Fracture: The Cross as Irreconcilable in the Language and Thought of the Biblical Writers

Harrisville says best what the book is about. "[It] is the event of Jesus' death that creates the history of salvation and refers the Christian community to the Old Testament for an interpretation of its faith. Prophecy is thus rendered from Christ and not toward him. Methodologically speaking, this move was not of Christian origin. The community of Qumran, for example, could take a contemporary event for its point of departure and, like the Christian community, discover the Old Testament anew. What was new in the Christian community was its exclusive reference to the sufferings and death of Jesus of Nazareth as the point of hermeneutical departure. Thus . . . by virtue of its relationship to the cross, a truth was attached to the biblical word that it did not initially possess. This attachment renders the relationship between cross and Scripture more than dialectical; the relationship is diastatic. The fulfillment does not automatically follow from the promise; for the promise cannot be what it is, cannot emerge as promise, without first being shattered, or fractured." Some more conservative readers will disagree that the Old Testament text -- perhaps especially those they considered messianic -- did not possess, inherently, all the truth they can contain. Still this book can stimulate thinking about what the cross, the death of Jesus, did to the thought world of the first followers of Jesus, including those whose writings are found in the New Testament.