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Criticism and
Conflict.
Biblical criticism need not conflict with long-accepted understandings,
but it may do so. This will mean that some traditional interpretations
have been ill-grounded in scripture and that some new interpretation
should be suggested if justice is to be done to the facts of scripture.
Criticism has thus often disturbed existing religion; yet it is also
intrinsic to the religious belief in biblical authority. Far from being
a nontheological activity, it is essential to proper theological evaluation.
We momentarily suspend the existing theological conviction to see whether
it stands the test of questioning against the biblical material itself.
Not surprisingly,
therefore, religious conflict has been a great stimulus to critical
questioning. Two groups share the same scripture but have widely differing
religious convictions. Each may then appeal to the scripture and argue
that it cannot mean what others have taken it to mean. According to
Matthew 23.23, Jesus himself says that the “weightier matters of the
law” are neglected if one concentrates on the implementation of details—an
appeal to the general tenor of the text against its detailed literality.
As against the Christian understanding of Isaiah 7.14 as a prediction
of Christ's virgin birth, the Jew Trypho (second century CE) insisted
that the Hebrew word means simply “young woman,” that no virgin birth
is involved, and that the reference is to the natural birth of Hezekiah
(see Immanuel).
The religious conflicts
that most stimulated the rise of biblical criticism were, however, the
Catholic-Protestant conflict within Christianity and, later, the disputes
among the many different directions within Protestantism, for these
particularly emphasized the unique role of scripture and the implications
of reading it for and from itself.
Obstacles to Criticism.
The main factors with which criticism has had to contend have included
the following:
General ideas
or principles concerning the Bible, such as the conviction that, being
the word of God, it must necessarily be perfect and thus inerrant in
all its parts (see Inspiration and Inerrancy). As against these theoretical
convictions, criticism works with the factual realities of the Bible.
Harmonizations
that universalize ideas and meanings throughout the Bible, obscuring
differences between one part and another. Criticism notices these differences,
such as that between documents affirming a virgin birth (Matthew, less
clearly Luke) and others that appear not to do so (Mark, Paul, John).
Midrash
and allegorical interpretations that decontextualize the words of scripture,
ascribing to them senses that may be found elsewhere but do not fit
this context. Criticism takes the actual context to be decisive.
Failure to perceive
the literary form of the texts, and, in particular, failure to give
weight to the silences of scripture, the absences of elements that are
commonly read in; for example, the absence from the Hebrew Bible of
Adam's disobedience as an explanation for evil, the absence of any birth
narrative in Mark, the absence from other Gospels of the clause “except
for unchastity” (Matt. 19.9; cf. 5.32; see Divorce).
Anachronistic
reading into the text of meanings, ideas, and situations of a later
age; for example, to understand bishop in the New Testament as if this
were identical with medieval episcopacy, or “scripture” in 2 Timothy
3.16 as if it meant exactly the same set of books that are canonical
in modern Protestantism (see Canon). Criticism insists on starting with
the words in the meanings that they had in biblical times.
Rationalistic
apologetic arguments supposed to overcome discrepancies; for example,
the idea that, since the ejection of merchants from the temple by Jesus
is placed early in the ministry by John, late by the other Gospels,
the event happened several times. Criticism, on the other hand, suggests
that the differential placing of the story was for reasons of theological
meaning within the narrative.
Authorship.
Classical biblical criticism has been much interested in matters of
authorship. The Pentateuch was not written by Moses himself; the book
of Isaiah contains materials from a time long after that prophet lived;
the Gospels were not necessarily written by the disciples whose names
they bear. This realization at once changes our picture of the sort
of book the Bible is: it is not a once-and-for-all, divinely dictated
report but a product of tradition developed over some time within communities
of faith. Relations between documents like the synoptic Gospels are
literary relations, involving revision, change of emphasis, selection,
and theological difference. The feature of pseudepigraphy must be recognized
as a fact: that is, that books may be written in the name of, and attributed
to, some great person of the past who presides over that genre. Thus,
almost all Israelite law, of whatever time, was attached to the name
of Moses, as were wisdom writings to that of Solomon; some letters written
in the name of Paul or Peter may have been written by followers, perhaps
using some material from the apostle himself, rather than by him directly.
