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What Is Biblical Spirituality? Perspectives from a Minor Genre of Old Testament Scholarship * ABSTRACT The field of Biblical Spirituality as a sub-discipline within the overlapping subject areas of Spirituality and Biblical Studies (alternatively, Old and New Testament Studies) is still in its infancy. In this essay, an overview of some of what has been written on this sub-discipline is provided, en route to proposing in brief a model for the working field of Biblical Spirituality. 1. Background to This Study Although the phrase “biblical spirituality” has been in use for some time now, the discipline of Biblical Spirituality 1 is rather recent. What has been written about Biblical Spirituality has more often than not been theoretical, discerning possible boundaries to and contents of the field. Yet, on the other hand, much of what has been written about faith in the Bible and faith from the Bible—put in more traditional terms: exegesis and hermeneutics—may well be classified as Biblical Spirituality. Drawing from these streams, and building forth on a series of earlier publications, 2 I begin to * This essay was initially presented as a paper at a Biblical Spirituality seminar at the Titus Brandsma Institute, Radboud University, in June 2007, in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. 1 When capitalised, I use “Biblical Spirituality” to refer to the academic discipline; without capitals, the phrase refers to the practice of a spirituality which relates itself specifically to the Bible. 2 See C. J. S. Lombaard, “The Old Testament in Christian Spirituality: Perspectives on the Undervaluation of the Old Testament in Christian Spirituality,” HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 59, no. 2 (2003), 433– 50; C. J. S. Lombaard, “Four South Africans’ Proposals for a Central Theme to ‘Scriptural Spirituality,’” Scriptura 88, no. 1 (2005): 139–50; C. J. S. Lombaard, “Genealogies and Spiritualities in Genesis 4:17–22, 4:25–26, 5:1–32,” in The Spirit That Moves. Orientation and Issues in Spirituality (ed. P. G. R. de Villiers, C. Kourie and C. J. S. Lombaard; Acta Theologia Supplementum 8; 111
112 The Old Testament and Christian Spirituality negotiate in the following pages a route to what I propose may be a future working model for the discipline we have come to call Biblical Spirituality. This is done below in conversation with four publication projects, spread over five decades, on Old Testament Spirituality and, in one case, on Biblical Spirituality. 2. Still History, after All These Years Despite claims to the contrary, the historical-critical paradigm of exegesis still dominates the scholarly reading of the Bible. Often, reaction against historical-critical exegesis still presupposes an underlying positivism that was present in the early, modernistic stage of the development of the historically oriented methods, 3 but which is now largely absent. The reason behind such reactions is usually quite clear: the plea is for faith, rather than history alone. Bloemfontein: University of the Free State Press, 2006), 146–64; C. J. S. Lombaard, “Four Recent Books on Spirituality and the Psalms: Some Contextualising, Analytical and Evaluative Remarks,” Verbum et Ecclesia 27, no. 3 (2006): 909–29; C. J. S. Lombaard, “Teks en Mens. J. H. le Roux se Lees van die Bybel binne die Konteks van Hoofstroom-Eksegese in Suid-Afrika,” Old Testament Essays 19, no. 3 (2006 [special ed.]), 912–25; C. J. S. Lombaard, “The Relevance of Old Testament Science in/for Africa: Two False Pieties and Focussed Scholarship,” Old Testament Essays 19, no. 1 (2006): 144–55; C. J. S. Lombaard, “The Old Testament between Diachrony and Synchrony: Two Reasons for Favouring the Former,” Journal for Semitics/Tyskrif vir Semitistiek 15, no. 1 (2006): 18–31. 3 Fee identifies aspects of historical exegesis as including questions of context— which refer to the genre of the biblical literature at hand, the historical context, and the literary context—and questions of content, which relates to an original text (where possible), word meaning, grammar, and historical background (see G. Fee, “History as Context for Interpretation,” in The Act of Bible Reading. A Multi-Disciplinary Approach to Bible Interpretation [ed. E. Dyck. Downer’s Grove: InterVarsity, 1996], 15–32; cf. F. E. Deist, Witnesses to the Old Testament [The Literature of the Old Testament, vol. 5; Pretoria: NG Kerkboekhandel, 1988], 41–71).
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viii Introduction various coloniali
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The Old Testament in Christian Spir
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Undervaluation of the Old Testament
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Exegesis and Spirituality * ABSTRAC
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The emerging discipline of Biblical
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