Chapter eight of Christopher Seitz’s Prophecy and Hermeneutics: Toward a New Introduction to the Prophets is “worth the price of the entire book” (but my copy is used). The chapter is entitled “Prophecy and Hermeneutics: Canonical Reading and Hermeneutical Reflections.” Due to how the chapter is so concise, clear, and helpful, I plan to devote the next series of posts to insightful portions from Seitz.

He begins the chapter with quotes from Benjamin Jowett and Hermann Gunkel.

Jowett is quoted: “The true use of interpretation is to get rid of interpretation, and leave us alone in company with the author.”

Gunkel says, “If the contemporary readers wish to understand the prophets, they must entirely forget that the writings were collected in a sacred book centuries after the prophet’s work. The contemporary reader must not read their words as portions of the Bible but must attempt to place them in the context of the life of the people of Israel in which they were first spoken.”

Seitz then writes,

In these quotations we see a separation of text and author and a valorizing of man over text. In this chapter I want to reverse that trend (221).