Exegese Biblical

The 2008 SBL meeting in Boston included a panel review session on James R. Royse's book, Scribal Habits in Early Greek New Testament Papyri (NTTSD 36; Leiden: Brill, 2007). A number of the reviews of this important work are presented here, along with Royse's response. The papers were produced as oral presentations and have been kept in their original shape, except for some straightforward corrections.

Orthographic variation within the manuscripts of the Greek NT is seldom a cause célèbre beyond the ranks of diehard textual critics. Even among these most will concede that orthographic irregularities amount to little more than evidence of scribal incompetency or inconsistency in their spelling practices. To find the same word both spelled correctly and misspelled with a single manuscript b the same scribe is not uncommon. It approaches the  norm. The critical editions of our Greek NTs have therefore opted, on good grounds, to exclude textual variants displaying non-standardized spelling. To include them would make it impossible for anyone to use the critical apparatuses in a meaningful way. The deluge of senseless errors would drown out variants of demonstrable textual significance.

Jesus' interpretation of the Hebrew scriptures is skillfully eclectic, employing techniques of rejection, interiorization, prioritization, and synthesis. The eclectic nature of Christ's interpretation of the Hebrew scriptures specifically precludes any ascription of the contemporary strategies of rigorism or inerrantism to his hermeneutic. Instead, Christ's hermeneutic is best described as situational, agapic, and open—hence pastoral. It is situational insofar as no hermeneutical rule can predetermine how scripture will be applied to a situation. It is agapic insofar as all texts are interpreted in service of the divine love and repaired human relationship. It is open insofar as it: 1. is characterized by bricolage, hence open to experimentation with a variety of resources, 2. resists any rigidly predetermined interpretative outcome, thereby preserving openness to agapic outcomes, 3. valorizes the micronarrative, and 4. rejects totalization. Ultimately, Jesus' interpretation of scripture is pastoral, preferring human flourishing through scripture to blind obedience of scripture.

Read the full article at: http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/opth.2016.2.issue-1/opth-2016-0056/opth-2016-0056.xml?format=INT

This volume offers the first in-depth analysis of the literary structure of Hebrews against the background of its most frequently mentioned Sitz im Leben, the ancient synagogue. In the context of the liturgical year and its reconstructed cycle of readings, the text is newly interpreted on the basis of Exod 31:18–32:35 and Jer 31:31–34, so as to demonstrate that Hebrews was an ancient homily for the most important fast-day, Tisha be-Av, on which the destruction of the two temples was commemorated.
The first part presents 20th- and 21st-century scholarship on Hebrews and a new structural analysis. The second part offers a detailed discussion of the ancient synagogue and its liturgy. This allows the reconstruction of the readings on which the text of Hebrews is based and a positioning within the liturgical year. The resulting thesis, that Hebrews is an exhortative homily for Tisha be-Av, is confirmed through a motivic analysis of all the biblical texts read on this fast-day. On the basis of the hermeneutical key thereby established, the third part offers seven cumulative readings of the entire text: structural, contextual, intertextual, rhetorical, theological, socio-historical, and hermeneutical-critical. These generate new interpretations and insights within the horizon of current Hebrews scholarship.
The present monograph is the first to connect research on the ancient synagogue and its liturgy with a comprehensive interpretation of Hebrews that also discusses alternative form-critical avenues and establishes intertextual connections, especially to relevant rabbinic texts. The examination is directed not only to those with a specific interest in Hebrews, but also to scholars and students of the New Testament, Theology, Jewish Studies, and Religious Studies.

