Ritröð Guðfræðistofnunar - 01.01.2013, Qupperneq 13

Walter Grofi, Tiibingen1
Augustine as an Exegete
of the Old Testament in his
Quaestiones in heptateuchum
I am most happy for this opportunity to provide a glimpse into my current
work on reception history in connection with a project of translating and
commenting on St. Augustine’s Quaestionum in heptateuchum libri VII from
the point of view of an Old Testament scholar. Already before starting this
project, I had come to appreciate Augustine’s work in connection with my
commentary on the Book of Judges published in 2009, when I had to treat
the story of Jiftach’s sacrifice of his daughter.2 What Augustine wrote in
connection with that passage not only remained formative in the Western
Church throughout the whole Middle Ages but also reappears, at times
almost in the same words, even in commentaries of our own day.
Using a series of examples, I propose to show, what, in my opinion,
is typical for Augustine’s exegetical method. Naturally, we cannot today
interpret the Old Testament in the same way he did, but we can observe
and admire how intensively he struggled with the literal sense of the Old
Testament using the means available to him, and we can appreciate his
numerous exegetical works as outstanding examples of reception of the
biblical text. With Augustine, we can see how easily an exegesis focused
exclusively on the final text, — a form of exegesis on which currently an
exaggerated emphasis is being placed — glides over into an individualistic
reception based on ones own authority. In addition, through the confronta-
tion with Augustine’s exegesis, we can better recognize the time-bound
character of our own exegetical methods and approaches.
1 Lecture held at the Faculty of Theology of Háskóli íslands. I thank Rector Kristinn Ólason
for the invitation and for the opportunity to publish the text. I am also grateful to Dr. Thomas
Riplinger for translating the text into English.
2 Walter GroB, Richter. Úbersetzt und ausgelegt. Mit Karten von Erasmus GaC (Herders
Theologischer Kommentar zum Alten Testament), Freiburg - Basel - Wien, 2009.
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