A Canonical Approach to Isaiah 5:1-7

The pre-critical approach to the prophetic literature of the Bible assumes that everything contained in a prophetic scroll was attributable to the prophet named in the scroll’s superscription. Furthermore, it considers a prophetic text, predictive or not on its face, to be open to fulfillment at any point along the temporal continuum, for the first or a supplementary time. In this approach, the Bible is a latent text, able and willing to grab you by the throat at any time.

The historical-critical approach, two or three hundred years old, ascribes to the prophet under whose name a scroll has been transmitted any word that is explicable in terms of the age and circumstances in which he lived and to which he might have responded. This is a different standard. In order to apply it, a full use of all available historical evidence and the application of the principle of historical analogy are paramount. This approach tends to set to one side any exploration of criteria on the basis of which the prophetic corpus was and might still be appropriated. It also tends to assume that whatever is not attributable to the prophet named in a superscription is of less interest or of no interest in comparison to “authentic prophecy,” that to which a name and date can be associated with a relatively high degree of plausibility. In this approach, the Bible is historicized within a rationalistic paradigm and kept at arm’s length. If one is not exhausted by the prep work required to read the Bible in this way, it is still possible for its message to come through. The message may even come through in technicolor and in high definition.

Another approach, one that seeks to have the best of both worlds, is worth considering. In this approach, the senses a text has had, from its inception to the present, are explored in terms of their interrelations and contradictions. The goal is to allow the later senses to be revitalized in light of the earlier, and the earlier to be put in perspective by the later. If this approach is undertaken within the framework of a metanarrative associated with a polity called into existence by the speaking “I” of the larger corpus of texts of which prophetic literature is a part, and the text understood as the word of God here and now in some sense, the text is life-enhancing to the polity that stands within the narrative and acts as a critical check in that context. This approach is rightly thought of as a canonical approach to reading the Bible.

One might wonder what that would look like in practice, in the case of a text like Isa 5:1-7. It’s hard to say. It is not a recognized method of interpretation of the Bible among very many academics. It’s a matter of intellectual and spiritual exhaustion. Who can control the relevant secondary literature? Who can engage with the text at so many levels at the same time?

It is the way, this canonical, intertextual way, that biblical texts are read in the synagogue and church. Biblical scholars, not just rabbis, priests, and pastors, might try approaching the biblical text in this fashion. It is however necessary to give up any pretense of comprehensiveness or of having adopted a neutral point of view. 

Comments

[Mitchell Powell]

It is however necessary to give up any pretense of comprehensiveness or of having adopted a neutral point of view.

I couldn't agree with you more. Although I haven't put in the years of biblical scholarship you have (biblical studies have only been my main fascination for about three years, since I was fifteen), I can't help but feel glad to see someone willing to drop the pretense of neutrality towards the Bible. All too often someone attacks a text (this applies to fundies of both the pro- and anti- Bible persuasions) with loads of assumptions, all the while deluding themselves and others that they are treated the Bible with all the precision of mathematics.

[JohnFH]

Mitchell, I like your blogging very much. Keep it up.

[justin bieber supra]

If you wish to be the best man, you must suffer the bitterest of the bitter.