“Scripture’s Textual Authority”: The Work of Brevard Childs in International Context

Thesis Summary in 300 Words

Brevard Childs led one of the most productive careers of any Old Testament scholar of the last generation. It was also one of the most controversial. During his lifetime five major accounts of his hermeneutics were published, including one in German. His proposals were debated in scores of articles. The controversy is not surprising as, by his own account, Childs engaged in a “sustained polemic” with a field he judged to be inadequate in basic respects. At the same time, he never abandoned his German critical training and was in many ways always the consummate Fachmann.

None of the accounts thus far adequately present the ambitious scope of Childs’s work, largely because each begins with the assumption that his method was inoperable as it stood. (This view stems from James Barr, who voiced some of the most influential criticism of Childs’s approach.) Aspects of his “canonical approach” have been heavily debated, yet other dimensions are almost never discussed. My study first locates his contributions internationally, suggesting reasons why his work has been better received on the Continent than in the English-speaking world. It then explores the differences between Childs and the so-called “Yale school”—chiefly Hans Frei. Third, it sets Childs’s argument for canonical shaping against the background of his form-critical and tradition-historical training in postwar Germany. Fourth, that argument includes his theological reckoning with Judaism, which he sometimes termed the “mystery of Israel.” Fifth, the study addresses Childs’s researches into the history of reception. Finally, it probes the difficulty Childs had reconciling his interest in Wirkungsgeschichte with his acceptance of elemental insights from the critical paradigm. This is done by contrasting his reading of Psalm 102, which reflects his core argument for “scripture’s textual authority,” and that text’s reception in traditional Jewish and Christian exegesis.

Part One :: Reading Childs in English and German

1 :: On Reading Childs in English and German

2 :: Biblical Theology: Does it Matter Where a Scholar is Trained?

Part Two :: The Inner (and Outer) Logic
of Scripture's Textual Authority

3 :: The Heart of the Matter (res): Why Childs Resists Narrative and Canonical-Intertextual Reading Strategies

4 :: Form, Tradition-History and Final Form: Gunkel, von Rad, Childs

5 :: Canon and the “Mystery of Israel”: From Midrash to Canonical Shaping

Part Three :: Sourcing the Tradition

6 :: The Rule of Faith and Other Matters

7 :: ‘For a Generation to Come’: The Scope of Psalm 102 in Reception and Recent Research