Description: In What Have They Done to the Bible John Sandys-Wunsch documents the changes that have taken place in biblical exegesis since 1500 and accounts for the major reasons for these changes. Answering the question of why fundamentalism is unsatisfying to modern people, Sandys-Wunsch maintains that this development was the result of occurrences both within and outside biblical interpretation. The "internal" developments consisted of work on the textual tradition, biblical languages, and the recognition of wider problems such as consistency, cogency, and coherence within biblical documents. “External” factors were the development of secular society, tolerance, academic freedom, a perceived dichotomy between the Bible and science, and information about human culture in general, both past and present. He concludes that after the Renaissance it was the application of historical considerations to both the internal and external factors of the biblical tradition that was the main source of the modern approach to the Bible. Subjects: Bible, Literature, Methods, Historical Approaches, History, History of Interpretation
Review by Devorah Schoenfeld
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Published 5/13/2006
Citation: Devorah Schoenfeld, review of John Sandys-Wunsch, What Have They Done to the Bible?: A History of Modern Biblical Interpretation, Review of Biblical Literature [http://www.bookreviews.org] (2006).
Review by Jan van der Watt
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Published 5/12/2007
Citation: Jan van der Watt, review of John Sandys-Wunsch, What Have They Done to the Bible? A History of Modern Biblical Interpretation, Review of Biblical Literature [http://www.bookreviews.org] (2007).
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