The merits and demerits of historical criticism

In the previous post, we identified internal inconsistencies as a fundamental problem for biblical interpretation. Then we introduced the first attempt at a solution, historical criticism, taking Gerhard von Rad as illustrative of the method.

I had intended to press on to the second attempt at a solution in this post:  i.e., the canonical approach championed by Brevard Childs. But, when I began to write, I found that I still had a great deal of ground to cover with respect to historical criticism.

Canonical criticism will have to wait. In this post I will consider historical criticism in more detail.

The promise of historical criticism

Israel testifies that God has made himself known via historical events. The Exodus from Egypt, the revelation at Sinai, and the conquest of the promised land are key, formative events. But even the subplots of the biblical narrative have a revelatory function:  e.g., the Akedah (binding) of Isaac, or the consequences of Achan’s sin.

By rooting its testimony in history, Israel exposed it to critical investigation. Did the revelatory events actually happen? Is there a core of historicity underlying the narratives, even if they are unreliable (or merely unverifiable) at the level of detail?

Historical criticism set out to answer those questions. Many scholars — perhaps most — began from a position of faith. They did not set out to debunk Israel’s testimony, but rather to establish it on a secure foundation. And so, as we saw in the previous post, Gerhard von Rad isolated certain traditions which he regarded as both ancient and normative (non-negotiable).

Historical criticism arrives at a dead end

Regrettably, historical criticism didn't achieve what its practitioners had hoped to achieve. I'm finding it difficult to summarize the results of historical criticism to date, but I hope the following observations will be helpful:

1. Many parts of the biblical narrative cannot be confirmed by extra-biblical evidence. For example, Abraham is not mentioned in ancient sources other than the Bible. Nor are Joseph and Moses, who might have been expected to appear in Egyptian records.


2. When biblical protagonists are mentioned outside of the Bible, it can be a mixed blessing. For example, consider the following inscription which makes reference to David:
   

   … I slew [seve]nty kin[gs], who harnessed thou[sands of cha]riots and thousands of horsemen. [I killed Jeho]ram son of [Ahab] king of Israel, and [I] killed [Ahaz]iahu son of [Jehoram kin]g of the House of David. …¹;

   This inscription, chiseled in black basalt, was discovered at Tel Dan in 1993. It was a very important discovery because sceptics had argued that David never actually existed. The inscription not only confirms that there was a "house" (dynasty) of David; it also confirms that King Jehoram (of Israel) and King Ahaziah (of Judah) were killed together.
   
   But, in one significant detail, the inscription contradicts the biblical account. 2Ki. 9:14-27 says that Jehu was responsible for the deaths of Jehoram and Ahaziah. In the inscription, King Hazael of Aram takes credit for killing the two kings. Thus the inscription both corroborates and contradicts the biblical narrative.


3. The biblical accounts tend to betray an ulterior motive. For example, consider the biblical description of David's relationship with Saul.
   
   Saul regarded David as a pretender to the throne. No doubt, after Saul's death, some of Saul's fellow northerners continued to regard David as a usurper. But the biblical account maintains that Saul sought to kill David without cause. David is depicted as extraordinarily innocent in his dealings with Saul. Is the account historical, or is it an instance of political "spin", designed to legitimate David's reign?
   
   Similarly, the account of Solomon's succession to the throne served to legitimate his reign vis-à-vis his older brother, Adonijah. (See 1Ki. 1:5-53 and, for Adonijah's perspective, 1Ki. 2:15.)
   
   In general, historical criticism has been successful in recovering what Hermann Gunkel called the "Sitz im leben" (setting in life) of the text. Interpreting the phrase broadly, Sitz im leben refers to the function of a given text in subsequent generations:  in this instance, the legitimation of David's dynasty.
   
   Historical criticism has found it exceedingly difficult to penetrate further back, beyond the Sitz im leben to the events themselves. This is an important point, to which we will return.


4. Historical criticism was unable to isolate one ancient source that appeared to be closer to the historical events. Instead, scholars identified four primary sources. Conventionally referred to as J, E, P, and D, the four accounts were woven together in the final edition of the Hebrew scriptures.
   
