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Dictionary of the History of Ideas

Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas
  
  

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

A standard American edition of The Holy Bible, from
which all biblical quotations above have been taken, is The
Revised Standard Version (New York, 1952). Since, when
discussing metaphor in religious discourse, the element of
imagery must be kept distinct from the element of old-
fashioned English speech, which makes everything sound
vaguely figurative to many, the Revised Standard rather
than the King James Version of the Bible has been used
throughout the article. The early philosophic sources are
reliably examined, with extensive Greek fragments and good
English translations, in G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven, The
Presocratic Philosophers
(Cambridge and New York, 1957).
A distinguished translation of Plato's works is available in
The Dialogues of Plato by B. Jowett (New York, 1937), from
which the above excerpts have been taken.

Philo's thought has been treated in depth by H. A.
Wolfson in the two-volume work Philo (Cambridge, Mass.,
1948), which contains excellent notes and further bibliogra-
phy; and H. A. Wolfson's The Philosophy of the Church
Fathers
(Cambridge, Mass., 1956) is a valuable source for
a study of the extension of the philonic tradition of meta-
phorical exegesis into early Christian thought. Later devel-
opments, including the Victorines, are examined in B.
Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, 2nd
ed. (New York, 1952).

Various editions of the Summa theologica of Saint Thomas
Aquinas are available; and for a brief systematic critique
of the extension of Saint Thomas' theory of religious dis-
course into the traditional doctrine of analogy, see “Analogy
in Theology” by Frederick Ferré in The Encyclopedia of
Philosophy,
8 vols. (New York and London, 1967), I, 94-97.

Martin Luther's exegetical works are contained in the
first thirty volumes of Luther's Works, edited and translated
by J. Pelikan and W. Hansen (Saint Louis, 1958-67); in
addition, a valuable companion volume in the set, Luther
the Expositor,
has been appended by J. Pelikan (Saint Louis,
1959). Another seminal Protestant view is found in Jean
Calvin's Commentaries, translated and edited by Joseph
Haroutunian (Philadelphia, 1958). A useful series of general
articles on the Bible and the principles of critical biblical
scholarship, including three excellent articles on the history


208

of the interpretation of the Bible, are found in The Inter-
preter's Bible,
12 vols. (New York, 1952), Vol. I.

Some works in English by modern interpreters of religious
discourse who believe that it requires fresh articulation in
terms of a more literal philosophical theory include the
following. Defending exegesis in terms of the thought of
Martin Heidegger are R. Bultmann in Kerygma and Myth,
edited by H. W. Bartsch (New York, 1961) and John
Macquarrie in Principles of Christian Theology (New York,
1966). Attempting a similar exposition in terms of the phi-
losophy of A. N. Whitehead are John B. Cobb, Jr., in A
Christian Natural Theology
(Philadelphia, 1965), Charles
Hartshorne in Man's Vision of God (New York, 1941), and
Schubert M. Ogden, who combines an interest in both
Whitehead and Heidegger, in Christ Without Myth (New
York, 1961). Working toward analogous ends in terms of the
position of John Dewey is Henry Nelson Wieman in The
Source of Human Good
(New York, 1947). And arguing for
the articulation of religious discourse in terms of the analy-
ses of Ludwig Wittgenstein are Dallas M. High in Language,
Persons, and Belief
(New York, 1967) and Paul M. van Buren
in The Secular Meaning of the Gospel (New York, 1963).

FREDERICK FERRÉ

[See also Allegory; Ambiguity; Church, Modernism in;
Gnosticism; God; Hierarchy; Literary Paradox; Myth in
Biblical Times; Prophecy;
Rhetoric; Symbol.]