Steve Moyise of the University of Chichester has just published a very good review of Three Views on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament. In the review Moyise seems to be much more in line with Enns’ view than either Bock or Kaiser’s. He is actually quite against the view that Kaiser puts forth…and for good reason. His last paragraph sums it up well:
For the intended audience (evangelicals), it was perhaps obligatory to include Kaiser, but to my mind it would have been a far better book to have included someone who is grappling with the issues today rather than defending a position stated thirty years ago (“The Single Intent of Scripture,” 1978). While it is now clear that Sanders has not had the last word on the nature of Jewish beliefs in the first century, one does not expect to find comments like the following: “The Gentiles got it by faith, whereas Israel missed it badly. They thereby failed to obtain this righteousness and tried to obtain God’s righteousness by their own home-made substitute for that righteousness, idiosyncratically trying all the time to earn it by works” (158). It is of course ironic that a defense of “single grammatical meaning” involves many tortuous explanations. Hosea apparently understood that “the son” whom God called out of Egypt referred to a “coming Man of Promise who would appear under the similar reference” (223), even though the following verse says that they “kept sacrificing to the Baals, and offering incense to idols” (Hos 11.2). Readers can decide for themselves if any of his convoluted explanations could possibly be described as the natural historical-grammatical meaning of the text.
You can read the entire review here.
23 May 2009 at 7.32 pm
I’m a fan of this line from the review:
“Bock and Enns, on the other hand, believe that one’s view of inspiration must be formed by what we actually find in Scripture.”
23 May 2009 at 9.41 pm
Very short review. While I like most of it, I am disappointed by three things. 1) that he bashes Kaiser as being outside the evangelical doctrine of inspiration (!) and 2) that he bashes Kaiser on his methodology of building from chair passages rather than results, and 3) that he misrepresents how Kaiser explains and understands the Hosea passage.
Unfortunately for #2 and #3, Kaiser develops those ideas in other writings of his. For #1 and #2 at least, I am somewhat surprised that the review author was so hard on someone who has been significant for evangelicalism, and that he seems ignorant on methodology that Kaiser explains in almost everything he writes.
23 May 2009 at 10.11 pm
I understand where he was going with mentioning that Kaiser’s view was outside of an evangelical doctrine of inspiration. Had he had more space it would have been nice for him to parse it out. RBL reviews, though, especially of shorter, more popular books, are very limited on space (I had to edit my review of Sparks’ book nearly in half).
I’m not quite sure how he misrepresents Kaiser’s interpretation of Hosea. If Kaiser truly believes that the author of Hosea had Christ in mind when she/he wrote Hos 11.1, then it makes absolutely no sense that she/he went on to pen Hos 11.2. I think Kaiser is rightly called out for holding such an odd viewpoint and one that, ultimately, has Christ sacrificing to Baal.
I’m also not sure where he speaks to your #2. A little more clarity in what you are saying might help me understand.
24 May 2009 at 12.23 am
What I mean by #2 is that Kaiser believes you should start with passages that speak clearly and teach on the issue you wish to deal with, and then let the other passages fit into the system you’ve already parsed and drawn out. In light of that, he deals with the passage in 1 Peter and 2 Peter because he believes those to be the foundational passages dealing with prophecy. The author of the review mocked him and drew out Enns as joining in because Kaiser dealt little with the results (all the NT quotations of the OT) and focused on those two passages (what Kaiser believes are the ‘chair’ passages). While I’m not sure whether I agree with Kaiser, I am sympathetic to the method of utilizing the teaching passages as a foundation for the remainder of your study. The author disregarded that completely making Kaiser seem to be completely befuddled and swinging theological arms in unrecognizable shapes. I can’t believe the author didn’t realize this either as Kaiser often speaks of his methodology this way, so it leads me to believe he did that on purpose. A poor method of review in my opinion.
As far as the Hosea passage goes, I may be misrepresenting what Kaiser says, but I believe in earlier essays he didn’t say ‘the son’ in those passages referred to Jesus. He draws out a comparison of Israel first being ‘my son’, and then Jesus later seen as ‘my son’. This fits with Jesus actually being the new covenant, and while Hosea would have had in mind Israel, this set the scene for the possibility of a future ‘my son’. Kaiser I believe has an article in JETS that draws this out more. He also is more descriptive on how he sees fulfillment in his short book ‘Back to the Future: Hints for Interpreting Biblical Prophecy’.
26 May 2009 at 6.19 am
Kaiser believes you should start with passages that speak clearly and teach on the issue you wish to deal with, and then let the other passages fit into the system you’ve already parsed and drawn out.
From my perspective this is a misguided methodology when one is dealing with the NTs use of the OT. What lies behind this methodology, and what is clear in Kaiser’s essay in this book, is that the NT authors used the OT in the same way. It flattens out and otherwise varied use of the OT that we see in the NT. It also raises the question of ‘what is clear and to whom’? For instance, Matthew’s use of Hosea 11.1 is clear to me from my viewpoint in that Matthew clearly reinterpreted Israel’s Scripture in light of the coming of Christ in a way that Hosea would not have recognized (i.e., Matthew takes a historical statement by Hosea and interprets it as a prophetic fulfillment in Christ as the true Israel). This verse, however, might not be clear to someone, such as Kaiser, who wants to say that the NT authors all interpreted the OT in a normal, historical-grammatical way.
I’m also not quite sure one can argue the ‘chair’ passages that Kaiser picks should actually function in the way Kaiser wants them to function (and I’m still not sure why the rhetoric ‘chair passages’ are used or to what it is referring). To be honest, I was as befuddled at Kaiser’s essay as the reviewer was. It was unclear what Kaiser was really getting at in his entire essay. It was not well written, well organized, or well argued. The critique, however harsh it may seem, was well deserved.
As for the Hosea passage, I’ve not heard or read Kaiser saying anything other than that Matthew interpreted the text via regular historical-grammatical hermeneutics. Again, when one claims that all of the authors in the NT used the exact same hermeneutical method, it raises questions as it seems to flatten out the NT and causes one to argue using (from my perspective) far reaching exegetical gymnastics in order to prove ones point.
This is why I like McCartney and Enns’ (among others’) position: that the NT writers had the same hermeneutical goals (Christotelic) and used different, although culturally accepted, hermeneutical methods. Not only is that methodologically consistent when dealing the the NTs use of the OT, but I think it also makes the best sense of the texts.
28 May 2009 at 8.47 am
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