The Old Testament and Christian Spirituality - International Voices in ...

128 The Old Testament and Christian Spirituality
opposing reasons, certainly, and therefore with different emphases
(respectively smoothing over repetitions and contradictions or
stressing them), a shared view of how a Holy Scripture should be
can be detected here. To inform these warped expectations of the
Bible, in the hope of changing them towards more realistic views
of these texts, should be a part of the programme of Biblical
Spirituality.
Clearly, accepting the internally dialogical nature of the
biblical texts themselves and of the competing expressions of faith
that underlie these texts is fundamental to understanding their
communicative intent. 48 It is therefore impossible to speak of the
message of the Bible, or of a golden thread running through the
texts, or of a central thrust to the biblical confessions. The
diversity, complexity and concurrent nature of the messages we
find in the Bible must be acknowledged, if we are to remain true to
the nature of the Bible. What is more, it has now become clear that
these identified differences are not simply modern analytical
techniques forced onto the Scriptures. The biblical writers
themselves purposely intended to indicate to their readers these
internal editorial, and therefore, debating activities. 49 These are
indeed deliberately “writerly” texts 50 that both exhort and inform
later, including modern, dialogue. The educational value of such
insights can hardly be overestimated. The Bible contains different,
overtly competing spiritualities. No secret should be made of this,
for the sake of countering the fundamentalisms (both religious and
anti-religious) of our time.
48
Cf. Albertz, Religionsgeschichte Israels.
49
E. Otto, “A Hidden Truth behind the Text or the Truth of the Text: At a
Turning Point of Biblical Scholarship Two Hundred Years after De Wette’s
Dissertatio Critico-Exegetica,” in South African Perspectives on the Pentateuch
between Synchrony and Diachrony (ed. J. H. le Roux and E. Otto; New York:
T&T Clark, 2007), 19–28.
50
A. C. Thiselton, New Horizons in Hermeneutics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
1992), 98.