   Scholars believe that J and E originally offered rival accounts of Israel's history. The Yahwist (who wrote J), lived in what became the southern kingdom, Judah. The Elohist (who wrote E), lived in the northern kingdom, Israel. Norman Gottwald explains:
   

   As long as the northern and southern kingdoms stood as rival Israelite kingdoms, the Yahwist and Elohist versions of the national epic were firm competitors. After the destruction of the northern kingdom in 722 B.C.E., the Elohist lost its home setting and a redactor in the southern kingdom joined the two documents, or, more correctly stated, supplemented J extensively with parts of E. For this reason, E is much less completely preserved than J. … The effect of joining J and E was to affirm the national political tone of J but to permeate and leaven it with the religious and ethical qualifications of E.²

   In other words, J and E were both polemical documents, spinning the national epic in accordance with their authors' socio-political agendas. This tendency to "spin" events is equally obvious in the case of the other two sources, P and D.
   
   We return to the point made above:  scholarly investigations tend to dead end at the Sitz im leben of the texts. Scholars come up short of an objective description of the historical events.


5. Let me make the same point in yet another way:  the original source material was repeatedly edited and re-edited over a period of centuries, long after the historical events had taken place.
   
   At some point in Israel's distant past, there were no extended accounts of history. There were only oral traditions, or brief documents, that the authors of J and E were able to utilize. But they didn't incorporate the source material verbatim; they edited it in accordance with their distinctive objectives.
   
   The same process was repeated after the fall of the northern kingdom, when J and E were combined by an anonymous editor. Later still, P and D were added to the mix. Considerable editorial activity was involved in the process of reducing the several documents to a single text.
   
   (Phil at Narrative and Ontology has posted an eye-popping diagram of the process here. Good timing, Phil!)
   
   If Israel ever possessed an objective description of its history (which is doubtful), it was lost forever in the process which produced the biblical texts as they are known to us.
   
   Israel preserved its history:  and partly for spiritual reasons. But Israel also shaped its history in accordance with the partisan socio-political agendas of certain individuals or (more likely) communities.

Conclusions

I should point out that there has been a backlash against the documentary hypothesis in recent decades. Scholars proposed excessively detailed reconstructions of the text:  for example, parceling out a verse among several sources. Such highly detailed reconstructions failed to generate a scholarly consensus.

At a certain point, the whole project began to resemble a house of cards:  too much infrastructure resting on an inadequate base.³

I am not a scholar, and I am not equipped to defend the documentary hypothesis. However, I am inclined to trust the judgement of those scholars who insist that the core of the hypothesis is sound; that it sheds a lot of light on the biblical texts.

As Walter Brueggemann would say, it is impossible for us to return to an "innocent" reading of the text. But historical criticism is unable to resolve the problem of internal inconsistencies. What, then, shall we do?

If we can't go back, we must find a new way forward.

In 1970, Brevard Childs declared that biblical theology had reached a point of crisis. Childs

proposed that rather than theological interpretation being done according to the schema of historical criticism, it must be done according to the "canonical intentionality" of the text.⁴

In the next post, then, we will turn our attention to Brevard Childs and the canonical approach to the interpretation of biblical texts.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.
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¹Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition, Free Press, 2006, p. 265.

²Norman K. Gottwald, The Hebrew Bible: A Socio-Literary Introduction. Fortress Press, 1987, p. 140.

³The same objection applies in New Testament studies with respect to certain scholars' overly-confident reconstructions of Q.

⁴Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, dispute, advocacy. Fortress Press, 1997, p. 45.

A fundamental problem: and three attempts at a solution

Doug at Metacatholic has published a provocative post, Deconstructing the Decalogue.

(For those who aren't familiar with the jargon, the "Decalogue" = the "Ten Commandments". Literally, the ten "words" (Gk. logoi):  see the ESV footnote to Deut. 4:13.)

I intend to use Doug's post to illustrate a fundamental problem in any attempt to understand the Bible. In a three-part series of posts, I will lay out three attempts at a solution to the problem. The first attempt at a solution, historical criticism, is described in this post.

Internal inconsistencies:

For ease of reference, I am going to attach a label to the problem that Doug illustrates so well:  internal inconsistencies. One biblical text often contradicts, or appears to be inconsistent with, another biblical text.

Very often, the sickness of modernity is diagnosed in different terms:  faith vs. science. In other words, individuals must choose between the competing claims of rival authorities. Naturally, Christians will choose to believe the Bible instead of "believing" the claims of modern science.

