Historical Handbook of Major Biblical Interpreters

Abstract

Historical Handbook of Major Biblical Interpreters, edited by Donald K. McKim. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998. Pp. xxiii + 643. $29.99. Seemingly similar editions and works of reference occasionally appear simultaneously, suggesting a perceived need or, at least, shrewd awareness in distinct editorial offices of Francis Cornford's famous academic principle of ripe versus unripe time. To complement, therefore, Abingdon Press's Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation, edited by John H. Hayes (1999), we have the present Handbook. I stress complementarity: the Abingdon dictionary is avowedly ecumenical in selection of topics and contributors, proudly eclectic in coverage of methods and personalities. This InterVarsity compendium focuses on a relatively brief list of great names, with their lives and works assessed (as expected from this publisher) from a conservative point of theological vision. The Handbook appears in a single volume of clear, double-column type, enhanced with genuinely useful indices to persons, subjects, and contents. More than a hundred biographical entries are organized into temporal blocks (periods of church history): Early Church, Middle 16th & 17th Centuries, 18th & 19th Centuries, 20th Century Europe, 20th Century North America. The biographical entries are arranged within these sections alphabetically. This editorial arrangement encourages selective consultation rather than studious reading: to follow (for example) Jonathan Edwards with J. G. Eichhorn, or Kierkegaard with Bishop Lightfoot, sheds little comparative light. Scholarly practitioners of different linguistic, religious, and methodological traditions cannot convincingly be compressed into vaguely similar chronological categories. This peculiar arrangement is somewhat ameliorated by summary (but extremely competent) bibliographic and methodological survey essays prefacing each chronological section. Readers (or those simply consulting) this encyclopedia might have better been served if these essays had been redacted into a comprehensive introduction keyed and cross-referenced to the biographical entries arranged in traditional alphabetical order. That comprehensive essay could be separately issued as a valuable alternative to handbooks such as Brevard S. Childs's Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979). A singular strength of these biographical entries and the several introductory essays resides in the relatively full coverage of relevant traditional Anglophone and German scholarship. A notable weakness is the failure to incorporate more recent French (and, in general, Roman Catholic) scholarship. Many a biographical and exegetical article pertinent to this Handbook, for example, can be found in the Dictionnaire d'histoire et de geographie ecclesiastiques (Paris: Letouzey & Ane, 1912-). Readers will also have a different understanding of biblical hermeneutic traditions from per-using the eight volumes of the series La Bible de tour les temps (Paris: Beauchesne, 1984-89), edited by C. Mondeseret, A.-M. La Bonnardiere et al., or the English version, with notable substitutions and additions, in publication by Notre Dame Press (1977-; ed. C. Kannengeiser, P. Bright, P. Blowers, et al.). Readers may also wish to consult another recent encyclopedic volume: Augustine through the Ages, ed. A. D. Fitzgerald et al. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), especially for additional information on biblical studies in late antiquity, the medieval era, and the Reformation and its Catholic response. Each of the several introductory essays will inform student and scholar. The criteria of selection for the biographical entries, however, are neither clear nor justified. In the first two sections (comprising the early church through the late medieval period), the biographical entries suggest inclusion because of recognizable names rather than profound importance for biblical study: Origen, of course, is there, but what of the Cappadocians-Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory Nazianzus (cf. …