Notices Scripture and Interpretation

C. Stephen Evans, Mary Healy, and Murray Rae. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003. Pp. xx + 553. $34.99. “Behind” the Text, the fourth volume of the Scripture and Hermeneutics Series, is a product of the Scripture and Hermeneutics Seminar (SAHS). According to their website, SAHS “was set up in 1998 to see what could be done to renew interpretation of the Bible as Scripture in the Academy.” SAHS strives to be academic, interdisciplinary, distinctively yet ecumenically Christian, and communal. These parameters are well conceived and clearly exemplified in the collection of essays and responses that make up “Behind” the Text. The occasion for SAHS and thus the Scripture and Hermeneutics Series is that even though “the Bible has been scrutinized with the best scientific tools the modern world could provide. . . its effect has generally been to fragment Scripture and to make opening the Book as Scripture, in which we hear God speak to us personally and as communities, very problematic” (SAHS website). A central issue involved in this problem is the relationship between history and biblical interpretation. The “Boston consultation” of SAHS, out of which “Behind” the Text arises, was devoted to “many of the key issues” related to the “complex reassessment of history and biblical interpretation” occurring within the current theological turn in biblical interpretation (12). “Behind” the Text is divided into five sections of varying lengths: Historical Criticism—Critical Assessments, Rethinking History, Tradition and History, History and Narrative, and History and Biblical Interpretation, respectively. Most sections consist of just two essays, though the last section is expanded to four. The first section, however, devoted to the “critical assessments” of historical criticism, contains ten chapters including responses to the noteworthy epistemological critiques offered by Alvin Plantinga and Peter van Inwagen. Immediately following these exchanges are William Alston’s critique of the argumentation employed within some historical critical scholarship, Mary Healy’s exploration of the interpretive usefulness of the analogy between the hypostatic union of two natures in Christ with the divine and human authorship of Scripture, and Peter S. Williamson’s essay on the position taken by the Pontifical Biblical Commission on the place of history in biblical exegesis as