ABSTRACT
Once upon a time any preacher who wished to take up the challenge of responsible biblical preaching could at least be clear about the task. The devotees of the 'biblical theology' movement have long since left the convention hall and broken into smaller, sometimes rival, caucuses, or given up the cause altogether. Moreover, the alleged neutrality of historical-criticism has been unmasked as itself biased, the product of a set of ideological assumptions about the nature of meaning. Working preachers, for the most part, do not keep up with the hottest news from the hermeneutical front, nor are they likely to have a well-thumbed copy of the latest inscrutable tome from Derrida on the nightstand. Nevertheless, they are in touch, at least intuitively, with the changes rippling across the surface of biblical hermeneutics because they are active and intentional practitioners of the art of interpretation.
