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FRANCIS WATSON, Text and Truth: Redefining Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids/ Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1997). Pp. viii + 344. $45.
This book contributes to the growing corpus of work challenging the perceived fragmentation, isolation, and avoidance of any perspective of faith or theology characterizing much of contemporary biblical scholarship. The author, Francis Watson, reader in biblical theology at King's College of the University of London, articulated his concerns and correctives in a previous book, Text, Church and World(Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994). The mixed critical responses to that book motivated the author to provide further clarification and substance to his original project, and thus we have the present volume.
The author's intent is to establish "a renewed practice of `biblical theology"' (p. 13). By biblical theology he means "an interdisciplinary approach to biblical interpretation which seeks to dismantle the barriers that at present separate biblical scholarship from Christian theology" (p. vii). According to W., the currently isolated scholarly communities of OT, NT, and systematic theology must work together if there is to be authentic Christian theology. So detrimental are these disciplinary boundaries...