The Hermeneutics of the Apostolic Proclamation: The Center of Paul’s Method of Scriptural Interpretation. By Matthew W. Bates.

Abstract

I n this study, based on a Ph.D. dissertation submitted to Notre Dame University, Matthew Bates seeks to analyse the hermeneutical method underlying Paul’s exegesis of Scripture. In doing so, he surveys and challenges the work of many scholars who have worked in this field, including C. H. Dodd, Dietrich-Alex Koch, Christopher Stanley, Richard Hays, Ross Wagner, and Francis Watson. Bates’s central argument is that ‘Paul received, utilized, and extended an apostolic, kerygmatic narrative tradition centered on certain key events in the Christ story as his primary interpretative lens—a narrative tradition that already contained a built-in hermeneutic’ (pp. 56 f.). The recognition that Paul was a Jewish interpreter who used Jewish methods of exegesis must therefore be balanced by the fact that he read Jewish scriptures through the filter of this apostolic proclamation. In defence of his thesis, Bates explores 1 Cor. 13:3–11 and Rom. 1:1–6, tracing a kerygmatic narrative which underlies both. He then looks at various figurative methods employed by Paul—typology, allegory, and parable—but suggests that these are simply literary devices he employed to clothe the underlying meaning of the texts he quotes.