*****

Der vorliegende Band bietet erstmals eine fundierte Analyse der literarischen Struktur des Hebräers vor dem Hintergrund seines meistgenannten Sitzes im Leben, der antiken Synagoge. Im Kontext des liturgischen Jahres sowie des rekonstruierten Lesezyklus’ wird die Schrift neu auf der Basis der Lesungen aus Ex 31,18–32,35 und Jer 31,31–34 als antike Homilie zum wichtigsten Fasttag von Tischa be-Aw, an dem der Zerstörung der beiden Tempel gedacht wurde, erschlossen.
Die Untersuchung stellt im ersten Teil die Hebräerforschung des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts sowie eine neue Strukturanalyse vor. Der zweite Teil fügt eine profunde Untersuchung der antiken Synagoge sowie der antiken Synagogenhomilie im liturgischen Kontext hinzu. Diese erlaubt die Rekonstruktion der dem Hebräertext zugrunde liegenden Lesungen und eine Positionierung innerhalb des liturgischen Jahres. Die resultierende These, dass der Hebräer eine mahnende Homilie zu Tischa be-Aw sei, wird im Rahmen einer Motivanalyse sämtlicher zu diesem Fasttag gelesenen biblischen Texte bekräftigt. Im dritten Teil wird der gesamte Text auf der Basis des etablierten hermeneutischen Schlüssels sieben kumulativen Lesungen unterzogen, einer strukturellen, kontextuellen, intertextuellen, rhetorischen, theologischen, sozio-historischen sowie einer hermeneutisch-kritischen. Diese generieren vor dem Horizont der aktuellen Hebräerforschung neue Interpretationsmöglichkeiten und Einsichten.
Die vorliegende Monographie verbindet zum ersten Mal Forschungen zur antiken Synagoge und ihrer Liturgie mit einer kohärenten Interpretation des Hebräertextes, die auch alternative formkritische Ansätze thematisiert sowie intertextuelle Bezüge insbesondere zu relevanten rabbinischen Texten benennt. Die Ausführungen richten sich somit nicht nur an solche mit einem spezifischen Interesse am Hebräer, sondern auch an ForscherInnen und StudentInnen des Neuen Testaments, der Theologie, der Judaistik sowie der Religionswissenschaften.

This article studies the role of theological preunderstanding in interpreting the text of Scripture in the middle of the fourth century CE. It investigates Hilary of Poitier’s use of Scripture in Trinitarian controversies, his hermeneutical approach in his De Trinitate, and his theological exegesis of John 1:1-2. It is contended that Hilary’s pro-Nicene theology determined his particular reading of the opening verses of the Gospel of John. The article demonstrates how this exactly worked. Encountering the exegesis of Arius/‘Arians’/Latin Homoeans, Hilary attempted to show that the Son was eternally born from the Father and therefore, one could not speak about the temporal or even pre-temporal beginning of the Son’s existence. The Son already ‘was’ ‘in the beginning’.

It is usually thought that only one being can be all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving. Challenging this monotheist conviction, I propose a universe ruled by two deities: ‘day shift God’ oversees the events that occur while the sun is up, whereas ‘night shift God’ oversees the events that occur while the sun is down. I survey objections to this proposal and conclude that the real obstacle is not an argument, but an aesthetic preference.

The publication of Josef Schmid's landmark work on the textual history of the Apocalypse seemingly established the Andreas Text Type as a fourth-century product. The primary evidence for Schmid's claim came from the fourth-century corrections of the Apocalypse in Codex Sinaiticus, corrections which bore a close resemblance to the Andreas text of the Apocalypse. Schmid's reconstruction, however, is flawed. The fourth-century corrections he identified are actually from the seventh-century. The data supporting a fourth-century Andreas text type does not exist. Schmid's widely influential error appears to have been based on a misreading of Milne and Skeat's "Scribes and Correctors of the Codex Sinaiticus."

It has become fashionable to bemoan the state of diachronic biblical criticism since the application of its method involves subjective judgments. Should diachronic criticism be laid to rest? This programmatic essay engages Popper's view of scientific propositions as falsifiable hypotheses, and reevaluates the importance of alternate hypotheses. The discussion considers the way the different purposes of scholars inform their practice of method and their evaluation of opposing explanations. The methodological observations are illustrated with examples from the Covenant Code and Deut 1-12.

