As webpages and resources get memory holed by the internet, some of my old links become outdated. Steinmetz’s important article is one such example, originally hosted here. I’ve reproduced it below, with no editing or alteration from the original permission. You can find a digital scan of the article here. Tolle lege!

The Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis

By David C. Steinmetz

Article Originally appeared in “Theology Today” Vol. 37, April 1980, No.1, pages 27-28. All rights belong to Theology Today. Published here with permission.

“The medieval theory of levels of meaning in the biblical text, with all its undoubted defects, flourished because it is true, while the modern theory of a single meaning, with all its demonstrable virtues is false. Until the historical-critical method becomes critical of its own theoretical foundations and develops a hermeneutical theory adequate to the nature of the text which it is interpreting, it will remain restricted-as it deserves to be-to the guild and the academy, where the question of truth can endlessly be deferred. “

IN 1859 Benjamin Jowett, then Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford, published a justly famous essay on the interpretation of Scripture.¹ Jowett argued that “Scripture has one meaning-the meaning which it had in the mind of the Prophet or Evangelist who first uttered or wrote, to the hearers or readers who first received it.”² Scripture should be interpreted like any other book and the later accretions and venerated traditions surrounding its interpretation should, for the most part, either be brushed aside or severely discounted. “The true use of interpretation is to get rid of interpretation, and leave us alone in company with the author.”³