The development of biblical exegesis and hermeneutics in Christianity
Early stages
The earliest Christian exegesis of the Old Testament is found in the New Testament, not in the written texts only but in the oral tradition lying behind them. Some lines of exegesis are present in so many separate strands of primitive Christian teaching that they are most reasonably assigned to Jesus, who began his Galilaean ministry with the announcement that the time appointed for the fulfillment of prophecy, and the Kingdom of God that was its main theme, had arrived. If the accomplishment of his ministry involved his death, that was accepted in the same spirit; he submitted to his captors with the words “Let the scriptures be fulfilled” (Mark 14:49). The church began with the conviction that Jesus, crucified and risen, was the one of whom the prophets spoke. He was the prophet like Moses, prince of the house of David, priest of the order of Melchizedek, servant of the Lord, Son of man, and exalted Lord. If the prophets themselves were uncertain about the person or time indicated by their oracles, the early Christians were certain: the person was Jesus, the time was now. The New Testament writers shared a creative and flexible principle of exegesis that has regard for the literary and historical context and traces a consistent pattern of divine action in judgment and mercy, reproduced repeatedly in the history of Israel and manifested definitively in Christ. This exegesis is elaborated at times by means of typology and allegory, as when Paul illustrates the relationship between law and gospel by the story of Hagar and Sarah, the concubine and wife of Abraham, respectively (Galatians 4:21–31), or when Israel’s tabernacle in the wilderness becomes the material counterpart to the heavenly sanctuary in which believers of the new age offer spiritual worship to God (Hebrews 8:2 fol.). The writer to the Hebrews, indeed, occasionally relates the old order to the new order platonically in terms of the earthly copy of an eternal archetype.
At an early date Christians developed a line of Old Testament exegesis designed to show that they, not the Jews, stand in the true succession of the original people of God. This line is seen in the Letter of Barnabas, the apologist Justin’s (c. 100–c. 165) Dialogue with Trypho, and the 3rd-century Against the Jews ascribed to the North African bishop Cyprian (c. 200–258).