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.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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.

Brevard Childs: champion of orthodoxy

This is a continuation of my previous post:  the second part of my response to Brevard Childs's critique of Walter Brueggemann's Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy.¹

I began the previous post by saying that the article isn't very flattering to Childs. In this post, it will become clear why I see it that way.

The little texts and the Great Tradition:

First, allow me to juxtapose two of Childs's statements. The point is to demonstrate that Childs's criticism of Brueggemann is unjustified.

criticism; pp. 230-31

summary; p. 228

The biblical editors retained the radical scepticism of the book of Ecclesiastes largely in an unredactored [uncensored] form. But they added in an epilogue a rule for properly interpreting the book, namely, it is to be heard within the framework of Torah (Eccles. 12:13f.). When Brueggemann assigns an independent role to such traditions as counter- testimony, he is running in the very face of Israel's canonical witness.

[Brueggemann's approach] would seek to do justice to the radical unsettlement evoked by the new postmodern epistemological situation with its insistence on pluralism. … Accordingly, interpretation is defined by Brueggemann as an ongoing process of negotiating among the full range of conflictional testimonies which avoids any absolute claims — whether historical or ontological — beyond the court of appeal found in the biblical text itself.

The criticism of Brueggemann's method, on the left, has already been explored in the previous post. However, I now call your attention to the statement highlighted in yellow. As long as the book of Ecclesiastes is "heard within the framework of Torah", the biblical editors were content to allow the community of faith to study it.

Now consider Childs's summary of Brueggemann's method, on the right. The claims of the various testimonies are to be adjudicated by "the court of appeal found in the biblical text itself."

The biblical editors insisted that we must hear Ecclesiastes within the framework of Torah; Brueggemann is committed to precisely the same thing. Childs's objection appears to be unjustified.

Brueggemann falls into error, according to Childs, when he assigns an independent role to Ecclesiastes (and other such countertestimonial texts). But Brueggemann emphatically denies the charge:

Of course nothing could be further from the truth. I have consistently said that the different testimonies are endlessly in tension with and corrected by other testimony. None is freestanding, none is isolated, none is cut off. (p. 235)

The slight variation between [Professor Childs's] approach and mine I believe to be a more benign variation than his rhetoric suggests. What is at issue is the endlessly tricky relation between 'The Great Tradition' and the 'little texts.' … It is my concern that in future generations, the Church will be able to attend to the 'little texts,' even as it commits to the Great Tradition. (p. 237)

I think that's sage advice:  attend to the "little texts"; commit to the Great Tradition.

Childs, champion of orthodoxy:

Childs, on the other hand, approves of the subordination of some of the voices found within the biblical text. I am not putting words into his mouth. I quoted his statement to that effect in the previous post:  "the biblical editors subordinated [certain] voices", including the radical scepticism of Ecclesiastes (p. 230).

Childs approves of this work of subordination. Brueggemann errs because "he feels free to reconstruct voices on which Israel's authors had already rendered a judgment" (p. 230).

Indeed — and here's the point I have been building up to — Childs attempts to marginalize Brueggemann's voice. Childs makes himself the champion of orthodoxy:  he argues that Brueggemann's method tilts carelessly toward heresy.

It may be that one is philosophically justified in characterising Brueggemann's approach as postmodern. However, from a theological perspective the closest analogy is found in the Early Church's struggle with Gnosticism. …

One does not have to look far to discover the striking analogies between Brueggemann's postmodernism and ancient Gnosticism. Both operate within an overarching philosophical system in which [Brueggemann's] 'imaginative construal' closely parallels Gnostic 'speculation' as a means for correcting the received biblical tradition. Both approaches work with a sharply defined dualism between a God of creation who is known and predictable, and one who is hidden, unknown, and capricious.

By characterizing Brueggemann's method as analogous to Gnosticism, Childs sets out to consign Brueggemann's Theology of the Old Testament to a place outside the pale of orthodox Christian teaching.

I submit that Childs's canonical approach has a natural tendency in that direction. If you accept that the biblical editors deliberately subordinated unsettling voices like that of Ecclesiastes, and you regard that subordinating activity as legitimate, inevitably you will be tempted to subordinate unsettling voices like Brueggemann's to your vision of orthodoxy.

The lived reality of the believing Church:

Childs speaks of "an established range of truthful witness". Brueggemann would not disagree with that way of expressing things.

But for Brueggemann, the radical scepticism of Ecclesiastes (and other countertestimonial texts) are within what is, by Childs's admission, a range of truthful witness. Here Brueggemann appeals to the lived reality of the believing Church:

What I have done is to give 'other voices' a serious hearing, for there is no doubt that in Scripture there are voices of witness in profound tension with each other. The issue turns on which witnesses are truthful, but it has been the lived reality of the Church that different witnesses in Scripture have been heard as truthful on different occasions. …

The silence and absence of God is indeed a lived reality that must be fully taken into account. I have not wanted to let any 'large' ecclesial claims censor the lived reality of the believing Church.

