Hope for a Troubled Discipline? Contributions to New Testament Studies from Reception History

Abstract

The recent attempt by G. Aichele, P. Miscall and R. Walsh to generate a debate between historical criticism and postmodern interpretation using the language of comparative mythologies has so far fallen flat. Here it is suggested that a more fruitful way forward would be to re-label historical-critical methodologies with the terminology of reception history. This would build on the presence of audiences—whether real or constructed—within those methodologies while undermining the use of terms like ‘first-stage/secondstage’ to keep them at the centre of biblical interpretation and encouraging historical critics to venture into the history of interpretation. This broadening of the discipline should also help limit the impact of the current financial climate on what otherwise appears to be a very narrow and heavily over-subscribed area of the humanities.

What Jesus Did, Does and May Do in Future: Gospel Miracles, Human Augmentation, Transhumanism and the Future of New Testament Studies

“…I exhorted fellow New Testament scholars to rethink the assumptions behind their approach to these texts and to consider re-inventing themselves explicitly as ‘reception historians’, as investigators of the near-infinite range of scenarios in which the New Testament and its interpretation either had played or could play, a significant, even essential, role. This shift I saw as both eminently feasible and as one to be pursued with rigour, while time allowed (Lyons 2010).…”

Fashions, Fallacies and Future Prospects in New Testament Studies

“…Indicative of this, there is now a refereed online journal devoted to the subject, Relegere, based in New Zealand. 53 A few years ago, John Lyons published a stimulating article in this journal on the potential of this approach (Lyons 2010). It should be of great interest in the field to note how the NT writings were transmitted, read and used, perhaps especially in early centuries.…”

Biblical Studies: Fifty Years of a Multi-Discipline

“…As has been pointed out by Lyons (2010), however, the study of reception can be understood as including the traditional forms of literary-historical analysis too, since in effect such approaches are really dealing with the reception of one stage of the text by those who will produce subsequent revisions. A composite text, as are most of the biblical books, is thus a tell whose layers comprise successive ‘receptions’ of an earlier layer.…”