Study On Terry Eagleton’s Biblical Interpretation

Terry Eagleton is not only an internationally acclaimed representative scholar of Western Marxism,but has also made exceptionally outstanding achievements in biblical interpretation,which provides a reference for many scholars to study the Bible text and plays a good demonstration role.This paper mainly uses the method of close reading to summarize the fragmentary and scattered biblical interpretation content in some of Eagleton’s works,and to observe the main issues and basic context of his approach to biblical interpretation.In addition to the introduction and conclusion,this paper is divided into four chapters.The first chapter begins with an introduction to the class of the poor in the biblical sense,showing the collective characteristics and rights claims of the poor through the relevant contents of Eagleton’s writings,and citing the spokesmen of this class in the Bible,and then analyzing the process by which the revolutionary reversal claimed by Eagleton takes effect,in what sense it has a comic character,and the implications behind this comic character,followed by two specific examples of the Bible’s revolutionary reversal in Eagleton’s writing.The second chapter starts with Eagleton’s analysis of the mechanism of original sin,sin-making and atonement in the Bible,then extracts Eagleton’s views on the moral body developed in the process of biblical interpretation,analyzes why he believes that the most profound moral principle is the free development of each person,and why he emphasizes that this is embodied in the Bible as the Eucharist,and then summarizes Eagleton’s views on the Eucharist in various writings at different stages,such as the symbolic meaning of unity and fraternity.Eagleton believes that the biblical view of ethics asserts a kind of fraternity that breaks with ethical exchange values,a non-emotional ethics.The third chapter introduces Eagleton’s analysis of the disharmony and humor in the Bible,and the tragic hope conveyed behind these comedies,and explores why Eagleton thinks carnival bathos is the core of Christianity,and how the great salvation problem in the Bible is reduced to a daily secular problem..In the view of Eagleton,faith in the biblical sense has a performative character and what he wants to show in his analysis of Christian faith is the need to rebuild a rational faith.The fourth chapter analyzes the characteristics of Eagleton’s biblical interpretation,showing his pluralistic and flexible research perspective and his refutation of biblical fundamentalism through Eagleton’s meticulous consideration of the biblical text,and then pointing out the persistence of his practical character in his theoretical research career in the context of the times and social background of his writing process.The purpose of the above study is to carefully sort out the contents related to biblical interpretation in Eagleton’s academic works at different periods,to have a certain grasp of the overall overview and basic features of Eagleton’s biblical interpretation,and to explore the profound meanings implied by his biblical interpretive progression.