4 for reception history of Enoch.)
Chapter 8 (2 Peter 1) includes significant issues such as the basis for certainty about the Parousia, participation in the Divine nature, the inspiration of scripture, and the nature of prophecy.
Chapter 9 (2 Peter 2) is the material which overlaps with Jude. Noteworthy differences from Jude include: 2 Peter omits Jude’s direct references to the apocrypha, for example the dispute between Michael and Satan over Moses (v.9) and the citation of Enoch (v.14), although he does include the prophecy itself. It should be noted that Peter explains that the false teachers were prophesied beforehand by the prophets.
Chapter 10 (2 Peter 3) treats important issues, some of which are unique to the New Testament. For example, the final conflagration at the end of time and the reasons for Christ’s delay in returning.
Chapter 11 treats the delay of the Parousia. The similarity between Jude and 2 Peter has been debated by both ancient and modern scholars with various conclusions but almost everyone agrees that 2 Peter’s discussion of the delay of the Parousia and the coming final judgment by fire is unique to him. An exploration into this shows that the issue was raised at an early time in the church and has continued to shape theological discussions through the ensuing centuries.
Aims and Methods of this Commentary
The approach of this commentary series is rooted in the work of Hans‐Georg Gadamer and others such as Hans Robert Jauss (1982), and suggests that some kind of “dialogue between past and present,” some “fusing of horizons,” might be possible by considering the “horizons of expectations”; that is, by exploring how the readings vary from one historical period to another, from one interpretive community to another. Jauss puts it like this: “A literary work is not an object which stands by itself and which offers the same face to each reader in each period” (cited by Callaway, 2004: 4). In fact, the meaning is not in the text itself but is “produced by readers who engage texts.” Gadamer emphasizes the point that the reader is not a passive recipient of the text, but rather creatively interacts with it, in a dialogical relationship. In this way, the reader is inherently involved in constructing the meaning. Integral to this approach is not only that the text is located within a particular historical context but, beyond that, each reader is culturally and politically situated so that even we who are exploring reception history are being influenced by our personal backgrounds as we select and handle the materials. The important point is that the reception historian must be constantly aware of this.
According to Luz, there is a critical distinction between the history of interpretation and the history of influence; they are intrinsically related to each other (cf. Thiselton, 2011: 6). Of course, the starting point is to take into account the various readings of a text, but it is equally or more important to consider the “effect” of a text, that is, how the text has shaped its particular world. This involves the exploration of the dialogs and interactions between readings in a specific era but also how succeeding dialogs participate in the development of very different communities from those of its own time. In relation to our little text of 1 Peter, several kernels or seeds embedded within 1 Peter would lead to major controversies from which significant doctrines emerged. For example, 1:2–3 refers to God’s foreknowledge, which almost immediately initiated discussion and debate among early writers about free will and election. This discussion would grow in intensity (along with the discussions on the Pauline epistles) until currently these theories differentiate various current denominations. In other cases such as the sections on slavery (2:18–25) or roles in marriage (3:1–7), entire movements and counter‐movements have developed, shaping culture, theology, and society. 2 Peter 1:20–21 (along with Pauline parallels) has shaped one of the central doctrines on the inspiration of scripture. The point is that reception historians are interested not only in how various readers have read and interpreted the text, they are also interested in the effects the text has on its readers and their communities. The concept is that what a text does is as important and meaningful as what it means. Riches (2013: 6) explains that this means taking “account of the power of a work to shape its readers, to create a new readership, new in the sense that its sensibilities, its understanding of the world and society and of individual lives as located in society … have been informed and re‐formed by their reading of the work.”
In other words, a written work does not merely reflect or imitate the world from which it came but also is itself engaged in the shaping of that world. Luz (1989: 95) calls this the “history of influence” of a text and explains that it goes beyond the task of the history of interpretation by the consideration of its use in practice, singing, praying, and even hoping and suffering. Studies such as those by Exum (2007) and Sherwood (2000) have shown the significant contribution which results from considering the effects and “afterlives” of a text.
The exploration of the reception of the Bible in art is especially enlightening. Indeed, the Bible has been an important subject for artists through the centuries and in turn, artists have provided information from biblical texts to people who are not able to access the biblical text for themselves (such as before translations of the Bible made scripture accessible to the general populace); through the ages art has conveyed theological positions or doctrines of the church to people as well. Recently, scholars have been exploring in a deeper way the processes involved between a work of art and its viewer, the theoretical framework of which is also rooted in the philosophy of Gadamer. In this context, the artist is considered to be an “active reader.” O’Kane explains that biblical artwork engages the viewer, thus broadening their horizon (O’Kane, 2008: 1). For more on Gadamer’s theory, see Davey (in O’Kane, 2008: 191–210). In other words, a painting gives a perspective which is itself a unique reading; it is more than simply the illustration of a story or the “transposition of a text onto a canvas,” it [the painting] “is itself an interpretation of a text” (Exum, 2007: 7), which encourages and challenges us to consider more creative possibilities and alternative perspectives for the interpretation of the text (Exum, 1996: 7–8).
In essence, the painting is itself an exegesis (for an extensive discussion of this, see Berdini, 1997). Hornik calls it “visual Narrative” and Baker goes so far as to refer to the work of African‐American painter Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859–1937) as preaching the gospel with a brush (Cf. Exum, 2007: 188–210). In short, the work of art becomes a text to be interpreted by the viewer.
One of the major challenges of reception history, however, is that although many theorists and practitioners of biblical interpretation have made suggestions, there is little agreement on the nature of the process for the selection of materials (Evans, 2014: 114). In fact, there is a wide variety of judgments about which realizations of a biblical text should be selected as shaping the successive generations of interpretations. There are, however, “patterns of practice,” that is, principles of selection which emerge. One particularly attractive approach is to identify emerging patterns, such as discourse and practice that “valorize various trajectories of interpretative tradition … [that identifies] what may be seen as significant, exemplary, or normative within ecclesiastical tradition or theological tradition” (Evans, 2014: 115–116).
The guiding principle for this commentary series is to provide a representative sample of kinds of material from different historical eras, emphasizing interpretations which have been influential or significant. This principle is valuable in that it is overarching enough to give each commentator flexibility to choose the process which works best for each of the diverse texts. Our aim for this study of 1, 2 Peter and Jude will be to provide representative kinds of interpretations through the ages; samples of various kinds of interpretations which have particularly affected theology, literature, music, art, culture, and society. In