"The early papyri of Luke are remarkable for their diversity. Six pre-fourth century witnesses are extant. The content, date, provenance, textual relationships, and scribal habits of each vary from fragment to fragment. Their texts range from a few paltry lines to nearly an entire gospel. All were produced in the second, third, or fourth centuries. All are from Egypt--though their precise sites of discovery differ. The nature and frequency of their scribal variations also fluctuate. Nonsense readings, itacisms, and similar orthographic 'deviations' prevail in some; others exhibit little to none of these. The incidence of nomina sacra and numerical abbreviations varies from scribe to scribe, even line to line. Their significance is debated. The amount of surviving text is at once both an accident of history and a byproduct of particular scribal habits. The rates of additions, omissions, transpositions, and the like can be tracked to the individual copyist. Human hands have shaped the bequeathals of history and the absence of 'expected' readings continue to hold the imagination hostage. Questions swirl over textual alignments, while the very nomenclature of 'text types' is decried in some quarters. More than simple artifacts of early Christian piety, these papyri disclose the fault lines of Luke's textual history--well in advance of the great fourth-century codices."

Resumo Alguns pesquisadores destacam a força retórica da mensagem do livro do Apocalipse de João, como é o caso, por exemplo, de Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Lewis Snyder e Jean Felipe de Assis. Neste artigo, apresentaremos para discussão o método da análise retórica proposto por Roland Meynet com suas vantagens e limites para uma compreensão dos hinos do Apocalipse. Observam-se algumas especificidades no Apocalipse para o êxito da aplicação de tal método, como, por exemplo, o grego raro do livro com interferências das línguas hebraica e aramaica na estrutura gramatical e o contato com a cultura greco-romana. Serão expostas outras abordagens recentes dos hinos do Apocalipse e as metodologias escolhidas pelos pesquisadores do tema em contraste com a retórica bíblica. Por fim, será verificada a dificuldade de aplicar o método de Meynet aos hinos do Apocalipse e qual seria uma opção metodológica possível. Palavras-chave Apocalipse. Retórica Bíblica. Hinos. Metodologia. Abstract Some researchers highlight the rhetorical force of the message in the Book of Revelation of John, such as, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Lewis Snyder and Jean Felipe de Assis. In this article, the method of rhetorical analysis proposed by Roland Meynet with its advantages and limits for an understanding of the hymns of the Book of Revelation will be presented for discussion. Some specificities can be noticed in Apocalypse for the successful application of such a method, such as the rare Greek language in the book that has interferences of the Hebrew and Aramaic languages in the grammatical structure and contact with the Greco-Roman culture. Other recent approaches to the hymns of the Book of Revelation and the methodologies chosen by the researchers of the theme in contrast to the biblical rhetoric will be presented. Finally, we will verify the difficulty of applying Meynet"s method to the hymns of the Book of Revelation and what would be a possible methodological option.

Fig. 4 before and after comparison of my simple reversal (repair) of Dr. Edwin Thiele's two-step stumble into ruin of his chronology, (published by my 825-page two-part treatise finalized version between 20 June and 1 July of 2018, from research begun in 1999 and solved in 2005) transparently demonstrates that my Fig. 4 2005 correction of Thiele's compound error, preserving all of Thiele's renowned biblical bi-directional Judah-Israel synchronisms without any further modification of Thiele's chronology on my part, automatically exposed 25 extrabiblical synchronisms validating Thiele's chronology as he would have finished it without resorting to any biblical emendations, had he not uncritically accepted contemporary Assyriology's 701 BC synchronism between Sennacherib's 3rd campaign against Judah in Hezekiah's 14th year simultaneously recorded in Sennacherib's annals and in 3 different biblical books, 2 Kings, 2 Chronicles, and Isaiah as the Hebrew Bible's most prominent extrabiblical synchronism. With his originally flawless internal biblical Hebrew kings chronology offset from the truth by 1 year late (Sennacherib's first 5 years became corrupted by their leading scholars as a localized “wrinkle” in the otherwise perfect Assyrian chronology), no other Assyrian synchronism to Thiele's initial Hebrew kings chronology was possible, leading Thiele to spoil his originally perfect internal biblical chronology by emending 2 Kings 15:30-33, which enabled Thiele's synchronism of Shalmaneser III's 6th year annals 853 BC Battle of Qarqar with the 1 Kings 22 death of Ahab, exactly 12 years preceding Shalmaneser III's 18th year annal's receipt of Jehu's tribute, which Thiele offered as clinching evidence for the correctness of his solution (more below).

