Perhaps no modern biblical scholar has argued more eloquently or more compellingly than Richard Hays that those who would read Holy Scripture rightly must be prepared to engage in a thrilling, unpredictable, and even perilous endeavor…. Hays, George Washington Ivey Professor of New Testament and Dean of Duke Divinity School, with these words: Thank you for supporting our publishing ministry.Several years ago, I introduced a Festschrift in honor of Richard B. To keep reading, subscribe-subscriptions begin at $4.95-or log in. This article is available to Christian Century magazine subscribers only. He wants us to rethink how we teach and study and preach the Bible. Hays isn’t just trying to nudge the dial on Pauline scholarship. He read them in light of Christ’s work of gathering a church of Jews and gentiles, here at the end of the age. Hays’s work points out that Paul didn’t do so. If Paul can reread Israel’s scripture christologically, then why can’t we? Think of the constant refrain in introductions to historical criticism: that we have to read the scriptures in their “original” (that is, historically reconstructed) context.
This may seem like scholarly intramurals, but the upshot is significant. Echoes is shot through with literary terms like intertextuality and metalepsis. When Paul quoted a Psalm or a passage from Isaiah, he assumed that the reader would know its original narrative context and that the meaning would echo between that context and Paul’s words to his readers. His reference was to Hays’s early landmark work, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul, which argued, contrary to convention, that Paul’s references to Israel’s scripture are not mere clumsy proof texts, but rather carefully considered figural readings. The visitor shook his head and protested out of earshot, “Richard is really a literary guy.”
Richard Hays countered that the gospel should lead us to rethink our notions of history.
This guest speaker felt that on the grounds of what counts as history we cannot say yeah or nay. The question was whether the resurrection can be said to have happened historically. I remember arguing a historical point with a visiting New Testament scholar while I was in graduate school at Duke.
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