesis

Peter J. Gentry

Peter J. Gentry is Donald L. Williams Professor of Old Testament Interpretation and Director of the Hexapla Institute at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He has served on the faculty of Toronto Baptist Seminary and Bible College and also taught at the University of Toronto, Heritage Theological Seminary, and Tyndale Seminary. Dr. Gentry is the author of many articles and book reviews, the co-author of Kingdom through Covenant, 2nd ed. (Crossway, 2018) and God’s Kingdom through God’s Covenants (Crossway, 2015), and the author of How to Read and Understand the Biblical Prophets (Crossway, 2017), and the critical edition of Ecclesiastes for the Göttingen Septuagint (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2019).

Editor’s note: In the Fall, 2019, a presentation was given to the 1892 Club at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. The goal of the presentation was to present recent research on the NT’s use of the OT, specifically the NT’s use of prosopological exegesis to interpret OT Christological texts. Prosopological exegesis is now widely discussed, and it is part of the larger discussion of “retrieval,” specifically whether various hermeneutical methods used in the Patristic era ought to be retrieved today. In this paper, Peter Gentry seeks to wrestle with this form of exegesis and offer a preliminary evaluation and critique. He presented it at a later 1892 Club meeting. We have included his reflections in this issue of SBJT because it fits well with our attempt to think about “retrieval,” and in this case, the attempt to learn from the Patristic era for us today. In this paper, Dr. Gentry questions the validity of this form of exegesis and thus provides an important conversation about what is best and not best to “retrieve” from the past, and how to read and interpret Scripture on its own terms. SBJT has preserved the oral nature of his presentation in what follows.

SBJT 23:2 (Summer 2019) p. 106

We enjoyed a presentation a couple of months ago that focused on hermeneutical methods used by the apostles to interpret the OT. In that presentation it was argued that NT authors employed a form of prosopological exegesis as evidenced later in the Patristic Fathers. The presentation stimulated me to look at Matthew Bates, The Birth of the Trinity (2016)1 and other resources to think through the validity of this hermeneutical technique. This paper is my present reflections on the use of prosopological exegesis by NT authors to understand OT texts.

Matthew Bates defines prosopological exe...