My result fully preserves Leslie McFall's 1991 added internal biblical coregencies, and Rodger C. Young's 2003 half-year retro-shift of Solomon's death, which preserved Thiele's basic chronological conclusions. Fig. 4 corrective two-step removal of the 2 Kings 15:30-33 last of Thiele's biblical emendations (also finding Ahaz's Isa. 6:1 coregency start), exposed the purely Hebrew biblical (Masoretic Text as confirmed by its Dead Sea Scrolls antecedents) chronology of Thiele as he would have essentially finished it exclusively by his renowned biblical method had he not stumbled by two steps into overall compound error of + 1 year (faulty Assyriology) - 4 years (emendation of 2 Kgs. 15:30-33) = - 3 years net shift. This is all that I did, leaving Thiele's chronology as I received it from McFall and Young otherwise untouched. Fig. 4 repair of Thiele's self-inflicted damage shifted Thiele's chronology overall forward by 3 years preceding the 40 years interval of its repair between Uzziah's death and Manasseh's coregency, where both chronologies (before & after repair) are compared.

The post-Exodus chronology until its 480th year in the 1 Kings 6:1 4th year of Solomon measured time as defined by Moses' new spring-to-spring (ss) calendar, whose Exodus 12:2 “beginning of months ... first month of the year” was the Exodus month. According to it, Caleb and Joshua alone among the 12 spies sent in its 2nd year, 3rd month (Numbers 10:11, 29 - 13:20-23) delivered a faithful report of Canaan urging its immediate invasion (Nu. 13:30), returning after 40 days in its 4th month marking Canaan's grape harvest (http://www.angelfire.com/pa2/passover/jewish-calendar-months.html).

Counting fall-to-fall (ff) Jubilee cycles (JC) back from the biblically recorded 49th year end of a Jubilee cycle in the Appx. A chart 11/19 ff702 BC 14th year of Hezekiah exposed by the unmistakable Ex. 25:2-13, 22-23 dual-fallow year Jubilee cycle signature (successive fallow 49th year of the old JC as followed by the fallow 1st [figuratively “50th”] year of the new JC) of 2 Kings 19:29 and Isaiah 37:39, we discover the absolute chronology of the abortion of the JC start caused by the failure of the intended 2nd spring-to-spring (ss) year of the Exodus mobilization to invade Canaan. Fig. 1 exposes the originally intended start of the JC as falling in the 7th ss year of the Exodus instead of its historical 56th (= 7 + 7x7) year, starting 56 - 40 = 16 years after the punitive 40 ss years of Hebrew wandering in the deserts of Midian by which the rebellious generation of the Exodus (males at least 20 years old at the Exodus) died. Not only was the JC originally planned to start in the biblically schematic 7th (ss) year of the Exodus, but its total length as cut off by the 10 JC's of the Daniel 9:24-27 70 weeks of years prophecy (whose 70th was Messianic), was intended to be a biblically schematic 30 instead of its actual 29. This exposes God's leading and pleading, but never forcing His people, guiding history under His protection (Genesis 3, Job 1) to play out through the strife and errors of universal free will (Malachi 3:6).

My correction of Thiele's at first perfected but by afterthought marred biblical chronology builds upon its foundational part I, correcting the chronology of Sennacherib's first five years, which revealed 702 BC as the true date of Sennacherib's invasion of Judah, enabling correction of Dr. Edwin Thiele's error in his widely accepted chronology of the Hebrew kings. Part I proved that Sennacherib's third campaign, biblically recorded in king Hezekiah of Judah's 14th regnal year, did not take place in 701 BC as Thiele had trusted for the cornerstone of his chronology, but rather in 702 BC, vindicating and perfecting his work. The lion's share of credit for my having discovered the ultimate biblical chronology belongs to Thiele (1943) as given improvement and correction by his indirectly participating colleagues Valerius Coucke (1928), Leslie McFall (1991), and Rodger C. Young (2003) who advanced Thiele's work without essentially modifying its chronological structure (CTMY). CTMY made possible my solution (solved in 2005, perfected and first published in 2015). My results validate not only their work, but the Masoretic Text (MT) as confirmed by its majority Dead Sea Scrolls representation, on which this chronology is exclusively based, and into which this chronology was imperceptibly (indeed mystifyingly according to over 2 millennia of effort since the 3rd century BC LXX futile effort to make sense of it) woven into the MT as a watermark or hologram of its authenticity.

