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.

After corresponding with Prof. Georg Steins, I realized just how out of date some of this information was. The outline has been under almost constant revision since November 2006. After re-writing a section on Paul Noble (his book) I was surprised to see how different my take on his work was compared to the notes I complied at an early stage of research. It's time for an overhaul of the research section of this site...

Probable title with (I hope) one year to go:

Brevard Childs in Context: The Struggle for Scripture's Textual Authority

Looks like it could be about 6 chapters long, but again, very different from the six I listed in January 2006.

[1] Reading Childs in English and German

[2] Circumscribed Intertextuality? Why Childs' Interests are Not Reducible to Final Form Exegesis

[3] Vergegenwärtigung and the Tradition-histoircal Legacy

[4] From Midrash to Canonical Shaping: Confronting the "Mystery of Israel" in the Internal Argument for Canon

[5] Sourcing the Tradition: The Rule of Faith as Inner and Outer Logic

[6] Shall the Twain Meet? Psalm 102 in Recent and Ancient Scholarship

The only title I think might say from January is the one for Chapter 2. Then again, that might go too. The four guesses at a final title are definitely off. If I had to nominate a replacement at this point, I would say:

Regula Fidei: Childsean Hermeneutics and Deuteronomy 31

or maybe:

Scripture and Theology: Childsean Hermeneutics and Deuteronomy 31

Or something like that.

Possible Thesis Titles or, in search of a center of gravity

The Mind of Scripture and Christian Figural Reading

The Problem of Figural Reading

A Theology of Figural Reading

Biblical Theology and Figural Reading

Chapter Titles (working)

[1] Of Eclipses, Crises, and Biblical Theology

[2] Georg Steins' Intertextual Alternative to Brevard Childs (full title deleted: it was unfair seen from further along—drd, 27.4.2007)

[3] More Misreadings of Childs

[4] The Mind of Scripture: Midrash versus Allegory

[5] Trinitarian Hermeneutics and Christian Figural Reading

[6] An Essay into Figural Exegesis: 2 Kings 2

In Old Testament studies, Brevard Childs has pioneered a canonical approach for over thirty-five years. Other scholars have joined ranks by pursuing questions related to canon, though most of these remain in the English-speaking world. However, Georg Steins’ recent work evidences a growing interest in Germany in the hermeneutics of canon as it relates to intertextuality. Steins advocates a modified Childsean approach, kanonisch-intertextuelle Lektüre (canonical-intertextual reading).

But Childs levels sharp criticism against Steins’ reading of Genesis 22, and against R. W. L. Moberly, a British canonical scholar upon whom Steins relies heavily. Childs’ criticism hinges on the difference between midrash and allegory as means of understanding intertextuality in the Old Testament. Yet it is not clear why contrasting midrash and allegory reads against the work of Steins and Moberly. I propose researching this disagreement, probing what each critic means by midrash, allegory, and intertextuality, and using Genesis 22 as a test case.