I submit that the problem is more fundamental than that. Christians cannot simply "believe the Bible" because the Bible comprises a range of viewpoints. Scripture is "multivocal" (my preferred summary term). A close reading of scripture does not pit faith against science, but one biblical "voice" against another — often even within a single book (e.g., Ecclesiastes).

Doug analyzes three Old Testament scriptures, which I am presenting side by side in tabular form. The first text, from Exodus 20, explicates the second commandment:  "You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth" (Ex. 20:4).¹

Exodus 20:5-6	Deut. 7:9-10	Ezekiel 18:20
You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.	Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations, and repays to their face those who hate him, by destroying them. He will not be slack with one who hates him. He will repay him to his face.	The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.

(1) The Decalogue asserts that God will punish three or four generations for the sins of the father. (2) Deuteronomy makes no mention of subsequent generations; rather, it focuses on the sinner himself. God will not be "slack" with the sinner (i.e., there will be no delay in punishment?), but will punish him to his face. (3) Ezekiel goes even further, flatly contradicting the Decalogue:

The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father. … The wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.

Doug comments,

The words portrayed as belonging to God both in speech and writing seem to be up for conversation, criticism and dialogue. God in Ezekiel disagrees with God in Exodus, and even though the final redaction of Exodus most likely post-dates these prophecies the tensions and discordances are preserved in the text on its long journey towards canonicity.

What are the implications of this conclusion for exegesis? How can texts which are inconsistent with one another supply a coherent and authoritative guide to doctrine and practice?

Historical criticism:

The first attempt at a solution that I wish to consider is historical criticism.

The historical-critical method presupposes that Israel's understanding of God was contingent on its location in space and time. As the generations passed; as Israel encountered other nations with different religious ideas; as Israel's fortunes on the world stage rose and fell — Israel's doctrines and practices changed.

In my view, this is undoubtedly a biblical perspective. As Walter Brueggemann says, "Israel’s articulation itself would seem to stress the historical."² And indeed, traditional theology has been open to the notion of progressive revelation:

Different faith groups assign various meanings to the term "Progressive revelation." A common definition is the belief that God did not teach full theological, legal, moral, scientific, medical and other knowledge to humans in the beginning. Rather, God gradually revealed truths over a long interval, according to their needs, and at a rate slow enough that humans were capable of fully absorbing them.

But traditional theology was not open to the idea of irreconcilable contradictions in scripture. That Israel might actually change its mind, and conclude that the doctrines of an earlier era were in error — that was simply unthinkable.

In fact, historical criticism doesn't assume progressive revelation. Methodologically, earlier documents are preferred to later documents. The biblical historian assumes something like a degeneration from an original purity, rather than progress toward perfection.

As an example of the historical-critical method, consider Gerhard von Rad (whose views are here summarized by Walter Brueggemann). Von Rad proposed

that the recitals of Deut. 26:5–9, 6:20–24, and Josh. 24:1–13 constitute Israel’s earliest and most characteristic theological articulation. These highly studied recitals … narrate Israel's remembered "historical" experience of the decisive ways in which Yahweh, the God of Israel, has intervened and acted in the life of Israel. …

Von Rad was drawn to term these stylized recitals as credos, as bottom-line articulations of what is unquestioned and nonnegotiable in Israel’s faith.³

Thus von Rad employed the historical-critical method to isolate the earliest recitals of Israel's faith. He recognized that subsequent generations always circled back to the core material; they retold the stories in ways that were appropriate to new historical circumstances. But it was the most ancient stratum of the tradition that von Rad deemed normative and non-negotiable.

Were von Rad's conclusions warranted? Had he succeeded in isolating the earliest stratum of the tradition? Can the historical critical method solve the problem of internal inconsistencies for us?

In my second post, I will lay out some of the inadequacies of the historical-critical option. I will then direct our attention to a second attempt at a solution:  canonical criticism.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.
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¹Unless otherwise indicated, scripture is quoted from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version.

²Brueggemann, W. (1997). Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, dispute, advocacy, Fortress Press, p. 40.

³ibid., pp. 32-33.

Jesus' error

Last Sunday, I mentioned that Jesus was apparently mistaken in one of his prophecies. The prophecy is this:

For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done. Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. (Mt. 16:27-28)¹

There's a similar saying in Mark's "little Apocalypse":

So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that [the Son of Man] is near, at the very gates. Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. (Mark 13:29-30 // Mt. 24:34 // Luke 21:32)

The meaning of these two sayings seems perfectly straightforward:  the eschaton will arrive within the lifetime of that generation. Is it possible that Jesus erred? — that he made a prediction that was not fulfilled?

