This book reads Scripture with Scripture. That is not a chance discovery but a method: an image from Revelation 12 is not explained out of the writer's imagination, but out of the places where that same word, that same formula, that same image occurs earlier in the Bible. Where I could, I went back to the original text itself — the Hebrew of the Masoretic Text, and the Greek — and not to a summary of it. The word-counts at the back of this book (the master concordance) were carried out on that original text and are reproducible.
The four marks. So that the reader may never believe more than the text says, almost every reading in this book carries a mark. There are four:
- well-documented — the text says it itself, or the verbal echo is hard and countable; - weighed — a reading the text strongly supports but does not compel: a convergence of data, not conclusive proof; - contested — a reading on which careful readers differ, and which is presented here honestly as one choice; - speculative / framework — an interpretation that reaches beyond the text itself (a chronology, a historical application), offered as a possibility, not as a ground.
This book nowhere claims a proof. What Scripture brings into alignment is not proof but a convergence — and a convergence grows stronger the more, and the more independent, the directions from which it comes. Where a count yields a "hit", the question belongs with it of how often the word occurs at all; without that base rate, a number says little. Where this touches the interpretation, the notes say so plainly — even when it made the book's own reading less certain.
Two registers in this house. The books of this body of work read in two keys, and it is worth knowing that in advance. There is a narrative register, in which Scripture is read as a continuous story and a reading is set down as story; and there is this marked register, in which almost every load-bearing reading carries a mark and its limits are named out loud. The same image may stand as narrative in one book and as "weighed" here — that is no contradiction, but a difference in what a chapter promises. Where this book is stricter than its neighbours, that is by design.
No straw men. I have tried to render the other reading never at its weakest but at its strongest. Where a reading has an inconclusive point, that point is stated too. Where the tradition reads otherwise, it is named. The aim is not to win, but to see.
The translation. Wherever a clean modern rendering was possible, the Scripture quotations are the author's own concordant working translation: load-bearing, recurring words are translated the same everywhere, so that the echoes between the texts stay visible — for those echoes are the very heart of a reading that binds Scripture to Scripture. Where such a rendering would have become strained, a received English wording has been followed. The divine Name is rendered YHWH. The Greek text held to is the Received Text (Textus Receptus, after Scrivener); where this makes a difference to a passage, it is noted.
One premise, not a reading. Finally, there is one line offered not as a weighed reading but as a fixed premise, guarded from the first page to the last: this book is non-supersessionist. The congregation does not come in Israel's place, but comes forth out of Israel; the promises to the woman remain hers. Where the text and this premise meet, the last word is left to the text — and the text, all the way into Romans 11, proves this premise right.
This book reads Scripture with Scripture. That is not a chance discovery but a method: an image from Revelation 12 is not explained out of the writer's imagination, but out of the places where that same word, that same formula, that same image occurs earlier in the Bible. Where I could, I went back to the original text itself — the Hebrew of the Masoretic Text, and the Greek — and not to a summary of it. The word-counts at the back of this book (the master concordance) were carried out on that original text and are reproducible.
The four marks. So that the reader may never believe more than the text says, almost every reading in this book carries a mark. There are four:
- well-documented — the text says it itself, or the verbal echo is hard and countable; - weighed — a reading the text strongly supports but does not compel: a convergence of data, not conclusive proof; - contested — a reading on which careful readers differ, and which is presented here honestly as one choice; - speculative / framework — an interpretation that reaches beyond the text itself (a chronology, a historical application), offered as a possibility, not as a ground.
This book nowhere claims a proof. What Scripture brings into alignment is not proof but a convergence — and a convergence grows stronger the more, and the more independent, the directions from which it comes. Where a count yields a "hit", the question belongs with it of how often the word occurs at all; without that base rate, a number says little. Where this touches the interpretation, the notes say so plainly — even when it made the book's own reading less certain.
Two registers in this house. The books of this body of work read in two keys, and it is worth knowing that in advance. There is a narrative register, in which Scripture is read as a continuous story and a reading is set down as story; and there is this marked register, in which almost every load-bearing reading carries a mark and its limits are named out loud. The same image may stand as narrative in one book and as "weighed" here — that is no contradiction, but a difference in what a chapter promises. Where this book is stricter than its neighbours, that is by design.
No straw men. I have tried to render the other reading never at its weakest but at its strongest. Where a reading has an inconclusive point, that point is stated too. Where the tradition reads otherwise, it is named. The aim is not to win, but to see.
The translation. Wherever a clean modern rendering was possible, the Scripture quotations are the author's own concordant working translation: load-bearing, recurring words are translated the same everywhere, so that the echoes between the texts stay visible — for those echoes are the very heart of a reading that binds Scripture to Scripture. Where such a rendering would have become strained, a received English wording has been followed. The divine Name is rendered YHWH. The Greek text held to is the Received Text (Textus Receptus, after Scrivener); where this makes a difference to a passage, it is noted.
One premise, not a reading. Finally, there is one line offered not as a weighed reading but as a fixed premise, guarded from the first page to the last: this book is non-supersessionist. The congregation does not come in Israel's place, but comes forth out of Israel; the promises to the woman remain hers. Where the text and this premise meet, the last word is left to the text — and the text, all the way into Romans 11, proves this premise right.