The following books were used during the 2006-2007 academic year at Westminster Theological Seminary, in the course on Biblical Interpretation During the Second Temple Period taught by Peter Enns, Professor of Old Testament and Biblical Hermeneutics:
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According to the seminary catalog:
Biblical Interpretation During the Second Temple Period
Purpose:
• To explore the nature of biblical interpretation in Second Temple texts
Special attention is given to the hermeneutical, theological, and doctrinal implications of the Second Temple data. Student presentations and discussion are integral to the course.
Confucianism and Commentarial Traditions
Kelly James Clark, professor of philosophy at Calvin College, has written a review of three books on Confucianism that is well worth the read for all academic theologians, even if not particularly interested in Confucianism.
The title of his review is Confucian Hermeneutics: Why commentaries are never definitive. He draws parallels between Confucian commentarial traditions and those of Christianity. His thoughts are well worth the trip over to Books & Culture to check it out.
I offer a sampling here:
“By this point, Christian readers might feel the hermeneutical shoe fitting rather too snugly. The parallels between the Confucian and Christian traditions are strikingly obvious. The Classic of History resembles the historical books of the Pentateuch, the Poetry resembles the Psalms and the Song of Solomon, and the Rites are like Leviticus (there is no obvious biblical analogue to the divinatory and metaphysical Changes); the Analects bears some similarity in genre and authority to the Gospels, and the Mencius, the Great Learning, and the Mean are like Pauline epistles (Mencius’ systematic rendering of Confucianism would have as much or more influence on the Confucian tradition as did the Analects, just as some have alleged that Paul’s epistles informed Christianity more than the Gospels). And like the Confucian canon, the Bible is a book of many genres, tremendously variegated, spanning vast periods of time with portions lost to pre-history; it is multi-authored, compiled and/or edited; yet its interpreters come armed with pretensions to harmony and sufficiency. Debate over the Christian canon both assumed and precipitated difference in doctrine. Some have sought to rise above the need for interpretation with appeals to the perspicacity of Scripture (which clear view of the truth is denied to those who disagree with them).”
The three texts which Clark is reviewing can be found in the descriptive paragraph below along with his thoughts considering their value:
“These topics are dealt with in the three masterly books under review, which represent the recent explosion of excellent work in Sinological studies led especially by historians but followed by philosophers and religionists. John Makeham and Daniel Gardner are historians. Makeham’s monumental work, Transmitters and Creators: Chinese Commentators and Commentaries on the Analects
, is the most impressive of the three, insightfully digging through millennia of ancient commentaries. Gardner’s invaluable contribution with Zhu Xi’s Reading of the Analects
lies in helping us understand the relationship of Zhu Xi, perhaps China’s greatest and most systematic philosopher, to his master, Confucius. And Bryan Van Norden’s edited volume, Confucius and the Analects
, is a fine collection of essays by prominent contemporary philosophers (that is, commentators) attempting to understand Confucius; their essays divide, not very neatly, into two groups: the more traditional and the more revisionist understandings of Confucius.”