It occurs to me that one way to approach your problem is not at all
tangential to this list, namely to contextualize your students' reading
habits within the traditions of medieval exegesis, where this sort of
proleptic reading was not only unexceptional but positively required.
Undoubtedly your students have assimilated the way they look at the Old
Testament from their churches without any explicit articulation of any
exegetical theory. If you can get your students to see their own
interpretive practices as belonging to a historically specific tradition
then it is no great step to getting them to think about interpretation in
other historical contexts. Indeed with more advanced students (although I
doubt it would fly with a general education course) there's much to be
discussed about the role of historicism (both old and new) in biblical
interpretation.
Karl Hagen
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