Style has been an important criterion from the beginning. Already
in the ancient church it was obvious that 2 Peter was not in a style
that Peter used, that the letter to the Hebrews differed in style from
Paul, and that the book of Revelation differed vastly in style from
the gospel and letters of John; and this observation was already used
in early arguments about the canonicity of such books. These ancient
observations formed a basis for similar discussions later, especially
in Renaissance and Reformation (see article on Christian Interpretation
from the Middle Ages to the Reformation, above), when the appreciation
of ancient styles had been greatly quickened.
Sources.
That books had been formed by the combination of earlier sources was
an obvious corollary of these ideas. Chronicles used Samuel-Kings, revising
sometimes slightly, sometimes drastically, and adding material of its
own. Mark is most commonly believed to have been used and rewritten
by Matthew and Luke. And the sources used could be works that had long
disappeared. The books of Kings mention other historical sources known
to them. Material common to Matthew and Luke, but absent from Mark,
could go back to a source now lost. Within the Pentateuch the different
strata, marked by very different language, style, and ideas, could be
explained if different sources from different times had been gradually
combined. The detection of different sources within a book may thus
explain discrepancies and divergent theological viewpoints. Source criticism
of this kind is a highly characteristic form of classical biblical criticism.
It, along with questions of authorship and date, is sometimes called
“higher criticism,” in contrast to “lower criticism,” the study of text
and textual variations (see Textual Criticism), but these terms are
now old-fashioned. Indeed, from about the 1930s on, source criticism
itself became somewhat old-fashioned and less work was done on it; uncertainties
in its conclusions were noted, and rivals to the widely accepted views
came to be more commonly supported. Nevertheless, source-critical results
continue to be used as a normal framework of discussion by the great
majority of scholars, and the broad outlines of source identification
in the key areas—the Pentateuch, Isaiah, and the synoptic Gospels—are
very generally accepted; such alternatives as there are are equally
critical, but in a different way.
Cosmology and Miracle.
The rise of biblical criticism ran parallel with changing ideas about
the world we live in. New scientific knowledge made it seem impossible
that the world could have originated as recently as the date (5000–3600
BCE) implied by the Bible's own chronology, and the vast majority accepted
this: the world was not exactly as Genesis had made it seem (see Science
and the Bible). Similarly, it was debated just how exactly factual biblical
depictions of miraculous events were. Critics noted the literary aspect:
scripture is quite uneven in the degree to which it brings in miracle
stories, and it may describe the same event in ways that are more sheerly
miraculous or less so. This suggests that the element of miracle is
again in part a matter of style. Biblical criticism is not in principle
skeptical about miracles; but it takes it as clear that not all miracle
stories are to be taken literally just because they are in the Bible.
On the whole, critical scholarship leaves the question aside; for, in
its developed form, it concentrates mainly on the meaning or function
that the miracle story had within the work of the writer. For this purpose,
it finds it unnecessary either to defend or to deny the reality of miracles;
the exegetical process works in the same way in either case.
History has often been looked on as the essential component in
biblical criticism, though we have maintained that its foundations rest
more in language and in literary form. The literary perceptions thus
stimulated often could not produce solutions without a historical account
of what had taken place. Thus, in the method of Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918),
Pentateuchal sources identified through linguistic and literary criteria
were matched with the evidence of different stages in the development
of religious institutions in Israel, producing a likely sequence and
dating. Dating sources and setting them within the framework of known
world history thus provides a strong frame of reference for biblical
study and a way in which evidence can be marshaled and ordered for discussion
and theological evaluation. In particular, the knowledge, even if only
approximate, of what lay before and after makes it possible to understand
the presuppositions of biblical writers and the situation for which
they wrote.
