Kit Barker is Lecturer in OT at Sydney Missionary and Bible College. He has published multiple articles on speech act theory, divine illocutions, theological interpretation, and the Psalter. The work under review is based on his 2014 doctoral dissertation.
The book contains an introduction, two parts (consisting of seven chapters), a conclusion, bibliography, and two indexes. Part one of the book consists of three chapters, which lay out Barker’s pursuit of theological interpretation. Part two consists of four chapters, which address the author’s approach to theological interpretation of the Psalter. The final two chapters of the second part address the interpretation of two imprecatory psalms (Pss 137 and 69) via Barker’s application of a speech act theory–based hermeneutic. His aim, following that of Wolterstorff and Vanhoozer, is that “the goal of theological interpretation should be the clarification of how the text functions as divine discourse” (p. 3).
The first part...
