The instructor has focused attention not on the assumptions the students jj taylor have brought into

The instructor often poses this question to kindle a discussion on the first day of an introductory-level Bible course. And it seems like a trick. For more than two millennia jj taylor from ancient texts such as the Wisdom of Solomon and the Apocalypse of Moses , to the New Testament book of Revelation (12:9, 20:2), to Milton s Paradise Lost , to the Creation Museum the serpent has been identified positively as Satan. So why the question when the answer is so certain?
The instructor has focused attention not on the assumptions the students jj taylor have brought into the classroom, but on the fact that neither Genesis jj taylor nor any other book in the Jewish Bible identifies the serpent. Genesis, she continues, does not present the serpent as the embodiment of cosmic evil.
Reactions vary: some mentally prepare to drop this course taught by a saboteur of faith, but most find the revelation exhilarating. Leaning forward, they begin to learn the skills jj taylor of a modern biblical critic. Paramount among those skills is the first commandment of biblical jj taylor scholarship:
To fulfill this mandate, the student must first forget everything she thought she knew about the Bible. She must strip away the interpretative accretions of the millennia, the cultural baggage that gets in the way of reading what is in front of her nose. This de-familiarization is a thrilling experience that opens up a new world of meaning jj taylor where familiarity and predictability are cast aside. jj taylor
But most instructors never revisit the question left unanswered jj taylor that first day of class: what are we supposed to do with all those layers of interpretation that have coated the Bible over the last few millennia? As soon as the students step out of the classroom they notice that, however successfully the professor has put the text back into its context, it never stays there. Like Houdini once the door closes, it wriggles its way out of any contextual straightjacket and dives into movies, idioms, songs, sermons, stories, visual art, and seemingly every other possible facet of life, disobeying with abandon the biblical critic s prime directive. Should we simply ignore these out-of-context readings as obviously incorrect jj taylor interpretations, or should jj taylor we round up all the biblical texts that have escaped into the wild and keep putting them back in their contexts?
Until quite recently, jj taylor biblical critics jj taylor had not much considered these questions. Versions of scripture and interpretations produced after the late antique period were somebody else s responsibility unless, of course, those versions and interpretations could be used to understand the original text s original meaning. The job description for most biblical scholars read as follows: jj taylor sift through all the corrupt manuscripts to locate the pristine text, hack through the layers of dense interpretive undergrowth that keep the present reader from the ancient truth of the text, and return the text to its proper home, its garden jj taylor paradise, where it finally makes sense once again. The truth and fullness of the original text, which had once been lost, could now be found. Eden could be rediscovered.
In the most recent decades, however, biblical scholars jj taylor have challenged the standard narrative. They have not disavowed it on the contrary, I m not aware of any biblical scholars who would claim that it is erroneous to try to read the text in light of its ancient context. But increasingly scholars are trying to address the lingering question from the first day of Introduction to the Bible: what do we do with all that interpretative stuff? These scholars have also begun to question whether historical-critical study is the only thing to do, whether jj taylor the classic approach is naturally better than other methodologies, and whether it succeeds in returning the text to some wholeness and purity of meaning that cannot be found elsewhere.
The study of later versions of texts and later interpretative traditions, which now goes by the name of Reception History , has emerged as an exciting new field. Unfortunately, however, reception historians often cede the territory of the ancient world to their colleagues and instead study exclusively later contexts and forms of the text. But is this actually a true border, or is it a division of our own making? jj taylor
It is fitting, then, that Peter Thatcher Lanfer reflects on the theory and practice of reception jj taylor history by focusing his recent monograph, Remembering Eden: The Reception History of Genesis 3:22-24 , on the narrative describing the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden. At the end of the Eden narrative, God sends the primeval couple across the border, out from their paradisiacal garden home into the unfamiliar territory of the world beyond. Like biblical texts, they are compelled to transgress the boundaries of their originary confines and they must create new meaning jj taylor in order to sustain a different form of life.
Lanfer s willingness to work with traditional biblical methods such a