Bultmann, "Exegesis without Presuppositions?"

One assignment for the second day of hermeneutics class was to read Rudolf Bultmann's classic article, "Is Exegesis without Presuppositions Possible?" It was first published in 1957 in Theologische Zeitschrift and then later in Existence and Faith in English in 1965.

I.
1. Bultmann's answer, in the sense that he means "presuppositions," is no. No one is a blank slate. There is another sense of presupposition, meaning prejudging what the text means, is yes. As a good modernist, he rejects allegorical interpretation. But that is not what he is really writing about.

2. Prejudgments are often involved even when one intends to do exegesis. He mentions the assumption that Matthew and John were written by the disciples Matthew and John. He says the same for the assumption that Jesus thought he was the Messiah. "Every exegesis that is guided by dogmatic prejudices does not hear what the text says, but only lets the latter say what it wants to hear."

II.
1. Such prejudgments are not however the interest of the article.

The historical method is an essential presupposition, from his perspective. There seem to be overtones of Ernst Troeltsch here. The exegete must presuppose the continuity of cause and effect. Bultmann might reminds you here of David Hume in presupposing that miracles are not allowed to be part of exegesis or what he calls "historical method." This may also hint at Troeltsch's principle of analogy. If we don't see miracles today, we should not assume there were miracles then.

He does not deny anyone the right to believe in miracles, however, He simply denies that their allowance can be part of historical method. I also heard overtones at the beginning of the article of Troeltsch's other principle--the idea that historical conclusions are always revisable. This concept appears later in the chapter as well.

2. "In every effort to achieve a unified view the individual historian is guided by some specific way of raising questions, some specific perspective."

Bultmann did not believe that this dynamic falsified the historical picture, but it was a factor of which the historian should be self-aware. "Historical phenomena are many-sided."

Bultmann seems confident in human understanding of ideas like "man and his possibilities for action" or "what economy and society in general mean."

An interpreter must have some relation to the subject matter. "Only he who has a relation to music can understand a text that deals with music." A "life-relation" to the text is necessary for understanding, an appropriate "pre-understanding."

"The historical picture is falsified only when the exegete takes his pre-understanding as a definitive understanding." "To understand history is possible only for one who does not stand over against it as a neutral non-participating spectator, but himself stands in history and shares in responsibility for it." This is what he calls an existentiell encounter with history.

"This existentiell relation to history is the fundamental presupposition for understanding history." "Historical knowledge is never a closed or definitive knowledge." In its existential aspects, the meaning of an event belongs to the future. "What a historical event means always first becomes clear in the future."

3. "The understanding of the text is never a definitive one, but rather remains open because the meaning of the Scriptures discloses itself anew in every future."
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This chapter is not what I expected. It is a mixture of the historical and the existential. It seems to me that he speaks of two different kinds of understanding. There is historical understanding. Then there is existential appreciation or "understanding."

Making an exegetical argument...

I actually have the workings of a post, "Exegesis in Bullet Points" that I might post sometime, but today I made this single PowerPoint slide on the nature of exegetical argument. For those who know me, this does not preclude other approaches to the biblical text. I only mean to say that this is the surest method if your goal is what the text really meant.

In exegesis:
1. Conclusions need to be based on evidence:

• from clues in the text itself (literary evidence)
  The text has the upper hand in the hermeneutical circle. No matter what nice parallels there might be in the background literature, no matter what is written in the rest of the NT, no matter what your denomination wants you to say or your particular Christian subculture, if you are doing real exegesis, the text casts the only deciding vote for what it meant.
• the most likely conclusion, not wishful thinking
  In exegesis, we are not looking for a possible meaning that fits with my preconceived notions. We are looking for the most likely meaning in context. We're looking for the probable meaning of the text, not a possible meaning that works out better for me.

2. Proposed meaning generally has to fit within meanings that were actually in the range of meanings from the time of writing. (historical context)

• I am open to the possibility that God implanted hidden meanings in the text such that no one had a clue what a text meant until centuries later. However, this is usually pre-modern thinking. Virtually all, if not all of the biblical texts had a demonstrable meaning to their first audiences. If you think the text is about attack helicopters, you're either a prophet or a bad exegete. 

3. The text has the final say:

• over supposed background information
  Scholars are especially bad at parallelomania. They know some parallel in Josephus, Artapanus, or Quintillian. But the text itself casts the final vote in exegesis.
• over my theology and pre-understandings
  It can be hazardous to your health to learn exegesis. Sometimes the text just didn't mean what my group wants it to mean. The polyvalence of the text actually may allow us to continue to believe things that are "extra" beyond what the text actually meant. I put most theological exegesis in this category. But if your goal is to listen to the text, then your theology is irrelevant. It meant what it meant, whether it is convenient to me and my group or not.

Exegetical Research Lecture

I did this 32 minute overview of exegetical research for a class I'm teaching.  It explains the domains of literary and historical-cultural evidence as they relate to exegetical conclusions.  The first ten minutes are hermeneutical in orientation, explaining what exegesis is and how it might differ from application or even theological interpretation.