² For a historical survey of New Testament scholars in the University of Edinburgh, see now O'Neill, J. C., ‘New Testament’, in Disruption to Diversity: Edinburgh Divinity 1846–1996, eds. Wright, D. F., Badcock, G. D. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1996), 73–97.Google Scholar

³ Schlatter, Adolf, ‘The Theology of the New Testament and Dogmatics’, in The Nature of New Testament Theology, ed. Morgan, R. (SBT ss 25; London:SCM, 1973), 117–166Google Scholar; Cullmann, Oscar, ‘The Necessity & Function of Higher Criticism’, in The Early Church, ed. Higgins, A. J. B. (London: SCM, 1956), 3–16Google Scholar; Ebeling, Gerhard, ‘The Significance of the Critical Historical Method for Church and Theology in Protestantism’, in Word and Faith (London: SCM, 1963), 17–61Google Scholar; Brown, R. E., The Critical Meaning of the Bible (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1982).Google Scholar

⁴ I draw mainly here upon my eighteen years in the Department of Religion of the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada.

⁵ See, e.g., Casanova, José, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1994)Google Scholar; Kepel, Gilles, The Revenge of God: The Resurgence of Islam, Christianity and Judaism in the Modern World (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994; French 1991).Google Scholar

⁶ ‘Religious Studies’ also designates the faith-oriented programmes of parish education in Roman Catholic circles, the adjective in ‘Religious Studies’ is unavoidably ambiguous. For a recent collection of papers examining the field, see Klostermaier, K. K., Hurtado, L. W. (eds.), Religious Studies: Issues, Prospects and Proposals (University of Manitoba Studies in Religion, 2; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991).Google Scholar

⁷ See, e.g., the standard survey by Quasten, Johannes, Patrology (3 vols.; Westminster, Maryland: Christian Classics, 1986 [1950]).Google Scholar

⁸ The theory of a ‘Q’ collection is of course quite widely accepted, though there remain sharp differences over what it may have contained and whether it represents a ‘gospel’ or functioned in some other way. See, e.g., the various points of view in Kloppenborg, J. S. (ed.), The Shape of Q: Signal Essays on the Sayings Gospel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993)Google Scholar. For a critical assessment of hypotheses about other Christian sources earlier than the surviving Gospels, see, e.g., Meier, J. P., A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus (New York: Doubleday, 1991, 1994) 1: 112–141.Google Scholar

⁹ Note, e.g., the recent study by my Edinburgh colleague, Lim, T. H., Holy Scripture in the Qumran Commentaries and Pauline Letters (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For more comprehensive discussion of the sources I mention here, see now Mulder, M.J. (ed.), Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity (CRINT 2/1; Assen/Maastricht: Van Gorcum; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988).Google Scholar

¹⁰ I have attempted to draw upon such research into the Jewish religious matrix in my study of the origins of devotion offered to Christ in earliest Christian circles: One God, One Lord: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988; 2nd ed.Edinburgh: T & T Clark 1998).Google Scholar

¹¹ My own current research programme, ‘Christ-Devotion in the First Two Centuries’, involves the sort of integrative research I describe here. In addition to the several essays that have already arisen from this research, I hope to produce a book covering this subject.

¹² Cf. now the very interesting recommendations of Gottwald, N. K. about scholars bringing to conscious reflection their ideological tendencies and preferences (‘Triumphalist versus Anti-Triumphalist Versions of Early Israel’, Currents in Research: Biblical Studies 5 (1997): 15–42, esp. 26–28.Google Scholar

¹³ I am encouraged in my view by the somewhat similar criticisms of postmodernist historiography given by Richard J. Evans, ‘Truth Lost in Vain Views’, Times Higher Education Supplement (Sept. 12, 1997), 18; id., In Defence of History (Oxford: Blackwell's, 1997).Google Scholar

¹⁴ So far as I am aware, ‘hermeneutics of agape’ is my own phrasing and the inferences as stated here my own. But for the following paragraphs I gratefully acknowledge the fertilisation my thoughts have received from LaFargue, Michael, ‘Are Texts Determinate? Derrida, Barth and the Role of the Biblical Scholar’, HTR 81(1988): 341–357Google Scholar, discussions with Dr. Kevin Vanhoozer, and from several essays by my friend Jeffrey, David, e.g., ‘Mistakenly ‘Logocentric’: Centering Poetic Language in a Scriptural Tradition’, Religion and Literature 22 (1990): 33–46Google Scholar; ‘Common Sense, Moral Accountability and the Intellectual Life’, Revue générate de droit 25 (1994): 429–443Google Scholar. Note now his larger study, People of the Book: Christian Identity and Literary Culture (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1996).Google Scholar

¹⁵ Barthes, Roland, The Pleasure of the Text (New York: Hill & Want, 1975)Google Scholar. I thank my colleague Kevin Vanhoozer for pointing me to this work, and for discussions of these matters as I formulated my thoughts for this lecture.

¹⁶ Thus, for example, a hermeneutics of agape would have very critical things to say about the author's likely meaning in a work such as Hitler's Mein Kampf!. But even radical critique is fully within the scope of agape guided by seeking to serve truth and promote human flourishing.

¹⁷ David L. Jeffrey, ‘Mistakenly ‘Logocentric’’, esp. 36–39.

¹⁸ I use the English translation from Krailsheimer, A. J. (trans.), Pascal Pensées (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966), 256 (saying #739)Google Scholar. French: ‘La vérité est si obscurcie en ce temps, et le mensonge si établi, qu'à moins que d'aimer la vérité, on ne saurait la connaître’, Pascal, Blaise, Pensées: texte de Léon Brunschvicg (Édition Lutetia; Paris: Nelson, 1955), p. 431 (#864; #863 Lafuma text; #793 Chevalier text).Google Scholar