(pp. 235-36)

Update:  I wasn't quite satisfied with the ending of this post last night, but I couldn't think what to add. Here's the point I didn't quite get to.

One of the great insights which emerges from Brueggemann's approach is that "postmodern" experiences are not at all new or unprecedented. The silence and absence of God; anomie; alienation; fragmentation; meaninglessness; doubt and confusion — all these postmodern themes were known to the ancient Israelites and reported honestly in scripture.

Brueggemann's approach is explicitly pastoral. He recognizes the immense potential of the "little texts" of scripture to address the distinctive needs of a postmodern people. Hence his determined effort to reclaim these voices in the service of the Church.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.
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¹Scottish Journal of Theology vol. 53, no. 2, 2000, pp. 228-233, with a reply by Brueggemann at pp. 234-238.

Two heavyweight scholars slug it out

Phil Sumpter suggested that I read Brevard Childs's critique of Walter Brueggemann's Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy. The critique, with a reply from Brueggemann, was published in the Scottish Journal of Theology seven years ago.¹

Readers of our respective blogs will know that Phil's theological sympathies lie with Childs, whereas mine lie with Brueggemann. I found the exchange between Childs and Brueggemann illuminating, but not very flattering to Childs.

The core disagreement:

Here's an excerpt from Childs's article which directs our attention to the key difference in the two scholars' approaches.

The present form of the biblical literature emerged during a long process of collecting, shaping and transmitting a wide variety of different traditions arranged in sections of Torah, Prophets, and Writings toward the end of serving communities of Israel as an authoritative guide of faith and practice.

In this process various editors exercised a critical function in registering from the received traditions that which they deemed truthful and authoritative. This shaping thus involved a Sachkritik [i.e., the editors passed judgement on the texts that had been handed down to them] which was not simply reflective of private, idiosyncratic agenda, but which arose from actual communal practice and belief. Accordingly, Moses not Korah, Jeremiah not Hananiah, were judged to be faithful tradents of divine revelation.

In a word, Israel shaped its literature confessionally to bear testimony to what it received as containing an established range of truthful witness. At the same time, the biblical editors subordinated other voices, either by placing them within a negative setting, or omitting them [from the canon] altogether as deleterious to Israel's faith.

(p. 230; both the emphasis and the paragraph breaks were added by me)

Here we have a concise description of Childs's "canonical approach" to Old Testament interpretation. The editors of the Bible did not pass on Israel's traditional texts uncritically. They shaped the texts during the process of transmission; they contextualized the texts by inserting editorial remarks; and they left other texts out of the canon altogether. Hence the canon functions as a control, subtly determining how the reader interprets any individual text.

There's nothing unique to Childs about the analysis so far. Critical scholars agree that this editorializing activity went on during the transmission of Israel's traditional texts. They also agree that the goal of that activity was to set boundaries on interpretation — i.e., to subordinate certain voices.

Where Childs stands apart from other critical scholars, including Brueggemann, is in maintaining that canon as an instrument of control is good. According to Childs, we must respect the boundaries that have been marked out for us. Evangelicals would likely agree with that statement, but it's unusual to hear it from a critical scholar.

Childs tests Brueggemann's book against this standard:

In contrast, when Brueggemann seeks to describe a category of countertestimony to the so-called core tradition, he feels free to reconstruct voices on which Israel's authors had already rendered a judgment. … [For example,] the biblical editors retained the radical scepticism of the book of Ecclesiastes largely in an unredactored [uncensored] form. But they added in an epilogue a rule for properly interpreting the book, namely, it is to be heard within the framework of Torah (Eccles. 12:13f.). When Brueggemann assigns an independent role to such traditions as countertestimony, he is running in the very face of Israel's canonical witness.

Yet it is also obvious that Israel's genuine complaints before God constitute a major positive witness within a large portion of the Bible. They are present in the Psalter, Prophets, and Wisdom literature as a truthful testimony to Israel's experience before God in order not to contradict, but rather to establish its core tradition of faith.

(pp. 230-31; emphasis added)

Ecclesiastes as a case study:

In the reference to Ecclesiastes, we have a case study of the differences between Childs and Brueggemann.

Ecclesiastes seems to be a very humanistic book. For example:

For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity. All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return. Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth? (3:19-21)²

Clearly this text stands in uneasy tension with other parts of the Bible.

In Brueggemann's view, it is a mistake to try to eliminate that tension. We must allow Qoheleth to testify to his experience. It is an authentic experience that many believers can identify with; it is a legitimate countertestimony to Israel's core tradition. We must not paper over the cracks in the biblical witness.