By his Assyrian cornerstone thus out of place, no other Assyrian synchronism would fit Thiele's at first perfect internal biblical chronology, "IBC", (my solution has 8). So he emended it in Jotham's reign (2 Kgs. 15:30-33), adding 4 years to Jotham to shift Ahab's disastrous 853 Battle of Qarqar (Shalmaneser III's 6th year) immediately before Ahab's 1 Kgs. 22 fatal battle against his Qarqar ally Benhadad. Thus Shalmaneser's 18th year receipt of Jehu's tribute in 841, 12 (= 18 - 6) years after Qarqar by IBC, harmonized Jehu's 841 accession with his 14th year of Hezekiah set in 701! But Thiele failed to notice that annihilation of Ahab's powerful military at Qarqar per Shalmaneser's 6th year annals, made impossible his 1 Kgs. 22 participation in his fatal war with Benhadad. Likewise Shalmaneser's 18th year annals report of Hazael's total incapacitation for his 2 Kgs. 9:15-16 wounding of Israel's Joram in battle, discredited Jehu's having killed both Joram and his sickbed visitor Judah's king Ahaziah in 841 (Appx. H, chart 2/19), stripping Thiele of all Assyrian synchronisms.

The Chronology Comparison Chart Fig. 3 exposing the difference between my and Thiele's chronologies, shows my two simple structural corrections: First Thiele's 701 BC synchronism with Hezekiah's year 14 is corrected to 702 BC. Second, Thiele's 4 fabricated years by which he (I believe honestly) found a self-deceptive pretext to lengthen Jotham's reign in order to contrive a specious but futile 853 BC Battle of Qarqar synchronism in Ahab's year of death in battle against his Qarqar ally Benhadad, are removed: Jotham's 2 Kgs. 15:30 actuarial 20th year (4 years after Jotham's death) used to synchronize Pekah's death in his official chronicle, in my chronology properly observes Jotham's official 2 Kgs. 15:33 16th regnal year of death.

One of the earliest and ultimately most fruitful clues in not only exposing Thiele's error, but confirming my entire resulting Bible chronology, was the common but hitherto unproven observation that the two fallow years in succession of 2 Kings 19:29 in Hezekiah's 14th year (Sabbatical years 7 & 1 in Fig. 3) suggested the Lev. 25:2-13 49th year of a jubilee cycle (fallow), followed in the next year by its figurative 49 + 1 = “50th” in the post-Sabbatical 7 + 1 = “8th” per Lev. 25:20-22, namely Hezekiah's 15th calendrical year (also fallow), observed on its Tishri 10 by celebration of the 49-year jubilee cycle just completed in the first year of its next sabbatical cycle, whose purpose was to establish and regulate perpetual and inalienable land ownership in ancient Israel on a jubilee cyclical ceremonial basis. This exposed the purpose of the Ezra 7:7 mission from Babylon to Jerusalem on the same 49 year cycle as that of 2 Kgs. 19:29 (arguably prophesied in Daniel 9:25 dating the start of its 70 Lev. 25 Sabbatical weeks of years, namely 10 Jubilee cycles), and likewise that of the first 2 years of Bar-Kokhba's revolt against Hadrian (introducing Appx. A), thus triply confirming Moses' jubilee cycle in synchronism with Benedict Zuckermann's sabbatical cycles.

Appendix C shows the 4 structural charts for my chronology. Appendix D offers scholarly confirmation of Thiele's biblical chronological method. Appendix E examines Sennacherib's 702 BC 3rd campaign synchronism with Hezekiah' 14th year. Appendix F discovers my 21 April 1443 Exodus date shown in Fig. 7 in proper synchronism with Amenhotep II's short and final military campaign begun on 11 November 1444 (the “Amenophis” of Mantheo, clearly the Exodus pharaoh as preserved in Josephus' “Contra Apion”). Appendix G concisely details all 25 of my extrabiblical synchronisms validating the breakthrough nature of my discovery. And Appendix H presents the complete set of my 19 key chronology charts, where my correction of Thiele in a span of 40 years is illustrated in my Chronology Comparison Chart “CCC,” shown as Fig. 11/19, also shown as Fig. [fig:Chronology-Comparison-Chart].