The centrality
of this frame, and the importance of the perspective it afforded, has
often caused the entire operation of biblical criticism to be understood
as “historical criticism.” But this exaggerates the degree to which
the ideals of historical research dominate biblical study. Historical
investigation is only one of the aspects of traditional criticism. Much
critical work is basically the exegesis of biblical books; for this,
complete historical precision is often impossible, and in any case is
not attained, often hardly attempted. More important is a rough and
general historical location; the gross distortion of total anachronism
is to be avoided. Words must be understood to mean what they meant in
the language of the texts, and that means in the time of the texts;
texts should be seen against the situation in life for which they were
written. In fact, biblical scholars, even when they insist on a historical
approach, are often not very historical; they tend to let theological
predilection overcome historical realism, and their motivation is commonly
the religious scholar's devotion to texts rather than pure historical
rigor. It was from traditional theology that there came the emphasis
on what had “really happened” in biblical times, on the persons of authority
who were behind the writings, on history as the milieu of God's activity.
Conversely, the historical perspective on the Bible which biblical criticism
has brought about is important primarily as a major fact within theology
itself, rather than as a purely historical achievement.
The Canon.
One important historical aspect is the perception of the canon of scripture:
the canon came about historically and can be understood historically.
The pioneering studies of Johann S. Semler (1725–91) in this area were
a vital step in the development of modern biblical studies. The boundaries
of scripture are not something eternally and unchangeably established
by God; what scripture included at one time and place was not entirely
identical with what it included at another; the study of scripture and
the study of church history are not separable. That the origins of the
canon can be investigated as a human undertaking is correlative with
a similar study of the books themselves. The canon can still be understood
as God-given, just as the contents of scripture are God-given; but not
purely and supernaturally so—rather, only indirectly and through the
mediation of human intentions and meanings. Biblical critics have not
rejected the canon; on the whole they have continued to uphold it, maintaining
that the religious content of the Bible (i.e., the canonical books)
is, broadly speaking, vastly superior in quality to that of any other
set of written texts.
Theological Differentiation.
Central to biblical criticism, and even more important than its historical
orientation, is its use of the perception that theological views and
emphases differ between one part of scripture and another. The Bible
is not a monochrome and unvarying photograph of the being and will of
God; it is more like a choir, each member of which has a different part
to sing. Thus, in spite of much common subject matter, the P stratum
of the Pentateuch has a theology quite different from that of Deuteronomy,
and Matthew presents quite a different picture of Jesus from that of
Luke. This in itself is no novel or revolutionary insight; but, rather
than being content merely to admire the complementary character of the
theologies of the books, biblical criticism uses it as a valuable index
for the identification of strata and their relative dating, situations,
and problems. Equally, it strives to perceive, understand, and evaluate
these different theologies as crucial stages in the understanding of
scripture as a whole, seen in a dimension of depth.
Theological Roots of Biblical Criticism.
Though biblical criticism may appear as something new, in fact it has
deep theological roots. The interest in personal authorship went back
to early times and was part of the argument over canonicity. Style was
also known as a criterion from early times; later, on the basis of style,
John Calvin doubted that Peter had written 2 Peter, just as, on grounds
of content, he thought that Psalms 74 and 79 came from the Maccabean
period (a view later regarded as drastically critical). The emphasis
on history and actual events was also part of general Christian tradition:
Christianity, people thought, was a peculiarly historical religion,
and the importance of the actual words and deeds of Jesus was overwhelmingly
accepted and stressed. If biblical criticism noticed and used the theological
differences within the Bible, this was an extension from the practice
of all theologies; for all, even when accepting the total canon of scripture,
had picked out portions as more essential and dominant, while treating
others as derivative or of secondary importance. As for the canon, the
first obvious fact was that theological tradition had not agreed about
it; there had been variations in canons throughout the early centuries,
and again as between Roman Catholic and Orthodox on one side, and Protestant
on the other. This fact was accentuated when Martin Luther, impressed
by theological differentiation, effectively demoted from the New Testament
canon James, Hebrews (not by Paul), and Revelation on the ground of
their inadequate understanding of the essential principle of justification.
Difference in emphasis between Old Testament and New Testament was also
traditional and universal in Christianity.
