Walter R. Dickhaut, in his small volume, Building a Community of Interpreters: Readers and Hearers as Interpreters, proposes that listeners and hearers of a sermon, story or biblical text function as interpreters of the meaning of each of these types of expression or forms of communication. Dickhaut’s thesis maintains that the hermeneutical process is better perceived as a spiral, rather than a circle with a closed circuit, because the reader of any text can influence its interpretation (12).

Dickhaut presents his proposal in two parts. The chapters in part one explain the process of listening, which involves the numerous occasions when one meets the text, the particular angle of vision of the reader and the metaphorical filters and lenses applied in each hearing. Every time a reader encounters or meets the same text, it is not the same reader who encountered the text previously (18). Time and the circumstances of the reader have changed. He may have acquired new learning or modified certain perspectives (18). A filter applied by a reader or listener removes what the reader prefers not to engage (21). The reader is often unaware the presence of these filters. Information that does not conform to the reader’s beliefs or opinions is filtered out. Dickhaut wants the reader to be aware he is wearing these unexpected blinders in the form of biases and prejudgments. When mindful of the blinders, the reader is better able as to make appropriate adjustments (25).

Lenses, on the other hand, focus the listener’s attention on specific interests and features that aim to discover something new (21-22). Lenses empower interpreters to discover “mystery, surprise, and expectation” in biblical texts (34). Lenses function to enhance or enlarge certain details (22). The reader’s angles of vision also shape interpretation. Angles of vision are shaped by the listener’s personal experience, family history, theological and political positions and social and cultural location (27).

The second part, chapters seven through fourteen, is an expanded discussion on the lenses of
mystery, surprise, and expectation, punctuated with three of the author’s sermons. The author encourages the reader to view texts through the lens of mystery and read and listen in such a way that he is satisfied with a sense of the mystery of God rather than needing explanation and rationalization. To read with expectation is to read and listen as one dissatisfied with certain aspects of the world we inhabit (86-87). Surprise in a biblical text can be achieved by searching for things one does not understand, because in doing so the reader “is more likely to learn something new, something that surprises him” (67).

The book’s strength is its reflection on the various factors that potentially effect the listener’s interpretation of a sermon or biblical text. Thus, preachers and teachers are introduced to features that influence the listener’s interpretation of a text or sermon. The author delivers on his goal to encourage building a community of interpreters. In the Afterword, Dickhaut maps out sessions for a Bible study group that explores what happens to meaning when a reader opens a book or listens to a sermon from various angles and when wearing a variety of spectacles.

Reviewed by David Seal

Publisher’s page: http://wipfandstock.com/building-a-community-of-interpreters.html

Preview Building a Community of Interpreters: https://books.google.com/books?id=YkxNAwAAQBAJ

Walter Brueggemann delivers another of his thought provoking works (in the vein of The Prophetic Imagination and its various spin-offs) intended to provide a positive framework and application of the Sabbath for the Church. Brueggemann offers a simple proposal to move from a negative appropriation of Sabbath (what one does not do) to a positive appropriation (following such works as Marva Dawn’s Keeping the Sabbath Wholly: Ceasing, Resting, Embracing, Fasting and Abraham Heschel’s classic The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man). The negative approach has long dominated the Protestant worldview with images of Puritanical laws enforced by draconian measures.

However, Brueggemann attempts to offer here a vista of Sabbath as “an affirmative declaration of faith and identity” (x). He frames his proposal between discussions of the relation of Sabbath to the first and tenth commandments in order to locate Sabbath within the life of Israel in faithful relationship with Yahweh and neighbor (following the lead of Patrick Miller’s The Ten Commandments in the Interpretation series, 1). Enclosed within this framework, he describes Sabbath specifically as resistance to anxiety (20-33), coercion (34-45), exclusivism (46-57), and multitasking (58-68). All of these belong to the tyranny of enslavement and disorder of life. The resistance of Sabbath is liberation from the domination of these taskmasters and a movement into the land of promise with its hope of life and blessing, fruitfulness and ultimate rest.

His premise is that restlessness is pervasive in our current context in typological likeness to the restlessness of Israel in bondage. The Pharaonic taskmasters rule our time and energy, but Yahweh says, “Let my people go!” and gives freedom to the captives and recreates society around restfulness. “Sabbath-keeping is a way of making a statement of peculiar identity amid a larger public identity, of maintaining and enacting a counter-identity that refuses ‘mainstream’ identity, which itself entails anti-human practice and the worship of anti-human gods. [Thus]…Sabbath is a bodily act of testimony to alternative and resistance to pervading values and the assumptions behind those values.” (21) Sabbath reorients all of life to the reality of the God who created all, the God of Israel, God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit who is God alone. It also calls for the humanizing of humanity as made in the image of this God. In this way, Brueggemann argues essentially that Sabbath observance/remembering cannot be reduced to practices of a day. It is the reorientation of all of life toward resting in the Deliverer’s faithful provision and ultimate claims upon us as Lord.

Walter Brueggemann, Divine Presence Amid Violence: Contextualizing the Book of Joshua (Eugene, Oregon: Cascade, 2009), xii + 82 pages, ISBN 9781606080894.

