e bring to our study the cultural biases of the twentieth century (as did those seekers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries). In our "wisdom" we may find our judgment clouded by the effects of modern society--movies and television, predominantly, which have cast Charlton Heston as both Moses and the voice of God (in deMille's "The Ten Commandments") or Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra--which make it difficult, if not impossible, to project ourselves back into the reality that was first century C.E. Palestine.
Each of the major alternative forms of biblical criticism brings with it a certain set of conditions or presuppositions that invariably alter the results obtained. The goal of hermeneutics--the interpretation of Scripture--is to try to "bridge two vastly different worlds [and becomes] a conversation between text and reader, requiring not detachment but involvement."
However, if one's interpretation is theologically-motivated as opposed to historically, textually, redactionally, or politically, then the bridge crosses the gap at a somewhat different point (as it does for each of the others). Accordingly, Crossan writes that
Even under the discipline of attempting to envision Jesus against his own most proper Jewish background, it seems we can have as many pictures as there are exegetes. . . . The problem of multiple and discordant conclusions forces us back to questions of theory and method.
Thus, the use of any commentary must be balanced by the examination of competing points of view to enable any exegete to weigh his or her own understanding and presuppositions against those which may be quite foreign or even controversial. In doing so, the exegete is then free to discard those views he or she finds objectionable or untenable, with the proviso that the discards may nevertheless remain valid for others.
In looking at Mark 8:27-33, virtually all commentators agree that this unit marks a signifi...