Biblical Interpretation: An Integrated Approach (review)

Hebrew Studies 40 (1999) 296 Reviews of the Scroll of Ruth," Gratz College Annual ofJewish Studies 6 [1977], 69-78). As noted throughout this review, the author is generous in acknowledging his debt to the writings of others, and footnotes and bibliography together come to 41 pages, as long as two chapters combined. I would be curious to know how his daughter, however old she may be today, would react to her father's answers to her childhood questions. Bezalel Porten Hebrew University Jerusalem, Israel msporten@mscc.huji.ac.i1 BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION: AN INTEGRATED APPROACH. By W. Randolph Tate. Revised edition. Pp. xxvii + 276. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson 1997. Cloth, $24.95. This revision of Tate's 1991 monograph includes a new chapter (chap. 10) and an expanded one on the process of reading (chap. 7). Otherwise both the structure and focus of the book remain the same. Tate's thesis is that the three worlds ("realities") of the author, text, and reader necessarily converge in the production of meaning. Part one deals with the author's world and the cultural/linguistic codes that inform the production of a text (chaps. 1-3), part two (chaps. 4-6) tackles the world within the text (and issues such as the genres of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament), and part three (chaps. 7-9) details the reader's role in the production of meaning-the reader's preunderstandings, and how interpretive methods affect the reading process. Chapter 10, the new material, is a reading of the Gospel of Mark in which Tate tries to answer his critics' objection that he never integrated the three hermeneutical worlds of author, text, and reader. There is also a short concluding chapter (chap. 11). For Tate, hermeneutics should not be seen as the recovery of a meaning that is inherent within a text. Rather, hermeneutics is an enterprise that studies the production of meaning, particularly on the reader's part. On the whole, Tate presents a systematic and coherent view, and reviewers who are looking for inconsistencies will be disappointed. At the same time, a review of some of Tate's major conclusions on important hermeneutical points will illustrate that he opts for what can only be characterized as a conservative position within the broader literary-critical undertaking. Hebrew Studies 40 (1999) 297 Reviews First, Tate opposes fonnalist views of the autonomy of the text, particularly New Criticism and Structuralism. He vigorously maintains that although texts can be appreciated aesthetically apart from their originating contexts, "a knowledge of those originating circumstances will inevitably increase the appreciation of a text" (p. 3). Ultimately, no "plausible" interpretation can ignore the original contexts. Even the world of a fictional text "is in the real world while being outside of it," and therefore, the world of the text must be defined "exclusively in terms of the real world" against which it originated (pp. 6-7). Second, Tate's emphasis upon the original context of production would seem to make historical studies, particularly historical-criticism, crucial to the henneneutical enterprise. However , his actual position about the place of historical studies in henneneutics is ambivalent. He wants to hold that historical studies are essential to henneneutics, but at the same time, he strongly argues that meaning is exclusively a function of the textual world rather than the domain of historical studies (the world of the author). In the final analysis, meaning emerges from the interaction of the worlds of the text and the reader. The world of the author, or the historical site of the text's production , at best only infonns the conversation between text and reader so that "our understanding of the text improves when we immerse ourselves in its history" (p. xxiii). Historical considerations, therefore, are "an important adjunct to henneneutics" (p. 7). With his ambivalent view of the place of historical studies in henneneutics, Tate has the best of both "liberal" and "conservative" henneneutical views. He does not want to give up the normative role of historical studies, because that would take henneneutics in what he sees as a radical direction ("solipsism"). "The historical reference," Tate says, "places certain restrictions on the possibilities of interpretation" (p. 9...