Appendix [sec:25-Extrabiblical-Synchronisms], “Synchronisms for Thiele's & my chronologies” lists and locates expositions of its 2 Egyptian, 8 Assyrian, 6 Babylonian, 1 Tyrian, 3 Persian, 1 Sabbatical, and two pairs = 4 of Jubilee synchronisms (49th & 50th year Jubilee pairs, extrabiblically anchored to Bar Kokhba's spring-summer of 132 AD 49th Jubilee cycle year launching his revolt against Hadrian) totalling 25. These include synchronism of the Exodus with Amenhotep II's year 10, a Tyrian and Sabbatical year synchronism with Solomon's accession, Assyrian and Jubilee synchronisms in Hezekiah's 14th and 15th years, and Persian and Jubilee synchronisms of Ezra 7:7; exposing 3 historical Jubilee years in synchronism with Benedict Zuckermann's 1857 Sabbatical cycle.

Confronted with the efforts to build temples on Mt. Zion and on Mt. Garizim during the second half of the 6th century BC, Trito-Isaiah advanced an alternative to the traditional cult. Scholars have not clearly recognized that Trito-Isaiah did not simply oppose the cultic theology, rather he made use of the language and logic of the cult for his new theology. Isaiah 58 argues for a lay version of the sacrifice in the form of charity for the poor. In order to stress his argument, he associated it on a ritual level with Yom Kippur, on a cosmological level with the old צדקה-theology of Jerusalem, and on an anthropological level with the essential importance of נפש. The pattern of his theology can be found in the monumental iconography of Egyptian temple walls from Ptolemaic times.

This essay is slated to appear in the festschrift for Alan Culpepper in Brill's Biblical Interpretation Series (2018), Anatomies of the Gospels and Beyond, edited by Mikeal Parsons, Elizabeth Stuthers Malbon, and myself. This essay applies Cognitive-Critical Biblical Analysis to the human development of material behind the texts of Paul's writings as a complement to those who have worked on the material in front of biblical texts, as Alan Culpepper has done with Gospel traditions.

The Habakkuk prophet and the contextual hermeneutics

O objetivo desse artigo é ler o pequeno profeta de Habacuque como guia ou exemplo de
interpretação da história. O objetivo não é aplicar propriamente a hermenêutica contextual
à leitura de Habacuque. Mas é observar como o profeta é em essência um hermeneuta
contextual. Pode-se verificar que o profeta em grande parte exerce um papel muito
semelhante e pode servir de inspiração e referência para uma prática de interpretação da
história e da realidade contextual.

The aim of this article is to read the brief book of the prophet Habakkuk as a guide or
example of an interpretation of history. The objective is not to apply properly the
contextual hermeneutics to the interpretation of Habakkuk, but, rather, to notice how the
prophet is essentially a contextual interpreter. It is noted that the prophet is mostly acting
as an interpreter of history and reality in a contextual manner, and he can serve as
inspiration and reference to this way of interpreting.

O Evangelho de Marcos revela aspectos únicos sobre a vida e a obra de Jesus Cristo e sua encarnação, vida, morte, e ressurreição, sobretudo um ponto significativo na teologia do primeiro evangelho sobre sua história e a abordagem sobre o Segredo Messiânico que aparece em algumas passagens que mostra o quanto Jesus Cristo em algumas situações pediu Segredo Messiânico acerca da revelação de sua pessoa como o Messias esperado pelo povo no ambiente do Novo Testamento relatado na Bíblia, à promessa de Deus ao povo de Israel no Antigo Testamento fala sobre atos que o Messias ira realizar principalmente quanto á este titulo para concretização da obra Messiânica, durante um muito tempo este importante aspecto conceito teológico presente no Evangelho de Marcos foi tido como de pequena importância pela comunidade acadêmica teológica, contudo no alvorada da teologia liberal este aspecto foi trazido por Wrede o que causou uma grande repercussão sobre a teoria das fontes e sobre a redação do Evangelho de Marcos, esse artigo visa identificar como ocorre esse processo de interpretação dos textos no Evangelho de Marcos principalmente sobre o Segredo Messiânico, também como se desenvolveu na história Marcana e busca trazer uma explicação usando exegese sobre as principais passagens onde o fator messiânico é colocado em encoberto pelo próprio Senhor Jesus Cristo.

Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2016, 350pp.
In the present day, there is widespread confusion regarding the theological achievements of the Catholic Enlightenment. This book outlines such contributions in the fields of biblical exegesis, church reform, liturgical renewal, and the move towards a more tolerant view of other churches and religions. Since some of the most important Catholic Enlighteners lived in Germany, this book concentrates on their endeavors, but also frequently points to other European players. Only an un-polemical historical assessment of the Catholic Enlightenment can help us to get out of the current gridlock of interpreting Vatican II: was there a break with tradition or was there continuity? By reviewing the historical debates that preceded Vatican II, the unknown, marginalized or deliberately forgotten roots of the conciliar debates come to light that can help us fine tune future hermeneutical endeavors. This history is hitherto unknown to most researchers. Indeed, it is possibly the most neglected field of modern literary history.

This is the first of two essays in the Bruce Metzger festschrift, edited by J. Harold Ellens, Text and Community, Essay in Commemoration of Bruce M. Metzger, Vol. 1 (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2007), 196-216. Serious errors of interpretation include the facts that: (1) "Antichrist" never occurs in Revelation--only in 1 John and 2 John; (2) the "Antichrists" are mentioned as plural rather than a singular individual--referencing an actualized schism and impending visits of false teachers; (3) their christological errors are different--the first schism refuses to believe in Jesus as the Jewish Messiah/Christ, the false teachers advocate a docetic Christology--refusing to believe Jesus came in the flesh. Therefore, the Antichrists in 1 and 2 John reference two distinctive threats in the late first century with implications for later interpretations.

This article sheds light on the debates that took place in ancient Judaism between sectarian and early rabbinic interpretation of Scripture. Scholarship on 11QMelchizedek (11QMelch; 11Q13) has largely taken the scroll's harmonization of Deuteronomy's Sabbatical debt release (Deut 15:2) with the Jubilee (Lev 25:13) for granted, without examining its rationale. We provide an analysis of the hermeneutics that triggered the synthesis and argue that it was generated in part as a response to a legal-exegetical question: The Jubilee of Leviticus releases slaves, but does it require debt remission? When the separate sources of the Pentateuch were redacted into a single corpus, the compilation of originally inconsistent material into a single Torah must have posed interpretive problems for postexilic readers. After the promulgation of the Torah, Deuteronomy's Sabbatical debt law and the Jubilee were read synchronically, now for the first time as part of a unified literary composition. This had to raise the issue of their relationship. Among the questions that emerged for Second Temple readers was whether the Jubilee of Leviticus requires debt release, as Deuteronomy commands. But the absence of an explicit demand for debt release in Leviticus left the door open to argue that the Jubilee does not release debts (the position maintained in the halakic exegesis of the Sipre Deuteronomy and Sipra Leviticus). Taking a contrary stance, the author of 11QMelchizedek responded to that absence by identifying Leviticus's Jubilee with Deuteronomy's Sabbatical debt release. His synthesis of the two laws demonstrates that the often presumed opposition of legal and eschatological exegesis does not hold in the case of 11QMelchizedek.

Keywords: Dead Sea Scrolls, Qumran, Pesharim, Pentateuch, Exegesis, Innerbiblical Exegesis, Synthetic Exegesis, Eschatological Exegesis, Halakic Exegesis, Legal Exegesis, Legal Hermeneutics, Implicit, Legal Interpretation, Rewritten Scripture, Harmonization, Jubilee, Debt Remission, Sabbatical Year, Manumission, qōl wa-ḥômer, qal va-ḥomer, gezerah shavah, Eschatology, Andurāru, Auslegungsgeschichte, Rechtshermeneutik, Innerbiblische Exegese