The impetus toward
biblical criticism given by the Reformation was substantial. Stressing
scripture alone—as against mediation through church tradition—meant
that everything seemed to depend on scripture. The grammar and wording
of the original was reemphasized and a learned ministry capable of handling
these words was demanded. The Reformation rejected allegorical methods
that had covered over cracks in the surface of scripture, and in the
Hebrew Bible it mediated influences from medieval Jewish exegesis (seen,
e.g., in the KJV), which in this respect also favored literal understanding
(see article in this entry on Jewish Interpretation, above). It asserted
the freedom of the interpreter to take a stand on the biblical words
as against traditional and authoritative interpretations. But, despite
the reformers’ insistence on biblical authority, they failed to produce
doctrinal agreement; on the contrary, they created a wide variety of
conflicting doctrinal positions, all claiming a basis in infallible
scripture. The wide variation of ideas and hypotheses within later biblical
criticism is a reflection of the same situation.
Rise and Reception of Criticism.
The ancient and early modern anticipations of critical views are not
in themselves very important. It could be obvious enough that the statement
that “at that time the Canaanites were in the land” (Gen. 12.6) was
not written by Moses but was a later note; so argued Abraham ibn Ezra
(1089–1164), an opinion on which Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) later built
much more. Such observations were often only minor annotations and do
not amount to a critical vision of any scale. More important was the
growth of the general atmosphere of thought in which it seemed permissible
and even normal to argue on the basis of the language and literary form
of scripture, with freedom to offer the interpretations that emerged
from them. This tradition may go back to Erasmus (1466–1536), and is
well represented by Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), who belonged to the Arminian
current in the Dutch church. In France, Richard Simon (1638–1712) argued
that uncertainties about scripture undermined the Protestant reliance
upon it, while freedom in biblical study produced no clash with Catholic
dogma; alongside this, his argument against Moses’ authorship of the
entire Pentateuch is a minor point. Jean Astruc (1684–1766) pioneered
the systematic source analysis of the Pentateuch, the different documents
being isolated but understood to have been combined by Moses himself.
An especially active
locus of new ideas about scripture was England in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. In conflicts over church polity, civil government,
and religious freedom there were manifold viewpoints, all of which sought
legitimation from scripture, and the ensuing controversies evoked an
efflorescence of new ideas and arguments. Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679)
is a distinguished representative. For him there is no doubting the
authority of the Bible as the law of God; but equally, in the matter
of authorship and date, it is simply obvious that the only light we
have must come from the books themselves, and from this it is manifest
that the books of Moses were written after his time, and similarly with
other books. Other important exegetical ideas come from John Locke (1632–1704),
who noted, among other things, how Jesus kept secret his messianic status
until late in his career (see Messianic Secret); Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727),
who worked on biblical chronology and also thought that the idea of
the Trinity could be disproved from the New Testament; and many others.
In Germany, these
ideas were followed up in the later eighteenth century by university
professors, who applied them in a much more systematic way. A typical
genre was the “introduction,” which would cover in turn each book of
Old Testament or New Testament and discuss methodically all matters
of authorship, source analysis, and dates on the basis of language and
content; a pioneer of such work was by Johann Gottfried Eichhorn (published
1780–1783). Central names in Old Testament scholarship are Wilhelm Martin
Leberecht de Wette (1780–1849), noted for his work on the key book of
Deuteronomy, and Julius Wellhausen, whose solution (the “P” document
is the latest of the Pentateuchal sources) remains the point of reference
for all discussion of the subject. In New Testament studies, a central
figure was Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860), who saw a conflict
between Pauline and Petrine traditions as decisive for early Christianity.
Of the “quest for the historical Jesus,” it is hard to know whether
it counts as biblical criticism or as speculative theology; the claim
of Johannes Weiss (1863–1914) that Jesus’ mission was dominated by eschatological
expectation is a more clearly critical standpoint.
The return of this
developed biblical criticism to the English-speaking world was not without
conflict. W. Robertson Smith was removed from his professorship in Scotland
in 1881, and Charles A. Briggs from his clerical functions in the United
States in 1893. But soon after these events, critical approaches had
clearly won the day in these same churches. In Oxford from 1883 the
cautious and erudite scholarship of Samuel Rolles Driver commended the
critical reading of the Old Testament, and Lux mundi (1889) aligned
the Catholic tradition of Anglicanism with the same. By the early twentieth
century, critical perspectives, though not always easily accepted, were
overwhelmingly dominant in academic study and serious publishing throughout
the western non–Roman Catholic world.
