Time again for Paul's brief book reports.

David Dockery's Biblical Interpretation Then and Now was simultaneously informative and disappointing. The ostensible objective of the book is to provide some elementary analysis of the biblical interpreatation techniques/philosophies of the church fathers from the first to the fourth century and show how their writings could dialogue with modern hermeneutics.

The first part of this was done fairly well, though quite hurriedly. Still, I knew nothing about Theodore of Mopsuestia last week, and now I know a tiny bit. Unfortunately I still don't know where Mopsuestia is or whether it was the birthplace of the mop. But I digress.

Dockery discusses the hermeneutics of the New Testament, Clement, Irenaenus, the Alexandrians, the Antiochans, Jerome, and a few others in brief and simple language. He spend about 150 pages on this. The book as a whole is 183 pages, so you may see where the problem comes. He covers medieval and reformation contributions in about two pages, then proceeds to name drop Schliermacher, Husserl, Wittgenstein, Heidegger and other 20th c. figures. The dialogue portion occurs in roughly the last five pages of text and is, of course, not well developed.

My assumption is that the publisher only agreed to publish the book if it came in at a certain length, say less than 250pp including biblio, index and glossary. By the time he got through the church fathers, the space was simply gone. It's really too bad, since Dockery is apparently well versed in contemporary hermeneutical debates. It would have been interesting to see what he had to say. Oh well.

On the somewhat lighter side, I bring you Stephen Dobyns. You may or may not have read his excelent Church of the Dead Girls a little while back. Boy in the Water is a similar type of tale to that book, which is to say that it fits in the general category of "serial killer tale" but is really about how tragedy and violence affect "normal" people.

Since it is a very plot driven book I don't want to give away too much info, but I can tell you that the main character is dealing with an incredible load of guilt, and throughout the story, as more and more bad things happen to, him he struggles with the idea of cosmic justice. I don't think I said that very well, and don't think I can adequately describe the novel, but I'll just say I recommend it to those who like murder mysteries and are willing to try something a bit different.