Hermeneia FOUNDATIONS AND FACETS FOREWORD TO THE SERIES The publishers of Hermeneia: A Historical and Critical Commentary on the Bible are pleased to present the first volumes in a companion series to be known as Hermeneia: Foundations and Facets. The new series will include works foundational to the commentary proper and works treating facets of the biblical text. At present Foundations and Facets is confined to the New Testament division of Hermeneia. Foundations and Facets is designed to serve two related functions. Much of the more creative biblical scholarship on the contemporary scene is devoted to facets of biblical texts: to units smaller than canonical books, or to aspects of the New Testament that cut across or exceed canonical limits. An intensive treatment of the sermon on the mount, for example, need not require a full commentary on Matthew, any more than a generic study of the great narrative parables of Jesus demands a com- plete study of Luke. Facets in this sense refers to any textual unit or group of such units that does not coincide with canonical books. Such units may be as short as an aphorism or as extensive as source Q, as limited as the birth and childhood stories or as diffuse as hymns in the New Testament. Again, tracking the various strands of the gospel tradition from the time of Jesus down into the second century can better be pursued independently of specific biblical books. In this second sense, Facets refers to strands or trajectories of early Christian tradition. Further, Facets indicates features of biblical books themselves, such as the literary method of Luke, the use of irony in the Fourth Gospel, or the formal structure of the gospel as literary genre. While such features might well be included in the commentary proper, there may be reason to isolate one or more for special and extended consideration. As it turns out, these creative and innovative impulses in current schol- arship are linked to emerging new methods in biblical criticism or to the xviii Introduction to the New Testament reconception of old ones. Accordingly, a second function of Foundations and Facets is to accommodate the creation or revision of correlative foun- dational instruments and tools. Such foundational works, properly con- ceived, will form the basis for the next phase of biblical scholarship. The pioneering work of Martin Dibelius and Rudolf Bultmann in form criticism more than a half century ago rested on comparative evi- dence then newly acquired. Recent efforts to interpret the same oral forms—parables, pronouncement stories, miracle tales, and the like— have led to revised and expanded collections of comparative data. Founda- tions and Facets will be open to these primary materials, so that every student of the New Testament will be able to examine the comparative evidence firsthand. Similarly, new methods allied with literary criticism, the study of folk- lore, and linguistics bring with them newly conceived grammars and lexica. Grammars include a poetics of biblical narrative, a handbook of hellenistic rhetoric, and a systematic hermeneutics. Other alliances with the social and psychological sciences are producing correlative new meth- odologies, which will themselves eventually require precise formulation. To be sure, older methodologies are being revised and refurbished as well. The cultural and religious milieu of the New Testament, together with its sociological and economic substratum, remain ingredient to an under- standing of early Christianity and the literature it produced. And New Testament "introduction" is as pertinent today as it was when New Testament science assumed its modern form a century earlier, although it should by now be apparent that this traditional discipline must reorient itself if it is to lead into the text. It is fitting that the series should begin with a work of just this order: a classical form of scholarship with provoc- ative new content. The new series is thus aimed at both the Foundations and Facets of the biblical canon, seeking to harness mature as well as creative and innova- tive impulses impinging upon it. The complete scope of Foundations and Facets has yet to be deter- mined. It is the plan of the series to adapt itself as nearly as possible to the unfolding requirements of sound biblical scholarship. The series may thus eventually embrace works the exact dimensions of which are at present unknown, and it may well omit projected works for which suitable authors do not appear. The expansion of biblical instruction into secular contexts, such as the public university, presents biblical scholarship with a fresh and serious challenge: in addition to exposition for the reader trained in the funda- mental disciplines of biblical science, exegetes must now make the text in- Foreword xix telligible for persons generally rather than technically literate. It is the intention of the authors and editors of Foundations and Facets to meet this challenge: they aspire to a mode of biblical scholarship that will illumine the text for the general reader, while simultaneously serving the most stringent requirements of the advanced student. If the series succeeds in achieving this goal, it will have attained a new level of scholarly integrity. Polebridge Press Riverbend 1982 Robert W. Funk, editor .