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Analysing a Biblical Text: What are we After?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Vern S. Poythress
Vern S. Poythress
Affiliation:
Westminster Theological Seminary Chestnut Hill Philadelphia, Penn. 19118
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Extract

When an exegete approaches a biblical text, he wants to find out ‘what it means’. But which meaning is he after? Is he interested only in what the speaker (or author) intended? Or is he interested also in the speech product (which may not fully succeed in embodying the speaker's intention)? Is he interested in what the audience thought of the discourse? And which of these meanings (if any) is the appropriate starting point for a modern sermon?

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 32 , Issue 4 , August 1979 , pp. 319 - 331
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1979

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References

319 1 S.J.T., vol. 32 (1979), pp. 113–137.Google Scholar

321 1 My ‘internal projection’ corresponds to Hirsch's discussion of the ‘implications of meaning’. (Hirsch, E. D., Validity in Interpretation (New Haven–London: Yale, 1967), pp. 140ff.Google Scholar) According to Hirsch, the ‘implications’ are part of the verbal meaning. By contrast, my ‘external projection’, corresponding to Hirsch's ‘significance’, goes beyond the ‘meaning’.

327 1 Bultmann, , ‘New Testament and Mythology’, Kerygma and Myth, ed. Bartsch, Hans W. (New York: Harper and Row, 1961), pp. 1–2.Google Scholar

328 1 See Helm, Paul, ‘Revealed Propositions and Timeless Truths’, Religious Studies, viii (1972), pp. 127–136CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially the notes on sentences (types) which change truth value when uttered at different times (tokens) (pp. 128, 134).

329 1 Scholes, Robert, Structuralism in Literature; An Introduction (New Haven–London: Yale, 1974), pp. 24–26.Google Scholar

329 2 Barthes, S/Z (New York: Hill and Wang, 1974), pp. 18–20; Scholes, pp. 153–55.

330 1 ibid., pp. 91–111, 157–67.

330 2 Pike, Kenneth L., Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behavior, 2nd ed. (The Hague: Mouton, 1967), Ch. 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

331 1 Bultmann, , ‘New Testament and Mythology’, pp. 1–2.Google Scholar