It might help if we could reconstruct how the first generation of Christians understood Jesus' prediction. I suggest that we can get a reasonably clear insight into their expectations by considering the following three texts.

• 1Th. 4:13-18

But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.

To properly understand this text, we have to read between the lines a little. It seems that the Thessalonian Christians were worried:  some members of the community had died, and the surviving Thessalonians didn't know whether the departed believers could still be saved.

From our perspective, 100 generations later, the Thessalonians' concern is touchingly naïve: even bizarre. Was it really necessary for Paul to explain that departed believers are not lost? — that they will be raised to be with the Lord when he returns?

Such a concern would only arise in a church where Christ's return was expected almost immediately. "This generation" was not supposed to die; the Lord was supposed to return without delay.

And so Paul patiently reassures them:  not only will the departed believers be raised, their salvation will precede ours. ("The dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them.")

I might note, in passing, that most scholars regard 1 Thessalonians as the earliest of Paul's epistles. (It's possible that Galatians is even earlier.) This passage is evidence of the letter's early date:  it seems to have been written during that brief window of time when Christ was expected to return almost immediately.

• 1Co. 7:25-31

Now concerning the betrothed, I have no command from the Lord, but I give my judgment as one who by the Lord's mercy is trustworthy. I think that in view of the present distress it is good for a person to remain as he is. Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife. But if you do marry, you have not sinned, and if a betrothed woman marries, she has not sinned. Yet those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that. This is what I mean, brothers: the appointed time has grown very short. From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.

This is another problem text. (The Bible is simply full of them, in my view — but maybe I'm unjustifiably cynical.) The problem here is Paul's shockingly negative view of marriage. For example, "if you do marry, you have not sinned, and if a betrothed woman marries, she has not sinned."

Talk about damning marriage with faint praise! Whatever happened to family values?! This chapter of 1 Corinthians is one of the reasons that Paul has acquired a reputation as a misogynist.

The problematic nature of the text is diminished (though it doesn't completely disappear) if we emphasize verse 29 — "This is what I mean, brothers: the appointed time has grown very short. From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none."

Paul isn't concerned about propagating Christianity by making lots of babies (which seems to be the Roman Catholic model). He seems to advocate celibacy, or at least a radical shift in conventional priorities so that sex virtually vanishes from view: "From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none."

How can Paul talk this way? It's simple:  he does not envision 100 generations of Church history ahead. On the contrary, "the appointed time has grown very short".

Once again, we have an indication that Christ's return was expected almost immediately.

• John 21:20-23

Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them. … He said to Jesus, "Lord, what about this man?" Jesus said to him, "If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me!" So the saying spread abroad among the brothers that this disciple was not to die; yet Jesus did not say to him that he was not to die, but, "If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?"

Here we must exercise our imaginations a little. The years pass; one by one, the apostles die off (mostly through martyrdom). Eventually, only one apostle survives:  John, "the disciple whom Jesus loved".

And still the years continue to pass. John is now an exceptionally old man. Death inexorably closes in on him. Gradually the conviction takes shape in his mind:  the Lord is not going to return in "this generation" per everyone's expectation.

But John's church hasn't come to that conclusion. Decades after Jesus made his prediction, the saying has been spun a certain way within the Johannine community:  Jesus promised to return before John's death.

The days of John's life are so many grains of sand in an eggtimer. Before the last grain of sand falls, Christ will return:  he promised! If it doesn't happen that way, John's death could precipitate a crisis of faith.

And so this postscript is added to John's Gospel. (Scholars believe John originally ended at 20:30-31, and chapter 21 was a late addendum.) The misleading rumour must be addressed. "Jesus did not say to [Peter] that [John] was not to die, but, 'If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?'"

Here (sixty years later?) we have travelled a long distance from Jesus' original prediction. But the issue is the same:  "there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom."

Conclusion:

Did Jesus expect the kingdom of God to arrive within a generation? The evidence suggests that he did. First we have the prima facie meaning of the two sayings quoted in the introduction to this post. Second, we have the clear expectation of the first generation of Christians. Everyone "knew" that Jesus would return almost immediately — certainly before the last surviving apostle died.

