1. What inspired you to write this book?

Once upon a time, in the early days of my own doctoral studies, I had a plan to study the hermeneutics of the Reformers — to find and describe the elegant theories by which Protestants rediscovered the gospel and, I would have argued, read the Bible so much better than their predecessors. Dissertations, of course, have to justify their existence by finding something new or by finding a new angle, so I began to wonder what Calvin's hermeneutics would look like if I studied how he handled some of the less-usual topics and texts in theology.

That study led me to begin to reverse the hermeneutical question — to look more at the practice of biblical interpretation rather than at the theories of interpretation or inspiration. The Bible's neglected texts are often ideal for this purpose, because they force commentators and preachers either to form an opinion or else skip over the text altogether. I found myself gravitating towards these difficult texts, then, as a way of seeing how these theologian's theories and hermeneutics function in the field, and when under stress — when the text is itself very difficult or when the topic is one like divorce, where the application of the Bible's teachings is both urgent and excruciating.

In a sense, Reading the Bible with the Dead has grown out of twenty years spent reading old commentaries, during which time I have repeatedly found these ancient, medieval, and Reformation writers saying unexpected things.

2. Explain what you mean by a "neglected texts" of the Bible. Can you explain and give some examples?

The texts that especially interest me are precisely those that contemporary readers and preachers tend to avoid. One way to look for such texts is simply to see which texts are left out of the lectionaries. Those most often omitted are texts that deal with gender roles, violence, sexual matters, or moral controversies.

It is perfectly understandable why many would not want to have these passages read in church; parents, for example, might not want to be forced to explain certain violent or sexual Bible stories to their children. So I have chapters on Jephthah's daughter, the curses in the Psalms, divorce, and texts that address the role of women in the church. Most of these are missing from the lectionaries, as well as from so-called children's Bibles.

Yet previous generations of preachers and commentators, as well as children's Bibles from previous centuries, did include these stories and address them in a variety of ways — some of them remarkably insightful and moving, others less so. As for the role of parents in teaching the Bible to their children, the story of Jephthah's daughter was raised for me by my own daughter, who heard a passing reference to the story in Sunday school and came home to ask me about it. It's a very sad story, no doubt, but the story of how Christian commentators responded to Jephthah's daughter is vastly more encouraging. I think the church needs to remember not only these neglected texts, but also the neglected Christian pastors and theologians who often wrestled well with these exact stories.

3. What do you think is the benefit of reading such passages?

I think a primary benefit of reading such passages in Scripture is their very real currency today, both inside the church and outside. Back when I was in grad school, I supposed that by spending my life studying Latin commentaries that virtually no one read anymore, I would become a specialist in antiquarian obscurities. Little did I know then just how much currency these passages and topics still have.

I began writing my chapter on the polygamy of the patriarchs simply because I found it curious and engaging. As I worked my way along, I also began to notice that polygamy continues to be very much a living topic — not only in the controversial sense, as seen in the recent trial of a notorious Mormon polygamist in Utah, but also in the sense that there are marginal Christian groups in this country today who continue to return to these Old Testament narratives in order to find a warrant for their practices. Consequently, it's useful not only to study these passages, but also to know what the church has said about these texts over so many centuries. The same could be said for most of the topics that my book addresses.

4. What did you find most surprising during your research?

I've already mentioned that these old commentators can say surprising things. But I don't think I was prepared for the similarity between these commentators and contemporary feminist scholarship. Both sets of readers bring intensely moral expectations to the text. Both pay close attention to what is said and done and to what is not said and done. And in many cases, both display a fundamental empathy for the characters in the text and see their own empathy and remembrance as a way of doing justice to biblical characters who often seemed to bear the brunt of injustice.

This was an unexpected conversation to find myself in the midst of — to be moderating a dialogue between contemporary feminists and the male commentators of the Middle Ages and Reformation! But I think that there is a bridge to be built here between Christians who tend to dismiss feminism as a fad and feminists who are often justifiably angry with the church: both groups need to reckon with some of the sympathies of these earlier Christian writers for Old Testament women like Hagar and Jephthah's daughter.

5. Why should we care about the history of biblical interpretation?

From my own earliest days as a Christian, I was aware that Christians often disagreed over the interpretation of various passages of Scripture and that their disagreements could often turn dogmatic and nasty. One benefit of knowing the history of the interpretation of any particular text is that one inevitably encounters diverse points of view — not all of which will be compatible with one's own predilections, and some of which may well challenge us to see things in the text we have never noticed. These old commentators read the Bible with exquisite attention to detail! And they often asked questions that many Christians raise, even though some of these questions have gone out of fashion among historical-critical commentators today.

Moreover, to know the history of the Bible's interpretation is also a way to find out how you — as a Christian, as a member of a particular denomination or tradition — got where you are, so to speak. To be exposed to diverse interpretations of Scripture alongside an account of how these diverse interpreters were thinking ought to evoke a greater appreciation for the parts of the church throughout history that are themselves often overlooked by Christians today.

6. Who did you find to be the hardest commentator to read?

Maybe Origen, except that I had what I could almost call a conversion experience reading Origen. When I began this project years ago, I simply assumed that I would have to read a lot of allegorical interpretations of the stories that would be long, boring, and ultimately beside the point. However, I gradually began to see that even though Reformation commentators like Luther and Calvin routinely criticized allegories like Origen's, Luther and Calvin made exegetical moves that were just as practical and pastoral as allegory was meant to be. Even more surprising, many of the allegorical accounts that I read were very much in touch with the literal storyline and often pursued an agenda that bridged both the symbolic and the historical sense of the text.

Origen is a good illustration. He made a passing remark about Jephthah's daughter that compared her to the Christian martyrs, and I originally saw this as opportunism on his part, whereby he would take any excuse to urge Christians to martyrdom. But when I reread the passage, I saw that I had misjudged him, and that his "typological" reading here was in fact overwhelmingly sensitive not only to the human loss that martyrdom entailed in his own day — both for the martyr and for the martyr's friends — but also for the utter ambiguity of this fate. Origen candidly admits that a casual observer might well believe that the God of the Christians is a cruel sort of deity that he should lead his followers to martyrdom — but Origen insists that there is a hidden meaningfulness to such tragic deaths all the same. I had not expected this degree of sensitivity and compassion from the church's best-known allegorist.

7. Are you currently working on any new writing projects or are you continuing to emphasize the vision in this book?

Yes, on both counts. I'm currently working on a translation project for InterVarsity Press in which we will be gathering some of the best excerpts from Reformation commentaries and presenting them in canonical order — I'm working on the volume that covers Genesis 1-11.

My interest in theological interpretation is also linked to my work with seminarians — especially as they are future pastors. So I have linked this book to a website — http://purl.oclc.org/net/jlt/exegesis — where I hope not only to keep the book's appendix updated, but also to offer a few model sermons that show how the history of interpretation can inform the exegesis of these difficult passages in ways that make a difference in the pulpit.