Begining is a difficult thing. Where to start when there are so many possibilities? What should be the first thing when anything can be the first thing? How about a brief history. Why not? A little story to get in the mood. But this is a story that affects us all. It is the story of how we think, or at least a story of how a certain Euro-American worldview has become so significant for the way so many think. So, here begins a brief history of … theology.The following is derived largely from Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Rhetoric and Ethic: The Politics of Biblical Study (Fortress: Minneapolis, 1999). Over the next few entries I shall outline in more detail a 'broad brushstroke' picture of the history of biblical studies, and hopefully derive some outline of a current state, if such a thing is possible. There are three clear shifts in biblical studies, and it seems that there is a fourth shift taking place at the moment.

• The first phase of biblical studies was marked by a dogmatist-literalist hermeneutic in which was incubated a doctrinal-fundamentalist paradigm. The biblical record was seen as divinely revealed sacred Scripture. The fourfold sense of scripture was understood in the precritical mode of pre-modern biblical studies, but colonialism in conjunction with modernism tended to force towards literalist readings, readings that are definitive and divinely revealed.The fourfold senses are: the literal sense; the allegorical sense; the tropological/moral sense; and the anagogical/eschatological/secret sense. For further, see Wikipedia on Medieval Hermeneutics.
• The second phase saw a transition to a scientific-postitivist paradigm through the impact of modernity and modern philosophy.
• In the last century, as cracks have appeared in moderninst assumptions, the scientific-positivist approach has been decentred and gradually preplaced with a post-modern hermeneutic that accentuates cultural location and persepctive.
• A fourth transition seems to be taking place at the moment, as critique of post-modern perspecivalism grows. This burgeoning paradigm is less easy to pin down, as anything is when living in the middle of it, but seems to be more actively engaged with the ethical consequences of interpretation and therefore with the rhetoric, the persuading power, of words for good or ill. So it could be called the pastoral-theological, the libertionist-cultural, the rhetorical-emancipatory or the rhetorical-political phase, but I shall refer to it as the rhetorical-ethical paradigm.

In the next few posts I shall try to expand on these four phases in turn, looking at the shape, form and impact of each paradigm. Needless to say, I believe that the greatest hope for biblical studies, for faith and for life lies in engaging with a rhetorical-ethical hermeneutic.