I'm going to leave the reader hanging at this point. I want to pose this question as a theological / exegetical problem. Theologically, can we accept that Jesus made an error? If not, how do you exegete the sayings to make them appear true?

I will follow up with part two later this week. I plan to broaden the question to encompass Old Testament prophecies as well. Jesus' saying is not the only instance of a prophecy that seemingly fell to the ground, unfulfilled.

But for now, let me offer one positive conclusion that we can derive from the above data. The Gospels were relatively conservative in their handling of Jesus' sayings.

Yes, some sayings are of doubtful historicity. Yes, each of the Evangelists had his own theological perspective, and they were not above "spinning" Jesus' sayings to make them fit a preferred theological paradigm.

But a careful reading of the Gospels demonstrates a second tendency, moving in the contrary direction:  a conservative tendency. Some very difficult sayings were preserved for posterity when the tradition was committed to writing. This tells us:  (a) that the tradition became relatively fixed at an early date — presumably while "this generation" was still alive; and (b) that later copyists were unwilling to destroy authentic tradition, even when it gave rise to significant problems.

This survey of the data leads me to a Janus-faced conclusion; one that is fundamental to my understanding of scripture. On the one hand, we shouldn't be so naïve as to deny that real problems are present in the text. On the other hand, we can trust that the tradition preserves authentic information about the historical Jesus. The tradition thus provides an adequate foundation for Christian faith.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.
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¹Unless otherwise indicated, scripture is quoted from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version.

A postmodern take on historiography

I am very interested in the historical criticism of scripture. It is certainly relevant to the New Testament (the vexed question of the "historical" Jesus), and every bit as relevant with respect to the Hebrew scriptures.

For example, believers typically take David as a model for the Messiah. But then an archaeologist comes along to assert the following conclusions:

David and Solomon existed in the 10th century B.C. but as "little more than hill country chieftains." There was no golden age of a united kingdom, a magnificent capital and an extended empire.

Currently, Finkelstein's and Silberman's claim remains hotly contested. But what happens if the scholarly consensus moves in that direction? How does it affect exegesis? How does it affect faith?

Postmodern scepticism about historiography:

I am sympathetic to a postmodern view of historiography. The scholar's conclusions follow largely from his or her presuppositions.

I don't think it is entirely so. For example, I think we can conclude, on objective grounds, that the synoptic Gospels accurately capture the very "voice" of Jesus (his ipsissima vox), if not always his very words (ipsissima verba).

But over and over again, scholars' supposedly objective conclusions follow directly from their personal predilections. For example, did Jesus predict the arrival of the kingdom of God during his lifetime? Just about everyone resists that conclusion, although there are good biblical grounds for it.

Conservatives resist that conclusion because they can't admit that Jesus made a prediction that didn't come true. Liberals resist that conclusion because the image of Jesus as a wild-eyed, end-times prophet doesn't fit their preferred schema:  Jesus as a teacher of universal ethical truths.

Conservatives and liberals alike sift the data according to what is palatable to them.

Postmodernists conclude that there is no such thing as objective history. I agree that historiography is highly problematic. Some basic conclusions are objective, in my view; but you can't progress very far before scholars begin picking and choosing from the data in accordance with their personal preferences.

Ken Burns's perspective:

That was my long-winded introduction to a quote from the documentary film-maker, Ken Burns. He sat down with Jon Stewart to discuss his documentary, "The War", a fresh examination of World War II. The video is embedded below (at least, it will be until Comedy Central deletes it from their site). But here is my transcript of the excerpts that caught my interest:

The second world war has been so draped in bloodless, gallant myth. You know, it's the John Wayne war. And when you see colour [film footage], it's no longer at arm's length. It's right there, and it's the worst war ever, not the good war, cause it killed sixty million people. …

A handful of soldiers [are now] able to say, "This is what really happened. I saw bad things; I did bad things; I lost good friends. I was scared, I was bored, I was hot, I was cold."

All the things that are universal to war. A guy in Iraq today — experiencing the same thing. And two thousand years ago, in the Peloponnesian War — the same thing. …

We don't have a political bone in our bodies in this film. … But at the same time, history is the set of questions we in the present ask of the past. And so it's very much informed about our anxieties. …

We know that it takes some time from an event before you can really understand it:  that you can triangulate with the passage of time. So you're constantly aware as you're dealing with new stuff that [our perspective] is going to change.

