Bogdan Gabriel Bucur. Scripture Re-envisioned: Christophanic Exegesis and the Making of a Christian Bible. BAC 13.

Abstract

How did early Christians read the theophanies of the OT? In his rich and extensively researched volume (the first of a projected three-part project), Bucur seeks to answer this question by situating early Christian exegetical practice within a performative, liturgical context that discerned in OT theophanies the presence of Christ. He is dissatisfied with the nomenclature of “typology,” foreshadowing, prefiguring, or allegory, and even rewritten Bible—all of which fail to appreciate that early Christians regarded the real presence of the to-be-incarnate Son in the OT. Since exegesis occurred in or for liturgical settings, it is insufficient to identify this as a purely literary phenomenon. Thus, Bucur proposes the term christophanic exegesis as capturing early Christian assumptions better.Eight of the book’s ten chapters trace the reception history of a key theophanic text(s): Gen 18, Exod 3 and 33, Pss 98/99 and 131/132 (cf. Exod 24), Isa 6; Hab 3:2 (LXX); Dan 7; and 3 (there is no chapter devoted to Ezek 1, but discussion of the text does appear within other chapters). Each chapter follows a similar pattern. Bucur attends to features within the text itself that generated speculation within Jewish and Christian interpretive tradition. He traces Christian interpretations through the first millennium (and occasionally beyond) in a wide array of doctrinal, apologetical, and polemical texts; in liturgical materials (liturgy, hymnography, and sermons); and in iconography (several color images illustrating visual exegesis are included). He consistently finds evidence that Christians initially and most commonly regarded theophanies as direct encounters of Christ (this gave way to allegorical trinitarian interpretations only later). Consequently, the categories “typology” or “foreshadowing” often employed by scholars to account for these interpretations amounts to a scholarly “blind spot.”Bucur supplies his corrective to this blind spot in the first and final chapters of the book. He begins the book with an analysis of the encounter with Jesus on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24. The disciples failed to recognize Jesus because the glory of his resurrected state rendered him invisible to those who are not open to the presence of God. Thus, they needed their eyes opened to the reality of Christ present and in Scripture. For Bucur, this serves well as a paradigm for how Christians approached theophany passages. Exegesis (opening the Scriptures) occurred in a liturgical context (Jesus breaking bread) and with a transformational focus (our hearts burned within us). Scholars tracing Christian reception of theophanies must be sensitive to the aims and posture of Christian authors themselves. Insofar as language of “typology” or “allegory” overlooks the identification of Christ in and as the object of scriptural theophanies in Christian reception, and reduces it to “exegetical or theological convention” (p. 265), it is ultimately unsatisfactory. In the final chapter, Bucur turns to these terms directly, contending that they unhelpfully precondition scholars’ evaluations of Christian sources, not least in being defined in distinction from each other. Christ was not only found in representational form, or by way of analogy to biblical precursors, but encountered as an epiphany by Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, and others. Christian interpreters arrived at this through “performative exegesis” (a category borrowed from Geza Vermes). In a liturgical context, Christians desired to reenact the experience of figures in the text and so participate with them in that experience.There is much to commend in this volume. Bucur has canvased a dizzying range of sources, scholarly disciplines, and time periods in a way that few would dare to attempt. So far as I could tell from my own research areas, he consistently displays awareness of relevant scholarship and maintains a focused argument without minimizing distinctive elements. Moreover, his call to attend more appreciatively to the aims and context of early Christian biblical interpretation is a welcome one.The primary contribution of the book is to point to the intersection of the identification of Christ in scriptural theophanies with the hermeneutical context and aims of Christian interpreters. However, much of the book’s content is given over to establishing only that Christian interpreters identified Christ in scriptural theophanies. This slippage yields two interrelated weaknesses. First, after cataloging the reception of Christophanic exegesis, Bucur devotes surprisingly little space to reflecting on the relationship between this exegetical emphasis and the liturgical context in which it was nourished. Thus, there is not much demonstration in the book of the claim in the final chapter that all Christians were engaged in “performative exegesis.” What in the sources privileges this explanation over, say, a purely theological one, as may be advanced to account for Christological readings of non-theophanic passages? Second, Bucur’s arguments for the “earliest” Christian reception implies an interest in chronology; however, when a trinitarian interpretation of theophanies may be just as old, he pivots to pointing out that a Christophanic reading was the more “influential” tradition. Although Christophanic exegesis does appear to be generally earlier, this may strike some as inconsistent argumentation. Bucur might have drawn more attention to the performative, liturgical contexts of these interpretations and less to establishing simply whom Christians identified as appearing in scriptural theophanies. These criticisms aside, the book is a rich catalog that advances an important and welcome invitation to reconsider how early Christians read Scripture.