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BREVARD S. CHILDS, The Struggle to Understand Isaiah as Christian Scripture (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2004). Pp. xii + 332. $35.
The name of Brevard Childs is well known in circles of biblical scholarship for his contributions to biblical method, particularly the inauguration and articulation of canonical criticism. His commentary on the Book of Isaiah in the Old Testament Library series (2001) exemplified this method with precision and care, while also giving readers a stunning sense of the inner workings of the Isaian corpus throughout its sixty-six chapters. Now C. has studied the history of interpretation of this OT prophetic book, so often quoted in the NT, from the Christian perspective; his goal is to see if there are "any parameters that identify exegesis as Christian" (p. xi). C. wants to discern if there are lines of similarity through generations of Christian biblical interpreters, and to judge how they reject, correct, and enrich their exposition according to the needs of the historical moment. In the same vein, C. writes, "I hope in my study that the hermeneutical issues will be understood as primary" (p. xi).
The...