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What Is Biblical Spirituality? 125 explication and sense application are combined, in order to bestow on the faithful their (re)new(ed) religious identity. Though the nature of the Bible, the identity of the faith concerned, the manner of reading, and a host of other factors have changed much over the intervening two and a half millennia, the essence of this spirituality has remained. It is in the Bible that we find our being interpreted. 41 This is clearly an implicit foundation inherent to the discipline of Biblical Spirituality. However, we should not be led to think that from the Second Temple period onwards only one spirituality existed. The competing conceptions of faith we find reflected in the scriptural and cultural deposits from ancient Israel indicate that devotion had never been singular: rival strands of the same religion competed then, 42 have done so through the centuries, and certainly do so today. It would be misguided to think of any strand of faith giving full(est) expression to the Christian tradition; equally, it would be committing hubris to think of Biblical Spirituality as somehow superior within the broader disciplines of Spirituality to which it relates. 8.2 The relationship of history and faith Christianity remains an inherently historical faith: what God has done in the history of Israel, and what Christ has done in the history of the church remains of central import. However, history is no simple matter: 43 reducing historiography to simply “telling it 41 Cf. H. W. Rossouw, Klaarheid en Interpretasie. Enkele Probleemhistoriese Gesigspunte in verband met die Leer van die Duidelikheid van die Heilige Skrif (D.Th. proefskrif, Vrije Universiteit; Amsterdam: Drukkerij en uitgeverij Jacob van Campen N.V., 1963). 42 See Albertz, Religionsgeschichte Israels. 43 Cf. C. J. S. Lombaard, “Geloof en Geskiedenis,” Vox Voetianorum 26, no. 1 (2002): 43–45. Recent discussion on the nature of historiography has taken seriously the narrative implications of writing history, that is, that the art of historiography and the art of fiction writing are not that far apart. Between the
126 The Old Testament and Christian Spirituality how it was” is naïve—both in terms of modern history writing and the ways in which the past is rendered in biblical texts. 44 One must draw insights from the philosophy of history 45 and of science 46 in order to come to terms with the inherently narratological nature of two resulting extremes of a positivistic view of historiography and an extreme post-modernistic one, the view that history has a truth claim whereas pure narrative does not, has been offered—cf. H. Barstad, “‘Fact’ versus ‘Fiction’ and Other Issues in the History Debate, and Their Relevance for the Study of the Old Testament,” in Vergegenwärtigung des Alten Testaments. Beiträge zur biblischen Hermeneutik (Festschrift für Rudolf Smend zum 70. Geburtstag; ed. Christoph Bultmann, W. Dietrich and C. Levin; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002), 439–43. However, this too is too simplistic for a fully nuanced view of Old Testament texts, even when restricted to the more historically oriented texts in the Hebrew Bible, for the texts of the Old Testament, such as the Deuteronomistic History versus the Chronicler’s history, present history not as a truth claim about what happened, but as a truth claim about the meaning of the past. This current truth claim of the text, its kerugmatic historiography, is much more important for Old Testament texts than “what actually happened,” to the point that ancient stories may be completely retold, expanded or even invented, for the sake of conveying an intended message. This way of working with the past is closer to the uncertainties offered us by post-modernist approaches to historiography than to the securities of modernism (cf. Barstad, “‘Fact’ versus ‘Fiction,’” 443–46). Greater certainties can, however, be gained if historical-exegetical research focuses not only on the “narrated time,” but also on the “time of narration,” that is, the context and purposes to which a history is (re)told. The more editorial work on the text one can detect (whether smaller emendations or the larger work of placing existing texts within newer textual contexts), the greater the amount of material that renders us to trace a history of interpretation, already within the particular biblical texts, rendering us certain trajectories of meaning, upon which we may then expand. 44 Cf. C. J. S. Lombaard, “Wat Dateer Ons? Enkele Opmerkings rondom die Datering van Bybelse Tekste,” HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 58, no. 4 (2002), 1859–63. 45 See e.g., R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994); J. H. le Roux, “The Nature of Historical Understanding” (or: “Hermeneutics and History”), Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae XIX, no. 1 (1993): 35–63 46 See e.g., T. S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962); K. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (London: Routledge, 1989).
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Copyright © 2012 by the Society of
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Table of Contents Betwixt Text and
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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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Four Recent Books on Spirituality a
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Spirituality of the Psalms 55 • F
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Spirituality of the Psalms 57 in th
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Spirituality of the Psalms 59 emplo
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Spirituality of the Psalms 61 This
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Spirituality of the Psalms 63 uncon
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Spirituality of the Psalms 65 a rep
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Spirituality of the Psalms 67 the f
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Spirituality of the Psalms 69 celeb
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Spirituality of the Psalms 71 Psalm
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Exegesis and Spirituality 179 and w
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Exegesis and Spirituality 183 empha
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Exegesis and Spirituality 189 Vorst
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The emerging discipline of Biblical
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