Paul and the Hermeneutics of the Apostolic Kerygma: Reassessing Paul's Scriptural Interpretation in Light of His Hermeneutical Statements and His Prosopological Exegesis

This dissertation seeks to overcome disagreement regarding the center of Pauline hermeneutics by evaluating Paul's hermeneutical statements and examining his prosopological exegesis. The method of exploration combines historical criticism with a novel intertextual approach that utilizes early Christian reception history and parallels to Paul's exegesis. It is argued that Paul received, employed, and extended an apostolic, kerygmatic narrative tradition centered on key events in the Christ story as his primary interpretative lens' tradition containing a built-in hermeneutic.

Paul's interpretative statements are examined and two apostolic, kerygmatic pre-Pauline protocreeds are found to be especially vital: 1 Corinthians 15:3-5 and Romans 1:3-4. In these passages Paul interprets certain stages in the Christ story as 'according to the scriptures' or 'pre-promised'--?including preexistence, human life as a son of David, death for sins, existence among the dead, resurrection on the third day, and installation as Lord. Paul appends stages to this Christ story, bringing his apostolic mission to the Gentiles within the hermeneutical purview of these protocreeds. Other proposed hermeneutical centers --called typology (Romans 5:14; 1 Corinthians 10:1-11) and allegory (Galatians 4:21-31)--are determined not to be foundational generative techniques for Paul, but rather post hoc rhetorical tropes describing mimesis between text and world via the apostolic kerygma. The unveiling of the reader in 2 Corinthians 3:1-4:6 entails finding the divinely implanted underlying meaning of Moses' parabolic actions by penetrating the literal narrative in light of the kerygma.

The availability of prosopological exegesis for Paul is demonstrated via its presence in contemporaneous literature, from which a definition is also crafted. Prosopological exegesis is an interpretative reading technique that explains an inspired text by assigning a non-trivial dramatic character as the speaker or addressee. For Paul the new dramatic setting becomes the touchstone that explains the tense of the speech, clarifying the use of the past when the future is expected (perfectum propheticum). Assigned speakers include the Righteousness by Faith and a Presumptuous Person (Romans 10:6-8), the Apostles (Romans 10:16), and the enthroned Christ (Romans 11:9-10; 15:3; 15:9; 2 Corinthians 4:13), further showing that the apostolic kerygma is Paul's primary hermeneutical lens.