he first of The Scripture and Hermeneutics Seminar consultations took place in Cheltenham in April 1998. The theme for this meeting was the crisis in biblical interpretation and the sort of answers to it being proposed by advocates of speech act theory such as Anthony Thiselton, Nicholas Wolterstorff and Kevin Vanhoozer, all of whom were present. We were not agreed at this consultation whether speech act theory has the resources to take biblical interpretation forward, but it became clear that any attempt to renew biblical interpretation in the academy would require a process with multiple consultations to address the key areas we thought required attention.

Thus was born The Scripture and Hermeneutics Seminar, a ten year project which was originally based in Theology and Religious Studies at The University of Gloucestershire and which is headed up by Craig Bartholomew. The Seminar began as a partnership project between British and Foreign Bible Society and The University of Gloucestershire, and now has the additional support of Baylor University and Redeemer University College. Its ambitious aim is to facilitate a renewal of biblical interpretation in the academy that will help reopen the Book for our cultures.

The Seminar is thus academic. It recognises the fundamental importance of opening the Book at all levels in our cultures but the Seminar itself is an academic initiative, aimed firstly at biblical interpretation in the academy. The Seminar is interdisciplinary. Meir Sternberg rightly notes that biblical studies is at the intersection of the humanities, and The Seminar is based on the understanding that at this intersection interdisciplinary insight is required if biblical studies is to be saved from some of its isolation and fragmentation, and for new ways forward to be forged. It has been a delight at our consultations to find philosophers rubbing shoulders with educationalists and theologians, and missiologists working with literary scholars to renew biblical interpretation. The Seminar is Christian. Modernity has marginalised faith in the great public areas of culture but this is a travesty of a Christian perspective in which faith relates to the whole of life. The Seminar is ecumenical and has a wide range of Christian perspectives represented within it. However, it is a rule of The Seminar that faith is not to be excluded from the consultative process that forms the heart of The Seminar. We have been asked about Jewish and other faiths being involved, and we are keen that such dialogue should emerge. However, we have judged it important to keep The Seminar’s Christian character intact at this stage so that the interdisciplinary and faith dynamics have time to be nurtured. The Seminar is communal. The modern academy is deeply individualistic. But we recognise that a renewal of biblical interpretation will require communal work. And a great aspect of The Seminar is the emerging sense of community amongst Christian scholars of diverse disciplines.

The Seminar has identified a series of issues that require attention if we are to work towards a renewal of biblical interpretation in our day. However, it was felt that before attending to specific issues we should hold a consultation to assess the current state of biblical interpretation in the academy. This was the focus of our September 1999 consultation at Selwyn College, Cambridge at which we were particularly privileged to have Prof. Brevard Childs and Prof. Walter Brueggemann present. The consultation was called, The Crisis in Biblical Interpretation, and the papers from that consultation form the basis of this book. At this very stimulating event, it became clear that not all of us thought that biblical interpretation was in a crisis. Some did, others were reluctant to emphasise this. We were all agreed though, that biblical interpretation needs renewal, hence the title of this volume: Renewing Biblical Interpretation.

It is our view that biblical interpretation is a complex area whose renewal requires attention to many different aspects. The aim of this volume is to try and get these areas clearly on the table, so that in future volumes we can take up individual areas and explore them in considerably more depth. In what follows I will give some sense of the emerging geography of the key elements that we think need to be addressed if biblical interpretation is to be renewed. I am acutely aware from our consultations, that how one describes this geography will not be unprejudiced (in Gadamer’s sense of pre-judgement). No doubt, others in The Seminar would describe the geography differently, and if you read the chapters of this book carefully you will pick up on the nuanced differences amidst a significant consensus.

The more sophisticated and theologically aware models for biblical hermeneutics recognise nowadays the need to integrate three key elements or strands in their approach to the Bible, viz. the historical, the literary and the theological. In this volume all three of these elements are discussed. From this perspective chapters look as follows:

Other chapters overlap with these categories. Craig Bartholomew, for example, discusses the rise of historical criticism, and examines some of the theological hermeneutics being proposed today. Neil Beaton MacDonald’s chapter on philosophy of language connects with theological and literary issues. And, there are numerous other connections that can and should be made.

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