Craig Bartholomew on Reading the Old Testament in Postmodern Times

The following article is now available on-line in PDF:

Craig Bartholomew, "Reading the Old Testament in Postmodern Times," Tyndale Bulletin 49.1 (1998): 91-114.

Summary:

This article explores the impact of postmodernism on Old Testament studies by looking at the recent proposals of Rendtorff, Brueggemann and Clines. Rendtorff discerns a crisis in Old Testament studies with the demise of the Wellhausenian paradigm. He argues for a methodological pluralism in the present. Brueggemann stresses the epistemological shift that postmodernism entails and argues for a hermeneutic that fiends postmodern imagination. Clines welcomes the pluralism of postmodernism and articulates a consumer hermeneutic while favouring ideological critique of the Bible. This article argues that some form of metanarrative shaping one’s hermeneutic is inevitable and that at its best postmodernism re-opens the debate about a religiously shaped hermeneutic.