"Our journey began by suggesting a diagnosis of a discipline that is now widely felt to lack agreed criteria not just for appropriate methods and results, but in many cases about even the very subject to be studied. What future can there be for scholarly New Testament studies amid the ruins of so many "assured results" of the past? Two initiatives in particular, I suggested, may hold promise for a reenergized, common conversation about the New Testament: first, to investigate the implied readership and the implied readings that arise from its engagement with the text; and, second, to harness the New Testament's plural and diverse effects as a resource for renewed reflection on its interpretation. I have argued, in other words, that the question of the implied readers is linked, both exegetically and historically, to that of implied readings. More specifically, both of these questions are illuminated by the study of how the apostolic voices were in fact remembered, heard, and heeded in the early postapostolic period--and vice versa."Markus Bockmuehl, Seeing the Word: Refocusing New Testament Study
(Baker, 2006) pp. 229-230
