Preaching the Hard Sayings of Jesus by Carrol
Some Good Exegesis; Some Poor AssumptionsMy ultimate opinion on this book is that it is neither extremely helpful nor extremely harmful once the problems are acknowledged; then you can eat the meat and spit out the bones. When the authors stick to the text, they do a great job of exposing the words of Jesus. However, I have seen that the work is fraught with redactionistic assumptions (deciding Jesus did or didn't say something based on "additions" or "subtractions" from the story based on our interpretations of the author's biases). An excellent example of this is found in their exposition of Matthew 22:1-14 and Luke 14:16-24 - The Parable of the Wedding Feast. Ultimately, rather than recognizing that Jesus could have told the same story differently on two occassions or that Luke could have left details out, the authors decide that since Matthew was written post-Jerusalem-destruction, the verses referring to the king sending troops to destroy and burn the city could not have been in Jesus' original words. So rather than actually dealing with the hard words of Jesus recorded in Matthew, they opt to talk solely about Luke.
I'm afraid that this sort of thing happens over and over again. So while I have found some helpful nuggets and some deep thinking to challenge my soul, I fear that liberal-leaning of their scholarship makes this text dangerous to use. Nevertheless, with this hermeneutic identified, I do feel that the book can be a useful addition to one's library when used with caution.
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