To begin this review quite honestly, I chose the text because of the difficult dilemma it was attempting to resolve, namely violence and the Bible and even more specifically violence and war as ordered by God. The second factor that influenced me was the author. If someone can offer a reasonable apologia on the subject, it is Walter Brueggemann. Of value to my choice was also the perfect timing of the book with the war in the Middle East.

Divine Presence Amid Violence argues that aggression in the Bible, and more specifically, aggression that “comes” from God, is not to be against the people, but against the chariots and horses. In the Joshua context, they are the tools used by the evil empire to oppress people and use their labor while holding them in fear. Thus, Yahweh’s command is not to destroy peoples and nations, but to destroy the evil empire that oppresses them through destroying its tools of oppression. Brueggemann believes this is evident on many occasions in the book of Joshua where cities and ethnos are left untouched by the destruction of Israel’s attack.

One, perhaps shocking, aspect in Brueggemann’s apologia comes in the opening chapter, which deals with meaning and interpretation of the Biblical text before approaching a series of narratives from the book of Joshua dealing with violence in the Old Testament as an order from God. This however, does not give enough reason for the statement in the second chapter that, “It is clear that this text, like every biblical text, has no fixed, closed meaning.”

A disagreement with Brueggemann for the fundamental Bible scholar here is a must. For it is quite obvious to the reader, that a narrative has a definite and fixed meaning within its own historical context. And while the interpretation of a given passage through various other historical moments or cultural aspects may vary its essence as a piece of history remains intact.

Brueggemann raises an interesting proposal in the conclusion, suggesting that the modern church is often embedded in the culture of chariots and horses, rather than opposing it; thus counter parting a number of modern interpretations of the Kingdom of God and suggesting that with our theology and actions we as people of God are to be liberators from the tools of oppression and not their enforcers.

Reviewed by Dony K. Donev

Walter Brueggemann, Journey to the Common Good (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 125 pages, ISBN 9780664235161.

This excellent little book presents three addresses given by the author. This, together with the narrative theology represented, makes this work eminently readable and engaging. Brueggemann, a pre-eminent Old Testament scholar, is deliberately provocative whilst thoroughly rooted in contemporary Old Testament perspectives, bringing to the reader an insight of how the world of Biblical Studies can effectively and usefully address issues facing the church and our witness today.

In three chapters, Brueggemann looks at Scriptural narratives which engage the liberation from captivity in Egypt through to the Sinai visitation and instructions of God; the conflict between the revelation of God and the choices made by Israel in the succeeding years; then the challenges of engaging with God’s vision for reconstruction in the post-exilic period. Brueggemann takes each of these and, having identified the main narrative themes present, applies them to present issues and challenges affecting the North American context.

Two features of this book were of especial interest to the present reviewer. Firstly, Brueggemann expertly brings the narrative themes together and shows how his observations find expression in and through the ministry and teachings of Jesus Christ. In this way, he properly shows how the Old Testament narratives lead to their realisation in and through the ministry of our Lord. His skill in doing this is exemplary, and whilst the reader may not agree with all his final observations, the method which he employs in bringing the whole scope of Biblical testimony into play is, in itself, something for all to learn from.

Secondly, Brueggemann holds to an understanding of righteousness which, in the present debates between advocates of imputed righteousness and other forms, brings an important contribution. As Brueggemann puts it, ‘Righteousness concerns active intervention in social affairs, taking an initiative to intervene in order to rehabilitate society, to respond to social grievance, and to correct every humanity-diminishing activity’ (page 63).

This is a manageable piece of scholarship for the working pastor to digest, an informative as well as a challenging resource both for personal study and sermon preparation.

Reviewed by Jim Purves

Preview Journey to the Common Good: books.google.com/books?id=aN0JVqSMIHAC

Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., Preaching and Teaching from the Old Testament: A Guide for the Church (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 222 pages, ISBN 9780801026102.

How do you preach a lament? A proverb? A law? Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., former president of Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, answers these questions and more in this book. His credentials for this assignment include his reputation as a prolific writer and as an Old Testament evangelical scholar.

In this volume on how to preach and teach from the Old Testament, the author divides the subject into two parts. First, he addresses the need, then the means. In so doing, Kaiser builds on the foundation of his earlier book, Toward an Exegetical Theology, that explains how to develop and interpret principles from the Old Testament text. In this newer book, he devotes a chapter to each of the major genres (i.e., types of literature) found in the Old Testament. He also furnishes a sermon in every case as well to provide an example of how that particular genre should be preached. It is, therefore, basically a hermeneutics book that specifically focuses on the following genres of the Old Testament: narrative, wisdom, prophets, laments, torah, praise, and apocalyptic.

The author contends that every biblical text has only one possible meaning, i.e. the meaning the original author intended. In order to arrive at this one meaning, the reader must understand how to interpret the various genres found in the Old Treatment. Otherwise, an ill-informed preacher might attempt to interpret Old Testament praises in the same manner as Old Testament proverbs.

The one main concern of this reviewer has is the unfortunate fact that the author does not address the narrative style of sermons (whether told in the first or third person) promoted by many homileticians today. On a less serious note, the author tends to repeat himself from chapter to chapter (e.g., compare p. 31 with p. 41). Some paragraphs even seem out of order (see pp. 57-8). And, at certain times, the explanation of how to interpret a particular genre seems too brief. A few more examples would also have been helpful in order to further see how his analysis applies to other portions of Scripture within the same literally genre.