One of the best and most fun books on reading the Bible that I have read in a long time. Leithart argues against reading scriptureto extract the one narrow meaning from the 'husk' of the text. Instead he suggests careful attention be payed to the actual words of scripture (and thus eschews paraphrases like the Message). It is through this attention to 'the letter' of scripture that we get a full sense of the meaning of scripture. And he does this in an interesting and engaging manner. He defends typology as a valid hermeneutic (for any reading, not just scripture) by asserting that texts are events and thus change meaning over time. Rather than arguing for limits on the meaning of particular words, he allows the Biblical writers poetic genius in their word choice. This allows for nuances and shades of meaning, which are not directly evident from the context.

His chapter on Intertextuality is entitled 'The Text is a Joke.' By explaining the anatomy of a joke he shows how proper understanding of a 'joke' comes from understanding from outside sources and the ability to discover which information is relevant to 'get it.' His chapter on structure argues that like music, texts can be constructed with multiple structures and themes. In his final chapter, Leithart asserts that Scripture is about Christ, both as head (Jesus) and body (ecclesia). This means that passages point typologically to both Christ and his church and by extension, everything else.

This text grew out of Leithart's defense of the quadriga- the medieval belief in the literal, anagogical, allegorical and tropological senses of scripture. But Leithart isn't so much engaging patristics and medieval texts; rather he is trying to show that the quadriga itself is a good hermeneutic. Thus he attends to making sure we are reading the Bible with a literary sensitivity, thoughtfulness and an expansive imagination about all that the text is saying.


In criticism, I think sometimes Leithart is a little unfair in his critique of his opponents. Also, throughout this book, he uses John 9 and the story of Jesus' healing of the man born blind to show how this works out. In one sense this is smart, but it is also the easy route. John's gospel is ripe with poetic overtones, allusions, theologizing, symbolism. Any student of John's gospel is going to pay attention to what John is hinting at, not merely what the action is. I found myself wondering at different points, what Leithart would do with a non-narrative text which wasn't so expansive in its allusions. Still I substantially agreed and really liked some of the ways he opened up John 9 to me. ( )