Richard Hays’ Reading Backwards: SBL Review Session

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Last week at SBL I attended a review session on Richard Hays’ new book, Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel Witness. The reviewers included Marcus Bockmuehl, Marianne Thompson, and Francis Watson. The reviews were mostly positive, with most of the reviewers asking pretty tame (yet good) questions that either challenged small points of the book or gave slight push-back to Hays’ methodology. Hays in this work tried to do for the Gospels what he did for Paul, using his characteristic literary language (trope, metalepsis, etc.) and “intertextual” method (what we might call only slightly more than a simple “NT use of the OT”). I haven’t been able to read the work yet, but from the summaries given by the reviewers, this work may even be better than his work on Paul (Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul). Here are some points made by the reviewers:

Francis Watson

Watson took issue mostly with Hays’ preference for Mark’s allusive style (to the OT), as opposed to Matthew’s more explicit “proof-texting” style. Most reviewers noted that Hays somewhat ranks the synoptic Gospel writers style of transmitting Christology, giving Luke the highest rating, followed by Mark, and lastly Matthew. None of the reviewers were too impressed by Hays’ presumption to rank the writers, but Hays’ reply was that we should not focus on one style of showing how Jesus fulfills the OT by latching on to the style of our favorite Gospel writer. Rather, we should note the different styles of the Gospel writers and embrace all four of their styles for our own use in reading the OT. In any case, the majority of Watson’s paper was spent defending Matthew’s use of the OT as at least as impressive as Marks, especially by focusing on the quotation of Isa 9:15 in Matt 4, giving a wonderful exposition.

Marcus Bockmuehl

Bockmuehl appreciated Hays’ attempt to legitimate figural or typological reading of the OT, although he’s not sure that Mark actually suggests the type of answers that Hays reads out of the OT backgrounds. He posed the following questions to Hays:

1. Is the Evangelist’s encounter with Scripture unmediated? Bockmuehl didn’t seem to think Hays gave enough attention to second temple Jewish interpretive traditions as influences upon the Evangelists’ interpretation of the OT. This was probably his biggest critique of Hays’s book.
2. What residual role, if any, is there for non-figural reading? Is the literal sense of the OT important?
3. Is the LXX the Christian Bible?
4. Why the preference for Luke?
5. Is this kind of reading/hermeneutic promethean? Is Christ’s presence something that occurs only through their reinterpretive reading of the OT texts? The OT texts were bare before the reinterpretation in the early Christian exegesis, and they still testified to Christ.
6. If hermeneutical moves are retrospective and everything is already known through the OT texts, what is left of the NT author’s eschatological reserve?

Marianne Thompson

Thompson focused on the final chapter, which focuses on retrospective reading of the OT. First, she compares Hays’ work on divine identity with Bauckham’s. Hays looks inductively at how the Gospels identify Christ as God, while Bauckham creates a definition of divine identity and then sees if the Gospels give Jesus those attributes. Hays responded that he feels his approach is complementary to Bauckham’s. Second, she also noted there is a tension in the Gospels between statements of divine identity and non-divine identity, and she wonders whether Hays would align with Hengel, Hurtado, or others on early Christological views. Third, she makes the same comment as Bockmuehl about mediated interpretation and Hays’ lack of attention to second temple interpretive traditions, giving several examples in John’s Gospel. Lastly, she thought it odd Hays did not say anything about the need for the Spirit to illuminate our reading in our community, which would also guide our reading. Hays gives several guidelines for reading Scripture, but this is not one of them. Hays responded that he could have put that in there (and probably should have), although he did read a brief excerpt in which he does mention it once.

Summary

Overall, the panel was congenial and respectful. All the reviewers seemed to like Hays’ book pretty well. The one point that seemed to loom large was the question of “unmediated interpretation.” While I think attention should be given to second temple Jewish interpretive traditions, I also think the community of the early church and the teachings of Jesus are often neglected as a source of mediation. If one should be given priority over the other, I should think the latter would be the dominating factor of mediation for a Christian author whose new-found God read the OT so radically different from what they were accustomed to. In any case, I highly recommend buying Hays’ book and exploring his unique way of exploring the NT’s use of the OT. If you do buy the book, please do so through the links I gave above to help me out!