The Bible in human transformation

the long version

"Historical biblical criticism is bankrupt." This is the startling affirmation with which Walter Wink begins The Bible in Human Transformation. In spite of the contributions of the historical critical method to biblical study, the point has now been reached, he asserts, where this method is incapable of allowing scripture to evoke personal and social transformation today. The author first traces the causes of this bankruptcy as the necessary background for a consideration of the intellectual revolutions or "paradigm shifts" which ae currently opening new directions for human understanding. The main burden of the book is the proposal of a new paradigm for Bible study, based not on the objective models of the natural sciences, but on the model of personal interaction as employed by the human sciences, especially psychotherapy. This allows for a new exegesis which does full justice to the critical method but places that method in a framework where the text is enabled to evoke human change. Such an approach to the Bible remains objective in the highest sense, enabling the exegete to recover the original intention of the texts, while at the same time creating the possibility for human encounter with the texts as a legitimate part of the interpretive task. - Back cover.