Dempster continues, saying that there has been "an enchantment with the minute details of the biblical text rather than with its more global features, which ipso facto cannot exist. The concern for studying smaller and smaller sections of the biblical text and the increasing specialization of scholars studying the minutiae of philology and morphology have resulted in a loss of perspective." [1]
I've found this to
be commonplace in my dealings with biblical scholarship. In an effort to take
the human authors seriously (so they say), extremely bright PhD types forget
the Author behind the authors and the whole larger work—the whole canon, the
big Book of which the smaller books are but chapters. So the Text of which Dempster speaks is the whole
Bible. And the texts (individual books) are not rightly understood, more strongly stated, are distorted and twisted if it is not
considered how they are to be understood in the light of the
larger narrative framework provided by Genesis through Revelation.
[1] Stephen G. Dempster, Dominion and Dynasty:
A Theology of the Hebrew Bible (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2003), 28.
2 comments:
Excellent point. What's the Dempster book about? And have you read John Sailhamer's book "The Meaning of the Pentateuch?" John hits certain similar points really, really well in that book as well as saying a number of things I can't agree with.
David Bayly
David, the subtitle really says it: it's a" theology of the Hebrew Bible." It takes seriously the arrangement of the canon of the Hebrew Bible. And Dempster takes seriously the divine intention for the canon to function as a literary whole. As the title suggests, he traces the development of the key themes of "dominion" and "dynasty" across the storyline. I haven't read Sailhamer much yet, and I've heard polar opposite responses to his work. He sounds both quite good and quite odd at times. Press on, JW
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