You know, if you did something on Vietnam ten years after the fall of Saigon — when we're in a recession, when Japan's ascendant — it'd be a different film than twenty years out, when we just won the first Gulf war, that our economy was booming, Japan was stagnant. I mean, every time you change a degree from that moment, every part of your perspective changes. …

I think all of us are in a continuum. You know, somebody says, "Is this the definitive work?" Absolutely not! You know, our Civil War film, seventeen years ago, spawned hundreds of documentaries. It's just, you do what you can do in that time.

Allow me to object to one of Burns's statements: "We don't have a political bone in our bodies in this film."

In that statement, Burns momentarily falls back into the positivist trap. He speaks as if the historian floats in a heremetically sealed compartment, and is not influenced by the surrounding environment.

Conclusion:

Presumably Burns meant only that he isn't trying to support either the Democrats or the Republicans in this documentary. It's clear from everything else he said in this segment that he understands the hard truth of historiography:  that all historians are biased. We are all captives to the era which shapes us, all editing the data to respond to our interests and defend our prior convictions. As Burns put it,

Every time you change a degree from that moment, every part of your perspective changes. … You [just] do what you can do in that time.

That's why historical conclusions, like those of Finkelstein and Silberman, must always be taken with a grain of salt. One must always ask, Where does this historian "come from"? What axe is s/he grinding — what polemical position is s/he setting out to prove?

I hasten to add, it's true of everything I write as well. In one post, I'm trying to make a case for same sex marriage. In another post, I'm resisting the biblical teaching on penal substitution.

If the posts are tendentious, does that make me a liberal? No, because this idea has nothing to do with the great liberal/conservative divide. Conservatives are playing the same game, they're just grinding a different set of axes. Hence the postmodern scepticism about all historiography.


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The "Uh-oh" principle, part 2: Poetic justice in the prophets

I've decided to write two more posts on the David and Bathsheba story.

First, in this post, I want to explore a concept that Walter Brueggemann flags as a core element of rhetorical criticism. Brueggemann maintains that there is a very close relation between what gets said (the message of the text) and how it gets said (the literary or rhetorical techniques utilized by the author).

But let's quote Brueggeman himself on the subject. Here he is, contrasting historical criticism with rhetorical criticism:

Historical criticism, as it has come to be practiced, has been notorious for its lack of interest in the actual expression of the text itself. Indeed, the primary references for historical criticism characteristically are outside the text or, as is often said now, "behind the text" in the historical process. …

The commentaries are characteristically occupied with sorting out what is "genuine" in the text and with identifying parallels in other cultures. Such treatment of the text does not at all attend to the statements of the text itself, but is in effect a sustained raid on the text, looking for clues that support historical reconstruction. …

Rhetorical criticism is a method that insists that how what is said is crucial and definitive for what is said, so that the theology of the Old Testament does not trade in a set of normative ideas that may be said in many ways, but in a particular utterance that is spoken and/or written in a certain way.

It is now agreed that the primary impetus for rhetorical criticism as an intentional Old Testament enterprise stems from the address of James Muilenburg, "Form Criticism and Beyond," presented in 1968 and published in 1969. …

Muilenburg almost single-handedly made credible the practice of close reading, whereby one notices the detail of the text, such as word patterns and arrangements, the use of key words in repetition, the careful placement of prepositions and conjunctions, and the reiteration of sounds of certain consonants. … He held that such detail in the text is characteristically intentional, and that the force of the text cannot be understood apart from noticing such detail.

(Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, dispute, advocacy, Fortress Press, 1997, pp. 53-55.)

I am attracted to rhetorical criticism, in part because it puts evangelicals and liberals on common ground, at least to a significant extent.

To be clear, Brueggemann does not suppose that everything in the text is historical, or that the various Old Testament texts agree with one another. On the contrary, he maintains that scripture speaks with many voices:  there are diverse agendas at work in the texts as they have been handed down to us.

But insofar as rhetorical criticism begins with the text as it appears in the Bible, seeking meaning in (not behind) the text, evangelicals will find the method amenable.

Personally, I am at a disadvantage because I do not know Hebrew. Many of the details of importance to Muilenburg do not carry over into an English translation. But some of them do, so we will work with such details as are present to us.

