Philosophical Engagement With the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: Methodological Reflections

Jul 18, 2026

Uploaded by Aurora

Recent “philosophical” interpretations within biblical studies assume that philosophical ideas help illuminate biblical texts, yet they differ in how they connect the two fields. The article analyzes these differences by focusing on underlying methods. It proposes a simple trajectory of approaches at two disciplinary ends: using the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament for philosophical reflection versus using philosophy for biblical interpretation. The goal is to outline a needed research profile for this active subdiscipline.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages26

Reading Time1 h 6 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Philosophical criticism as a subdiscipline

Key research questions

Scope and trajectory of approaches

Using the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament for reflection

Using philosophy for biblical interpretation

Philosophical Engagement With the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: Some Methodological Reﬂections Arthur Keefer􀀁 Eton College, Windsor, UK Currents in Biblical Research 2022, Vol. 21(1) 349–374 © The Author(s) 2022 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions) DOI: 10.1177/1476993X221124950 [journals.sagepub.com/home/cbi](journals.sagepub.com/home/cbi) Abstract A raft of recent “philosophical” interpretations have emerged within biblical studies. They have in common the expectation that ideas from the discipline of philosophy will be helpful for understanding the biblical texts. However, the way in which they engage the two varies, and it is their methods that are teased out in this article. I offer a simple trajectory of approaches for works in this area, marked by two ends of characteristic disciplinary habits: using the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament for philosophical reﬂection and using philosophy for biblical interpretation. In this, the article sketches a much-needed research proﬁle for a lively subdiscipline. Keywords biblical criticism, biblical philosophy, exegesis, Hebrew Bible, methodology, Old Testament, philosophical criticism, philosophical engagement, philosophy Introduction A recent raft of “philosophical” interpretations has emerged within biblical studies. The book of Job has been interpreted via Aristotelian notions of friendship (Vesely 2019), Ecclesiastes read alongside Benatar ’s “anti-natal” premises (Peterson 2019), Proverbs putin touch with Socratic and Aristotelian moral theories (Ansberry 2010; Keefer 2021), and the book of Exodus analyzed with the epistemology of Polanyi (Johnson 2013), to name only a few. The prospect of using philosophical resources for biblical interpretation has, furthermore, been a matter of exploration at several research venues, including the Herzl Corresponding author: Arthur Keefer, Eton College, Windsor SL4 6DW, UK. Email: [a.keefer@etoncollege.org.uk](a.keefer@etoncollege.org.uk) Institute in Jerusalem, the “Hebrew Bible and Philosophy” sessions of the 2014–2015 SBL Annual Meetings, the Logos Institute for Analytic and Exegetical Theology in St. Andrews, Scotland,“The Origins of Second Order Thinking” research venture headed up by Dietrich and others, and the Center for Hebraic Thought, based at The King ’s College in New York City, which serves as the current online hub of such efforts. Within these venues, scholars contribute from several belief-based starting points, including Jewish, Christian, and secular stances, as well as several disciplinary starting points, whether biblical studies, theology, political philosophy, or moral philosophy. No publication, tomy knowledge, is currently dedicated to these types of inquiries, though several have featured them, including the Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Biblical Criticism series (Johnson 2018), the (discontinued) Journal of Philosophy & Scripture, and the

FAQs

What central assumption do “philosophical” interpretations share in biblical studies?

They assume that ideas from philosophy will be helpful for understanding biblical texts, while methods of engagement vary.

How does the article map the field’s approaches?

It sketches a trajectory between two characteristic ends: using the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament for philosophical reflection and using philosophy for biblical interpretation.

Why does the author focus on methods in this article?

Because the main variation among recent efforts lies in how they engage philosophy and the biblical texts, and the article teases out those methodological differences.

Jul 18, 2026

Uploaded by Aurora