Review in: Interpretation
2000 54: 312
Review door: M.
Eugene BoringGevonden op: http://int.sagepub.com/content/54/3/312.full.pdf+html
Revelation
by
David E. Aune Word Biblical Commentary, volumes 52A, B, and C. Word, Dallas, 1997-1998.
1354 pp. $32.99 (each, cloth). ISBN 0-8499-0251-7; 0-8499-0786-1; 0-8499-1545-7.
IN
THE INCREASINGLY POPULOUS and complex world of biblical commentaries, just what
a particular commentary is to do cannot be assumed in advance. The Word
Biblical Commentary addresses this problem by establishing a layout followed by
all the volumes in the series. For each section of biblical text there is a Bibliography
and the author's own Translation, followed by a section of Notes detailing
the text-critical and translation issues involved and supporting the author's
decisions. Then comes a section on Form/Structure/Setting, followed by
detailed Comment and a concluding Explanation, The latter two
sections are to offer "a clear exposition of the passage's meaning and its
relevance to the ongoing biblical revelation." This format "has been
consciously devised to assist readers at different levels," so that
"there is something for everyone" (p. x). This format sets forth a
judicious set of goals and provides a grid by which individual volumes of the
series can be appropriately measured.
The
bibliographies of Aune's three volumes are a gold mine. Better: they are a
treasure already extracted from the mountain of possibly relevant literature on
each topic and text related to interpreting Revelation. The numerous excursuses
provide extensive (but sifted) bibliographies not only for anticipated topics
such as "The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor" (pp. 775-79) but for
tangential but important topics such as "Eating Food Sacrificed to
Idols" (pp. 191-94), lists not merely compiled from other works on
Revelation.
The
excursuses provide the student a key hermeneutical resource. Aune has the
talent and industry necessary to survey a complex set of issues, and to provide
a helpful analytical summary of the history of the problem and the present
state of the question, treating fairly perspectives that differ from his own. A
good example is the excursus on "The Angels' of the Seven Churches"
(pp. 108-12). The 221-page Introduction—itself a substantial
monograph—is an additional work of supererogation with excursus-like sections
on topics such as "Genre" (pp. lxx-xc) that will constitute the point
of departure for future work.
The Translation and Notes
are extremely helpful. The Introduction has extensive sections on
text criticism as well as the distinctive syntax and vocabulary of Revelation,
all providing comprehensive surveys of the issues involved and how they have
been treated in the history of interpretation. These provide the foundation for
the meticulous discussion of the translation
of every word, phrase, clause, and sentence of the document. Aune knows the
manuscript tradition well and has made his own text-critical decisions (though
he differs from the "standard" text of Nestle 27 only forty times in
a document of 11,105 words). None of his variations is dramatic. The student
who has studied Greek for two semesters and who wants to know what is involved
in actual translation could do no better than to work through these sections,
looking over the shoulder of a master craftsman. Even though Aune is sometimes
inclined to be too mechanical in his application of grammatical
"rules," for example, in his understanding of the significance of the
presence or absence of the article, it is indeed revelatory for the exegete to
follow the discussion of one who has looked carefully at every "and"
and "the" in the text of Revelation from the perspective of both text
criticism and translation. Students can learn to ask reflexively "what
kind of genitive is this?" by observing Aune's own practice. The difficult
issues of "Semitisms" in Revelation and whether the author
"thought in Hebrew but wrote in Greek" are handled without sweeping
generalizations as Aune navigates the reader through the ocean of data.
Beginner and expert alike will become better exegetes and translators—not only
of Revelation—by attending to these sections.