With this method in mind, let's take another look at 2 Samuel 12. I'm using a different format this time, highlighting certain keywords:

(past experience of God's grace)
Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, "I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you out of the hand of Saul. And I gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your arms and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah. And if this were too little, I would add to you as much more.

(present moral failure)
Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites.

(impending consequences)
Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife."

Thus says the Lord, "Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house. And I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun."

(2 Samuel 12:7b-12)¹

The reader should note the pattern that emerges when the text is colour-coded in this way. The word "wife" recurs in all three sections of the text (past experience of God's grace, present moral failure, and impending consequences). The word "sword" appears in the latter two sections.

Rhetorical criticism tells us to be alert to the repetition of keywords. The literary technique is a clue to the meaning of the text. In this case, it tells us something interesting about the worldview of the author:  what I have called "poetic justice" in the title of this post.

• David sins with Uriah's wife (present moral failure), even though YHWH has already provided him with wives² (past experience of God's grace); poetic justice deems that his own wives will be taken by another man (impending consequences).
  
  
• David uses the sword to rid himself of a problem (present moral failure); poetic justice deems that David's kingdom will never be free of the sword (impending consequences). (That is, Israel will never be at peace with its neighbours while David is king.)

The idea of poetic justice is found not only here, in Nathan's oracle to David, but elsewhere in the prophets as well. It seems to be an important element of the prophetic worldview.

Klaus Koch describes this phenomenon in an evocative way. He is commenting on Jeremiah 1:13-16 —

The word of the Lord came to me a second time, saying, "What do you see?" And I said, "I see a boiling pot, facing away from the north." Then the Lord said to me, "Out of the north disaster [literally, evil] shall be let loose upon all the inhabitants of the land. For behold, I am calling all the tribes of the kingdoms of the north, declares the Lord, and they shall come, and every one shall set his throne at the entrance of the gates of Jerusalem, against all its walls all around and against all the cities of Judah. And I will declare my judgments against them, for all their evil in forsaking me. They have made offerings to other gods and worshiped the works of their own hands.

This text is not laid out in the same neat pattern as the one in 2 Samuel 12. There is no mention of God's prior grace to Israel. Moreover, the "present moral failure" is the last element mentioned. Israel's moral failure consists of forsaking YHWH to worship idols:  "… all their evil in forsaking me. They have made offerings to other gods and worshiped the works of their own hands."

Even though the pattern is not as tidy, we see a similar repetition of a keyword:  evil. Israel has committed evil, and evil (calamity) will be turned back upon Israel. Here's what Koch says:

In the prophetic genres, key words generally form the pivot in the logical progression from the 'now' to the 'impending'. … The word ra'a [evil] is used ninety times in [Jeremiah] and becomes the common denominator, both for human transgression that has already taken place and for a catastrophe that is going to break in from outside. …

For the prophet, ra'a is not an abstract power. It is an aura, with effects on the world, an aura encircling the particular agent, who brings about his own destiny.

(Klaus Koch, The Prophets II: The Babylonian and Persian periods, Fortress Press, 1982, p. 20.)

This is an evocative picture:  an aura of evil surrounding Israel which then attracts evil upon Israel. In the same way, David's aura of adultery or his aura of "the use of the sword" attracted precisely those consequences upon him in punishment. It is poetic justice.

I'm not convinced that we should take Koch's description at face value. It might better be understood as a metaphor rather than a literal, Magical Mystery principle of the cosmos.

Regardless, our rhetorical analysis of these two texts leads to an enriched understanding of the "Uh-oh" principle. When people do evil, "Uh-oh!" — that same evil will be turned back on their heads.

(Next up: a consideration of Bathsheba's voicelessness in the 2 Samuel 11-12 narrative. Whereas the first two posts have been evangelical in their treatment of the text, the third post will explicitly adopt a critical perspective.)



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¹Unless otherwise indicated, scripture is quoted from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version.

²YHWH's assertion, "I gave you … your master's wives into your arms" is odd:  we're not told any such thing in the narrative where David assumes the throne. However: (1) it was customary in that era for a new king to take the former king's wives, perhaps as a symbol of his succession to the former king's place; (2) David and Saul both had a wife named Ahinoam, although we can't be certain that it is the same woman in both references.

To Babel and back, part 1

This series of posts will introduce the concept of the blog. Part one surveys the history of biblical interpretation in the modern West.

