The Trouble with Biblical Hermeneutics

OK, one trouble, a trouble: There are, we are told, “three views” of the function of Matthew 1:1 – it’s the heading for the genealogy, it’s the heading for the whole book, or it’s the heading for the first section of the book (perhaps extending to 4:16).

Why has it got to be one or the other? Anyone with more than an ounce of literary sense knows that well-chosen titles send resonances in all sorts of direction. Does Robinson’s “Gilead” refer to the Kansas town where the book takes place? To the biblical city? To the associations of that biblical city (“balm in Gilead,” eg)? Why choose? Surely Robinson meant all of them.

The first chapter of Dickens’ Hard Times is titled “One Thing Needful.” It’s the title of the first chapter for sure, but it sets up a set of concerns that runs through the remainder of the book, to be picked up by a later chapter title, “Another Thing Needful.” What could it mean to say that “One Thing Needful” is “just” the title for the first chapter? Part of its meaning is its “reach” forward to a later chapter title, as well as its extension backward to the story of Mary and Martha.

So, for Matthew, 1:1 introduces the genealogy, but the obvious allusion to Genesis (2:4 and 5:1 in particular) initiates a “new Genesis” theme that carries forward throughout the gospel story.