Reading Scripture Canonically: Theological Instincts for Old Testament Interpretation
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
Mark Gignilliat, a veteran teacher of the Old Testament, explores the theological instincts that are necessary for reading, understanding, and communicating Scripture faithfully.
Reading Scripture closely requires more than historical tools, says Gignilliat; it requires recognition of the living God’s promised presence through the Bible. He takes seriously the gains of historical criticism, while insisting that the Bible be interpreted as Christian Scripture, offering students a “third way” that assigns proper proportion to both historical and theological concerns. Reading Scripture faithfully requires a set of theological instincts that keep together the close reading of the language of Scripture with Scripture’s reason for being and principal subject matter: the Triune God revealed in the person and work of Christ. Gignilliat demonstrates how interpreting the Bible canonically bears exegetical fruit, enabling students to read and engage Holy Scripture as a living witness.
- Explores the material character of the Old Testament
- Focuses on the Trinity as the Old Testament’s essential principle
- Provides insight into the theological and hermeneutical methods for engaging the Old Testament’s subject matter
Part 1: Scripture’s Material Form
- Scripture and Canon
- Sanding with the Grain: Final Form and Canonical Shape
- Canonical Intentionality
- Canon and Textual Criticism: The Search for the Christian Bible
Part 2: Scripture’s Subject Matter
- God as Triune, and Exegetical Metaphysics
- The Trinity and the Old Testament
Top Highlights
“Therefore the canonical approach’s registered concern for an ‘intentionality’ of some sort is not an intentionality that derives from a purely historical-descriptive or literary-genetic account: intentionality located specifically in the immediate textual origins of original author and original audience.” (Page 44)
“Because the formative role of the LXX in the early church speaks to the fact that God’s Word is translatable, thus not supporting a privileged status of one particular translation in the economy of grace. Yes, God spoke Greek, as a good book on the LXX in the early church has recently reminded us.27 But God also speaks Russian, German, Swahili, and, of course, English too.” (Page 73)
“To put a focus on this book as a whole, the following question drives the project from beginning to end: How and why should we read the material of Scripture—words, sentences, paragraphs, books, and so forth—in conjunction with Scripture’s theological subject matter?” (Page xiv)
“The church’s long-term health and faithful witness rests on its commitment to seeking after God’s Word in Holy Scripture” (Page 115)
“To make matters clear, canon registers its proper theological force when it is understood first as an internal property of the biblical texts and second as an external decision or act.” (Page 7)
How might we read the Old Testament canon as Christian Scripture? This is the driving question of the volume. Gignilliat places critical discussions within the framework of the Old Testament as an intentionally crafted, living Word of God and then proposes how Christians might read it with trinitarian sensibilities. This fresh and thoughtful exploration of what it means to read the Old Testament canon theologically can enrich current debates.
—M. Daniel Carroll R. (Rodas), Blanchard Professor of Old Testament, Wheaton College and Graduate School
Here is an authentic Christian refrain about the Bible, echoing the tradition but transposed into a twenty-first-century key. Gignilliat does ample justice to Scripture’s material form and historical situatedness—this is not a screed against historical criticism—yet he pushes beyond source-oriented considerations and reconstructions to grapple with the trinitarian witness of the biblical canon, especially the Old Testament. These are questions that contemporary Christian biblical scholars usually neglect to pursue. May it be otherwise!
—Stephen B. Chapman, associate professor of Old Testament, Duke University
With nuance and confessional humility, Gignilliat gives readers a book that manifests the rare combination that he himself possesses—equal comfort both in the field of Old Testament scholarship and in the theological and philosophical world. He offers not the mechanics of a method but something far more valuable: orthodox reflections that train our instincts and expectations as we go about reading the Old Testament as Christian Scripture.
—Jonathan T. Pennington, associate professor of New Testament interpretation, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
- Title: Reading Scripture Canonically: Theological Instincts for Old Testament Interpretatio
- Author: Mark S. Gignilliat
- Publisher: Baker
- Publication Date: 2019
- Pages: 144
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Topic: Theological Interpretation