1. The Normative Era:

People used to know things by consulting the Holy Bible. For example, if some scientist told you that the earth was millions of years old, you could whip out your Bible and prove him wrong.

The Bible was normative. Everyone agreed that the Bible was true; and truth can't contradict truth, right? So science had to agree with the Bible.

2. The Critical Era:

Eventually sceptics began to subject the Bible to critical scrutiny. For example, that question about the age of the earth wouldn't go away. New evidence was adduced to show that the earth is older than anyone would deduce from Genesis.

Theologians adapted. Maybe there are gaps in the Genesis genealogies, they reasoned. Maybe one "day" of creation actually refers to an "epoch". But the questions only multiplied:  evidence began to mount that the Bible wasn't absolutely trustworthy after all.

The assault from science was formidable enough, but then came historical criticism. It began to undermine confidence in texts that were critical to theology.

In the Hebrew scriptures, salvation is grounded in the Israelites' Exodus from Egypt. But did the Exodus really happen? All those plagues? The death of every first-born son in Egypt, and no trace of it in secular histories?

(In my view, the Exodus is simply too ancient an event to withstand critical scrutiny. Faith may say that it happened, but there is no independent evidence to corroborate the biblical account.)

For a while, Jesus was sacrosanct. Everyone shrank from criticizing the Gospels. But in 1778, Reimarus opened the floodgates. Critical scholars began to ask, for example, whether Jesus really walked on water.

And did he really claim to be God, or was that merely a myth, introduced later by Jesus' followers? The importance of historical criticism can scarcely be overstated:  it struck a savage blow at the very roots of Christian faith.

3. The Relativizing Era:

First, the assault from science; then, historical criticism; now, globalization. Globalization matters for religion because it exposes us to all the other traditions out there. Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, native religions:  a veritable smorgasbord of religious traditions, most of them with a venerable history. And all of it is now available at your local Chapters!

The result:  a descent into Babel. A cacophony of voices, all talking at once, each trying to make itself heard over the others.

Exposure to many traditions has called all of them into question. Christians offer a narrative account of how the cosmos came into being, what went wrong with it, and how God will rescue us in the end. But what's so special about that? The Dalai Lama has a competing narrative; American Indians have one of their own; Mormons have still another; and so on and so forth.

Every religion is equally convinced that its narrative is true. The effect is to relativize all of them:  my narrative doesn't look so special anymore.

Science weighs in with its authoritative opinion, claiming that all of the sacred texts are equally bogus. Science profers a narrative of its own. There is no god; the cosmos is billions of years old; all living creatures evolved from the humblest, single-celled organisms; evolution has no end goal (it is not purposive); human beings are an accident of nature; inevitably, the cosmos will collapse back onto itself, and that will be that!

Science has its own epistemology, too:  reason and the scientific method are the only sure guides to knowledge. But here's where the story takes an unexpected twist:  from a post-modern perspective, the scientific narrative is as suspect as any other:

Science has been under unprecedented attack with the rise of postmodernism. Both in academic circles and in popular culture, we see today a contempt for the sciences that many find hard to understand. Science is viewed as the vanguard of European exploitation, a discipline run amok, the instigators of nuclear and other weapons systems, the handmaiden of big business, and as the defilers of nature.

Postmodernists argue that the ideal of the scientist as a neutral, objective observer is pretentious. There is no such thing as an uninterpreted "fact"; and the interpreter of that "fact" is always biased:

Hypotheses do not simply rise up from raw data. Instead, they originate in the mind of the observer, who then imposes the hypothesis upon the data as a way of organizing it.

In sum, we have all arrived in Babel together:  Christians and Muslims; Mormons and Buddhists; mystics and scientists; theists and atheists. No one's opinion is normative anymore.

4. Triangulating a way out of Babel:

I do not believe Christianity has cornered the market on truth. Nonetheless, I am a Christian:  which is to say, that is the tradition that I operate out of.

My method (which I will explore in subsequent posts in this series) is to rely on three approaches to knowledge.

• Theological first principles.


• Careful exegesis rooted in historical criticism.


• Ultimately, I employ the texts as narratives which provide a necessary counterbalance to the presumptions of the modern, secular West.

Thus there are three elements to my method. We might describe the process as triangulating our way out of Babel, since there are three points at which we will seek to establish our bearings.



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