In
each section on Form/ Structure/Setting, Aune provides the reader with
his Outline of the section, a Literary Analysis discussing
rhetorical and compositional issues, a subsection on Source Criticism, and
a discussion of Central Interpretative Issues. It is in the latter two
categories that Aune's distinctive contribution to the discussion is most
visible. On the basis of his discussion of sources in the Introduction, he
provides his own source analysis of each section. The commentary is throughout
somewhat reminiscent of R. H. Charles's ICC volume (T&T Clark,
1920). Aune is quite confident of his ability to identify John's sources, and
projects two "editions" of John's own composition—a "first
edition" ca. 70 CE and a "second edition" near the end of the
century. He thus looks for three layers in every section: the original source
used by John and two layers of "interpolations" by John himself. The
language of "interpolation," in which the source is
"primary" and John's own contribution "secondary," suggests
that Aune is often more interested in the sources behind Revelation than in the
final form of the text.
Likewise, in this section Aune
incorporates his vast knowledge of the Hellenistic world and its literature. I
found this to be the commentary's most helpful contribution. Time after time,
Aune shows that what has been traditionally thought to be uniquely or
distinctively biblical or Jewish in fact has parallels in the world of
Hellenistic thought. Most interpreters of Revelation come to its text too
directly from their own reading of the Old Testament; Aune provides a wider
horizon, again not just by making general statements, but by providing an
enormous amount of information. Some of these sections are very illuminating;
others seem to be mainly a collection of data, "commentary" in the
worst sense of the word, a listing of trees without much sense of forest.
Nonetheless, the student who works through these sections will gain a new set
of eyes not only for Revelation, but for the New Testament as a whole.
The sections on Comment and
Explanation are supposed to provide "the exposition of the passage's meaning and its relevance" (p. x). On the first page,
Aune aligns himself with those historical-critical scholars who "bracket
theology" (p. xlviii). This statement is made in the context of
introductory issues. Well and good; issues such as authorship, sources, date,
and original text are to be settled on the basis of evidence rather than dogma.
The perspective carries over into the exegesis as well, however, in which the
significance of "bracketing" theology is not so clear. Even if one
attempts to eschew making theological judgments for one's own time, the
fundamental issue here is whether one can adequately discuss the meaning of a
historical text that has a theological content apart from dealing with the
theological issues involved. This question confronts the reader on every page
of Aune's commentary. Typical is a discussion (p. 146), in which the reader
learns much about the percentage of sentences in Revelation that begin with kai
but nothing about what it means today (or even what it meant for John) for
a church to have "lost your first love." I do not intend such
critique to minimize the importance of the detailed linguistic analysis Aune
provides. Such analysis is not an alternative to exposition of the meaning of a
text, but only one of its foundation stones.
The problem concerns not only details, but major
themes of Revelation. One example of several: Aune consistently argues that the
pairing of God-language and christological terminology is to be explained as
the author's Christianizing of a source. The phrase "and the Lamb,"
for example, is purportedly added to texts which "originally"
referred only to "God" (e.g., 21:22). Aune is certainly right that
Revelation makes use of older traditions and sources. He may well be right in
regarding this phrase as a Christian or Johannine addition. Even so, that only
poses the problem of meaning rather than "explaining" it: what does
it mean that a Jewish-Christian author who is an avowed monotheist nevertheless
combines christological language with God-language? So also, in discussing the
phenomenon that John can use a pronoun that could refer "either" to
God "or" to Christ (on 22:4, p. 1181), Aune only notes the
grammatical ambiguity, not the meaning of the phenomenon. Christians who
struggle with the issue of language for God and Christ in contemporary
theology—it is not clear whether or not Aune numbers himself among this
group—must do so on the basis of the ways in which this issue is dealt with in
the New Testament, and have a right to expect help from New Testament scholars
on such issues. One looks in vain in this massive commentary for direct help on
such hermeneutical problems. The student interested in theological meaning (not
only in the contemporary normative sense but in the ancient descriptive sense
as well) will have to look elsewhere. Even so, such students should not do so
unequipped with the linguistic and historical data provided by Aune's commentary.
M. Eugene Boring
BRITE DIVINITY SCHOOL
TEXAS CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY
FORT WORTH, TEXAS
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