1, 2 Peter and Jude Through the Centuries. Rebecca Skaggs

1, 2 Peter and Jude Through the Centuries - Rebecca Skaggs


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Moses (v.9) and the citation of Enoch (v.14), although he does include the prophecy itself. It should be noted that Peter explains that the false teachers were prophesied beforehand by the prophets.

      Chapter 10 (2 Peter 3) treats important issues, some of which are unique to the New Testament. For example, the final conflagration at the end of time and the reasons for Christ’s delay in returning.

      Chapter 11 treats the delay of the Parousia. The similarity between Jude and 2 Peter has been debated by both ancient and modern scholars with various conclusions but almost everyone agrees that 2 Peter’s discussion of the delay of the Parousia and the coming final judgment by fire is unique to him. An exploration into this shows that the issue was raised at an early time in the church and has continued to shape theological discussions through the ensuing centuries.

      According to Luz, there is a critical distinction between the history of interpretation and the history of influence; they are intrinsically related to each other (cf. Thiselton, 2011: 6). Of course, the starting point is to take into account the various readings of a text, but it is equally or more important to consider the “effect” of a text, that is, how the text has shaped its particular world. This involves the exploration of the dialogs and interactions between readings in a specific era but also how succeeding dialogs participate in the development of very different communities from those of its own time. In relation to our little text of 1 Peter, several kernels or seeds embedded within 1 Peter would lead to major controversies from which significant doctrines emerged. For example, 1:2–3 refers to God’s foreknowledge, which almost immediately initiated discussion and debate among early writers about free will and election. This discussion would grow in intensity (along with the discussions on the Pauline epistles) until currently these theories differentiate various current denominations. In other cases such as the sections on slavery (2:18–25) or roles in marriage (3:1–7), entire movements and counter‐movements have developed, shaping culture, theology, and society. 2 Peter 1:20–21 (along with Pauline parallels) has shaped one of the central doctrines on the inspiration of scripture. The point is that reception historians are interested not only in how various readers have read and interpreted the text, they are also interested in the effects the text has on its readers and their communities. The concept is that what a text does is as important and meaningful as what it means. Riches (2013: 6) explains that this means taking “account of the power of a work to shape its readers, to create a new readership, new in the sense that its sensibilities, its understanding of the world and society and of individual lives as located in society … have been informed and re‐formed by their reading of the work.”

      The exploration of the reception of the Bible in art is especially enlightening. Indeed, the Bible has been an important subject for artists through the centuries and in turn, artists have provided information from biblical texts to people who are not able to access the biblical text for themselves (such as before translations of the Bible made scripture accessible to the general populace); through the ages art has conveyed theological positions or doctrines of the church to people as well. Recently, scholars have been exploring in a deeper way the processes involved between a work of art and its viewer, the theoretical framework of which is also rooted in the philosophy of Gadamer. In this context, the artist is considered to be an “active reader.” O’Kane explains that biblical artwork engages the viewer, thus broadening their horizon (O’Kane, 2008: 1). For more on Gadamer’s theory, see Davey (in O’Kane, 2008: 191–210). In other words, a painting gives a perspective which is itself a unique reading; it is more than simply the illustration of a story or the “transposition of a text onto a canvas,” it [the painting] “is itself an interpretation of a text” (Exum, 2007: 7), which encourages and challenges us to consider more creative possibilities and alternative perspectives for the interpretation of the text (Exum, 1996: 7–8).

      In essence, the painting is itself an exegesis (for an extensive discussion of this, see Berdini, 1997). Hornik calls it “visual Narrative” and Baker goes so far as to refer to the work of African‐American painter Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859–1937) as preaching the gospel with a brush (Cf. Exum, 2007: 188–210). In short, the work of art becomes a text to be interpreted by the viewer.

      One of the major challenges of reception history, however, is that although many theorists and practitioners of biblical interpretation have made suggestions, there is little agreement on the nature of the process for the selection of materials (Evans, 2014: 114). In fact, there is a wide variety of judgments about which realizations of a biblical text should be selected as shaping the successive generations of interpretations. There are, however, “patterns of practice,” that is, principles of selection which emerge. One particularly attractive approach is to identify emerging patterns, such as discourse and practice that “valorize various trajectories of interpretative tradition … [that identifies] what may be seen as significant, exemplary, or normative within ecclesiastical tradition or theological tradition” (Evans, 2014: 115–116).


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