Although biblical
criticism made a deep difference to the handling of the Bible, this
did not have the feared serious effects on doctrine. This was partly
because many traditional doctrines were not nearly as solely dependent
on the Bible as had been supposed. Shifts in the mode of understanding
the Bible left it possible for these same doctrines to be still maintained.
Indeed, biblical criticism fitted in well with certain important doctrinal
emphases: in Lutheranism with justification by faith, in Anglicanism
with the centrality of incarnation, in Calvinism with the appreciation
of Israel and the Old Testament. Moreover, though much biblical criticism
grew up in association with latitudinarian views, with deism, and later
with liberal theology, the achievements of criticism showed themselves
to be separable from these origins and to be fully maintainable by those
who repudiated them. Thus “dialectical” or “neo-orthodox” theology,
bitterly hostile to “liberal” theology, accepted the legitimacy of critical
procedures and, though itself often cool toward biblical scholarship,
on the whole created an atmosphere in which it could flourish very freely.
In the Roman Catholic
world, Richard Simon's argument that critical freedom favored the Catholic
position was little accepted by his superiors, and critical work was
muted until the rise of Catholic modernism, especially in France in
the late nineteenth century with Alfred F. Loisy (1857–1940). The modernist
movement was formally condemned by Pius X in 1907, and the dogmatic
necessity of traditional authorships and dates was reasserted. But since
the encyclical Divino afflante spiritu (1943) and especially since the
Second Vatican Council, the critical freedom of the Catholic exegete
has been acknowledged, and today Catholic and Protestant biblical scholarship
form one total constituency (see also Pontifical Biblical Commission).
Jewish academic
scholarship has often differed from the solutions favored in Christian
work; examples include opposition to Pentateuchal source criticism from
Moses Hirsch Segal (1876–1968) and Umberto Cassuto (1883–1951), and
different reconstruction of Israelite religious history from Yehezkel
Kaufmann (1889–1963). Non-Jewish scholarship was often felt to be too
much influenced by Christian theological traditions. But the alternative
positions advanced by Jewish scholars are in their own way just as critical,
and offer no support to a consistent anticritical mode of study.
Biblical Theology.
Biblical criticism has often been understood primarily as an analytical
discipline, but equally it is linked with the discipline of biblical
theology, which is the synthetic side of the same movement. Biblical
theology seeks to see the common elements that run through the texts,
whether through a historical or developmental scheme or through the
perception of an inner structure. No serious biblical theology has arisen
except in conjunction with the critical approach. Biblical theology,
like criticism, is an exploratory approach; the true inner theology
of the Bible is not already known, but must be discovered. For opponents
of critical study, the theology of scripture is already known, fixed
in older creeds and traditions. Though twentieth-century biblical theology
felt itself to be in contrast with biblical criticism, they are in fact
two sides of the same coin.
Religious Environment.
All the above may count as a depiction of “classical” biblical criticism;
there remain some more recent developments to be mentioned. The older
critics worked largely from the Bible itself; later, increasing knowledge
from Mesopotamia and Syria, from Hellenistic mystery religions, from
gnosticism was added. Clearly, there is some overlap in religious ideas
and institutions, in legends, myths, and poetic forms. The “history
of religions” school explored this area; a central name is that of Hermann
Gunkel (1862–1932).
Form Criticism, influential from the 1920s on, is interested
in the smaller literary units that have a function in their “situation
in life,” through which one penetrates to the underlying purpose. Thus,
a gospel story might be of a form fitted for controversy with Jews,
a psalm might be of a form belonging to an enthronement ceremony. Important
form critics are Gunkel for the Hebrew Bible, and Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976)
for the New Testament. For the New Testament, form criticism often seemed
to be skeptical in character, suggesting that stories were generated
for these purposes rather than actually spoken by Jesus; in the Hebrew
Bible its effects were more conservative, suggesting ways in which poems
might have functioned in ancient cult and liturgy.
