Evans, Robert. Reception History, Tradition, and Biblical Interpretation: Gadamer and Jauss in Current Practice. Scriptural Traces: Critical Perspectives on the Reception and Influence of the Bible. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. 328 pp. $112.00 (cloth).

Abstract

Previous articleNext article FreeBook ReviewsEvans, Robert. Reception History, Tradition, and Biblical Interpretation: Gadamer and Jauss in Current Practice. Scriptural Traces: Critical Perspectives on the Reception and Influence of the Bible. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. 328 pp. $112.00 (cloth).Jeff JayJeff JayUniversity of Chicago. Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreIn this work Robert Evans articulates a genuine set of hermeneutical problems within biblical studies, which, he argues, as a discipline is currently threatened by fragmentation into competing methods relating to disparate (and often conflicting) scholarly interests in historical-critical analysis, ecclesial tradition, cultural context, critical theory, and theological methods. Evans boldly argues that the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer, supplemented by that of Gadamer’s student Hans Robert Jauss, provides integrity and coherence to these rival approaches. Overall Evans underlines that for all biblical interpreters, whatever their preferred approach, their own investments and finitudes are inescapable. Interpretation remains a self-reflexive act, and thus all understanding becomes self-understanding. Herein lies the true meaning of Wirkungsgeschichte, which is not primarily a “history of effects” nor a method of interpretation but a descriptive principle, articulating the way in which the consciousness of the interpreter is already affected by the very history being interpreted.Evans first addresses historical-critical analysis, which, he argues, plays a pivotal role even within a framework that privileges wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewusstsein. For Gadamer, recognizing the otherness of the text is a universal phenomenon in all understanding. Since interpretation is no naive assimilation, a genuine awareness of the text’s otherness must emerge. Nonetheless, Evans emphasizes that historical-critical analysis does not yield a definitive, singular meaning; rather, this phase in understanding is hypothetical, preliminary, plural, and iterative, a reconstruction of “the possibilities of the first reception” (45). The “hypothetical first-reception” proceeds from a historically contingent interpreter, and the projected historical horizon immediately recombines with the interpreter’s own life horizon (43).What is crucial is that there is always a reflexive and dialogical character to the process of understanding, an ongoing fusion and tension between past and present.Evans then considers Wirkungsgeschichte and the competing criteria by which scholars choose which receptions of a biblical text should be selected as significant in compilations of reception history. Evans evaluates two emerging patterns in order “to clarify what is at stake, hermeneutically, in different forms of practice” (115). The first group “valorizes trajectories of interpretative tradition, which may be seen as significant, exemplary or normative within an ecclesial or theological tradition” (115). What emerges here is a “canon of exemplary commentators,” wherein major theologians writing mostly in the commentary form produce the receptions that matter. The second group valorizes receptions that have been neglected in literature and the arts, which sometimes pose challenges to conservative or intellectualist traditions. Evans concludes that both trends are valuable aspects of Wirkungsgeschichte when understood in the Gadamerian sense, but here too, no matter which trend one follows, strategies of selection involve judgments that reflect one’s own place within a tradition.In his treatment of theological interpretation Evans zeros in on Gadamer’s claim that “lived affinity” between interpreters and texts is unavoidable; in Evans’s words, “understanding the text presupposes a relationship to what it says” (248). Likewise, in biblical scholarship interpretation is determined by a lived affinity that is itself theological because it is an affinity that emerges from one’s belief or unbelief in God. This rather provocative claim has far-reaching implications, and Evans intrepidly articulates them. On this view, historical-critical exegesis does not proceed as detached or detachable but is “part of an ongoing theological engagement and an ‘application of the texts’” (249). In terms of what actually happens when one understands a biblical text, historical and theological interpretations do not and cannot proceed separately because “the legacy of a text is part of our self-understanding” (250). For Evans, Gadamer’s hermeneutics implies that historical-critical study proceeds as a theological enterprise, a claim at which not a few historical critics will undoubtedly balk.This aspect of Gadamerian theory has elicited charges that Gadamer promotes conservatism. Evans quickly underlines, however, that Gadamer’s hermeneutics has nothing to do with preserving one’s own position. In the genuine dialogue between text and reader there must be a readiness to have expectations thwarted; the dialogue raises to consciousness an interpreter’s prejudices, which are provoked, and hence creates an opening for self-critique.Within this argument Evans intersperses several chapters devoted to a case study of Romans 13:1–7, Colossians 3:18, and Ephesians 5:21–22, which are texts that require the subordination of Christians to government authorities or of wives to husbands. His goal is not so much to argue for and defend his own interpretation of these texts as it is to illustrate that the hermeneutical principles he has set forth are operative in biblical scholarship, where there is inevitable self-involvement in all interpretation. He expressly does not develop his own interpretation of these texts: “I have resisted a final and formal presentation of my own understanding/application of my case study texts” (278). But why? Is this not what hermeneutics is about in the end?Perhaps this is a serious oversight because Evans inadvertently casts Gadamer’s hermeneutics as irrelevant for interpreters who desire to get to the business of crafting and defending fresh interpretations of biblical texts. Certainly Gadamer’s rich hermeneutical philosophy does not leave one high and dry in one’s attempt to understand. Certainly it does not leave one merely to sample the historically contingent analyses of other interpreters. But, unfortunately, that is where Evans’s case study leaves one, with the yearning to see how one might, informed by Gadamer’s philosophy, actually risk an interpretation that unfolds the self-reflexive dialogue that fuses and alters horizons.Gadamer allows Evans to demonstrate coherence in the disparate practices of contemporary biblical scholarship and to affirm a plurality of methods wherein historical-critical analysis, the study of the history of effects, and theological interpretation all unfold dynamically in the attempt to understand. I am convinced that Gadamerian hermeneutics does in fact illuminate much of what actually happens in biblical scholarship, but whether this has the potential to unite a divided discipline is doubtful, because, as Evans himself admits, this is an advocacy that “will not suit all of its practitioners” (277). Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Religion Volume 97, Number 1January 2017 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/688985 For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.