exegetical presuppositions

Longenecker (Bibilical Exegesis 93-95) points out that it has been observed that “it is doubtful whether we can hope to understand the contents of any mind whose presuppositions we have not yet learned to recognize.” If we are to appreciate the exegetical practices of the apostolic writers, it is necessary to have an awareness of their basic hermeneutical outlooks and attitudes. He then lists four major exegetical presuppositions in early Christian preaching.

Corporate Solidarity. In the first place, the concept of “corporate solidarity” or “corporate personality” had a profound effect upon the exegesis of early Jewish Christians. The concept has been defined as “that important Semitic complex of thought in which there is a constant oscillation between the individual and the group—family, tribe, or nation—to which he belongs, so that the king or some other representative figure may be said to embody the group, or the group may be said to sum up the host of individuals.” The precise nature of the relationships involved is not always entirely clear from the literature of the Jews, nor from that of their semitic neighbors. Probably this is due in large measure to the fact that “ancient literature never does fit exactly into our categories.” But though there are uncertainties as to precisely how the idea expressed itself in ancient life generally and as to the degree of influence it exerted in specific instances in the literature, there seems to be little question of its presence in the structure of Jewish and early Jewish Christian thought.

In biblical exegesis, the concept of corporate solidarity comes to the fore in the treatment of relationships between the nation or representative figures within the nation, on the one hand, and the elect remnant or the Messiah, on the other. It allows the focus of attention to “pass without explanation or explicit indication from one to the other, in a fluidity of transition which seems to us unnatural.”

Correspondences in History. Stemming in part from the concept of corporate solidarity is the understanding of history or, at any rate, of the history of the people of God as evidencing a unity in its various parts which is there by divine ordination. For both Jew and Jewish Christian, historical occurrences are “built upon a certain pattern corresponding to God’s design for man His creature.” This is but one aspect of a larger Hebrew-Christian Weltanschauung, wherein the nature of man, the relations between man and man (contemporary, past and future), the interaction between man and the universe, and the relation of both to God, their Creator and Redeemer, are viewed in wholistic fashion. In such a view, history is neither endlessly cyclical nor progressively developing due to forces inherent in it. Nor can it be considered in a secular manner. Rather, in all its movements and in all its varied episodes, it is expressive of the divine intent and explicating the divine will. With such an understanding of history, early Christians were prepared to trace correspondences between God’s activity of the past and his action in the present—between events then and events now, between persons then and persons now. Such correspondences were not just analogous in nature, or to be employed by way of illustration. For the early Christians they were incorporated into history by divine intent, and therefore to be taken typologically. Their presence in the history of a former day is to be considered as elucidating and furthering the redemptive message of the present.

Eschatological Fulfilment. An obvious presupposition also affecting early Jewish Christian interpretation is the consciousness of living in the days of eschatological fulfilment Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost begins with the assertion that the “last days” are being actualized now. And this theme is recurrent throughout the preaching of the earliest Christians. As with the covenanters of Qumran, early Jewish believers in Jesus understood their ancient Scriptures in an eschatological context. Unlike the Dead Sea sectarians, however, whose eschatology was mainly proleptic and anticipated, Christians were convinced that the coming of the Messianic Age was an accomplished fact. Messiahship had been realized in Jesus of Nazareth, and the last days inaugurated with him. While awaiting final consummation, their eschatology was rooted in and conditioned by what had already happened in the immediate past. The decisive event had occurred, and, in a sense, all else was epilogue.

Messianic Presence. In addition, as F. F. Bruce reminds us, the New Testament interpretation of the Old Testament is not only eschatological but Christological.” For the earliest believers, this meant (1) that the living presence of Christ, through his Spirit, was to be considered a determining factor in all their biblical exegesis, and (2) that the Old Testament was to be interpreted Christocenrically. W. D. Davies has pointed out that at least in popular and haggadic circles within Judaism, there existed the expectation that with the coming of the Messiah the enigmatic and obscure in the Torah “would be made plain.” And such an expectation seems to have become a settled conviction among the early Christians, as evidenced by the exegetical practices inherent in their preaching.