Tradition Criticism concentrates on the way in which traditions
have altered and grown, the places to which they are attached, and the
social and cultic relations within which they have been meaningful.
It is less interested in documentary hypotheses, more in oral stages
of tradition, and it illuminates the deep underlying forces that have
molded the Bible into its present form. It has been particularly exemplified
in Scandinavian scholarship.
Redaction Criticism is interested in the work of the final editors,
who molded the earlier sources into the text that we now have. The method
depends on some view of the sources used by the redactor, but the interest
falls less on these sources in themselves and more on the way in which
they have been adapted into the final text. The object is therefore
the shape and structure of the book as we now have it; yet the perception
of this depends on a perspective in time, going back to an earlier stage
or earlier revisional activity.
Modern Literary Readings.
Although the literary character of biblical criticism has been emphasized
here, from about 1960 on it has been increasingly felt that it is out
of step with modern trends in the appreciation of literature. Literary
critics from outside the technical biblical sphere—for example, Frank
Kermode, Robert Alter, and Northrop Frye—have made powerful contributions
and some biblical scholars are following similar lines. Most of this
literary movement is interested in the final, the present, stage of
the text, not in historical reconstruction; nor does it share the theological
interests characteristic of most biblical criticism. The stress is on
the styles, the patterns, the narrative techniques. The text, some think,
does not “refer” to anything external to itself, but operates within
“the world of the text” (see also Literature, The Bible as). Some of
this overlaps with ideas coming from structuralism, a movement centered
in France. Structuralism is interested in the code, the set of structures,
that are used in all social and literary complexes, as they are in language
itself. It stresses the synchronic, the structures visible within one
text at one time, rather than its development over a span of time, though
it can also be extended to deal with historical change. These types
of reading, in general, differ widely from traditional biblical criticism
and especially from its historical interests; on the other hand, their
reluctance to say anything informative about the world “outside the
text” leaves it doubtful how they can fit with the older theological
needs served by biblical criticism.
Canonical Criticism.
This approach, advocated principally by Brevard S. Childs, insists on
the canon of scripture as the essential key to interpretation. Canonicity
is interested in the final text, not in earlier stages that have led
up to it. The canon of books, which brings them all together as holy
scripture of the community, means that taken together they provide a
“construal” of all their contents. Traditional biblical criticism is
legitimate, providing, as it does, the starting points from which Childs
reasons toward the canonical sense; but its perspective and direction
are basically erroneous. Common areas with redaction criticism and with
modern literary readings and structuralism seem obvious; but Childs
is anxious to disclaim support from these quarters, for canonical criticism
is not at all literary in character, and its validation comes entirely
from the theological status of scripture. Though it appears to seek
a connection with much earlier exegesis, canonical criticism is a clearly
modern phenomenon, working entirely from the tradition of biblical criticism
even when it seeks to depart from it.
Conclusion.
Biblical criticism has proved to be a dynamic field of study. New approaches
and perspectives continue to appear. Areas undergoing fresh examination
include the nature of Hebrew poetic form (stimulated by our knowledge
of Ugaritic poetry; see also Poetry, Biblical Hebrew); the character
of Judaism at the time when Christianity originated; the character of
scripture as story rather than as history. Results believed to have
been established will be reconsidered. Yet some of the main positions
achieved have remained as essential reference points for the discussion,
and no alternatives have been proposed that have gained anything like
the same degree of assent. Still more important, the general intellectual
atmosphere of criticism, with its base in language and literary form,
its reference grid in history, and its lifeblood in freedom to follow
what the text actually says, has established itself as without serious
challenge. Serious work on scripture can be done only in continuity
with the tradition of biblical criticism.
See also Social
Sciences and the Bible.
James Barr
How to cite this entry:
Philip S. Alexander, Karlfried Froehlich, Jerry H. Bentley, James Barr
"Interpretation, History of" The Oxford Companion to the Bible.
Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan, eds. Oxford University Press
Inc. 1993. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Illinois
State University. 22 August 2005 <http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t120.e0350-s0004>
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