Childs, on the other hand, says that the editors of scripture have already passed judgement on the book of Ecclesiastes. He agrees that Ecclesiastes is a truthful testimony to Israel's experience. But he adds that the editors have carefully circumscribed (subordinated) Qoheleth's voice by appending a critical comment at the end of the book:

The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil. (Eccl. 12:13-14)

According to Childs, the apparent problem now vanishes. Ecclesiastes doesn't contradict the rest of the Bible. Because of this editorial appendix to the book, Ecclesiastes establishes Israel's core tradition.

Conclusions:

I have more to say, but I will do so in a follow-up post. For now, let's draw some conclusions.

• The distinction between "liberal" and "conservative" is sometimes facile, and Childs illustrates one way in which it can break down. Childs is "liberal" insofar as he is a critical scholar. Evangelicals typically insist that the Pentateuch, for example, was written by Moses, under YHWH's inspiration. They would be reluctant to concede that editors have altered the text in the process of transmission.
  
  But Childs ultimately arrives at very conservative conclusions. He champions orthodoxy, insisting that voices like that of Qoheleth must be subordinated to the witness of the canon as a whole. For that reason, Childs is likely to appeal to evangelicals, who engage in a similar practice (the "harmonization" of scripture).
  
  So is Childs a liberal or a conservative? Answer: Yes.
  
  And Childs is not so exceptional. James Dunn, for example, is a New Testament scholar who works within liberal presuppositions but often arrives at conservative conclusions.


• One can see that there is considerable agreement between Childs and Brueggemann, because they both accept the findings of critical scholarship. They agree that considerable editorializing activity has taken place during the process of transmission of the biblical texts.


• In the end, the difference between them boils down to a value judgement. Childs considers the data and deems the editorializing activity good. Brueggemann considers the data and deems the editorializing activity suspect.
  
  We all know that the Church (and the synagogue, though it's not my place to say it) has a long, problematic history of suppressing dissenting voices. Leaders in the Church have a vested interest in retaining their position of privilege. To do so necessarily means that marginalized people must be kept on the margins.
  
  One clear example of this is the subordination of women to male leaders. Consider the data. At one point, St. Paul says there is no male or female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus. But at other points, Paul says that women must not speak in the assembly; and they are not to teach or to exercise authority over men.
  

  As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. (1Co. 14:33b-35)

  What shall we make of this text? Is this Paul's voice? Or — as the evangelical scholar Gordon Fee argues — is this an interpolation by a later editor of Paul's letter to the Corinthians?
  
  If it is an interpolation, should we accept the opinion of the later editor? (That would seem to be the logical conclusion of Child's canonical approach.) Or should we insist that the editorial activity distorts Paul's voice, and allow Paul to have his say? In my view, we should follow Paul's egalitarian principle and open up church leadership to women.
  
  Thus I come down firmly on the side of Brueggemann. The editorializing activity really did take place, as Childs and Brueggemann agree. But this tendency of the orthodox to suppress voices that make them uncomfortable — I regard it as suspect, with Brueggemann, pace Childs.

More to come in the next post — probably 48 hours from now.

(update:  the follow-up post can be found here)


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.
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¹SJT vol. 53, no. 2, 2000, pp. 228-233. Brueggemann's reply is at pp. 234-238.

²Unless otherwise indicated, scripture is quoted from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version.

Spoken word, sacred text

1. Spoken words:

The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.
(Jesus, John 6:63)¹

The above verse from John's Gospel establishes a correlation between (1) words, (2) spirit, and (3) life. But note that the verse refers explicitly to spoken words.

Like many bloggers, I love books and texts in general. But in this post I wish to argue for the primacy of the spoken word in Christianity. (Perhaps in other religions also, but it is not my place to make such a judgement.)

The spoken word has a unique spiritual power — greater than the spiritual power of the written word. The spoken word is quasi-magical in its capacity to impart life to the hearer. These are the three elements brought together in John 6:63:  spoken words; spirit; life.

2. Sacred text:

This post was inspired by an essay by philosopher Paul Ricoeur, "The 'Sacred' Text and the Community".² Ricoeur confesses that he is frightened by the notion of a sacred text (p. 72). In Ricoeur's view, any text that is closed (immutable) ceases to be revelatory.

Ricoeur comments, "The notion of sacred text may have been alien to the Hebraic and pre-Christian tradition" (p. 71). No doubt he is thinking of the fact that both communities were initially founded on oral tradition which was later reduced to a fixed, "sacred" text. He points out that Christians (in particular, Protestants) continually redirect us away from the written word back to the oral:

It is the function of preaching to reverse the relation from written to spoken. In that sense preaching is more fundamental to Hebrew and Christian tradition because of the nature of the text that has to be reconverted to word, in contrast with Scripture; and therefore it is a kind of desacralization of the written as such, by the return to the spoken word. (p. 71)

Thus Ricoeur depicts an arc, a movement from the spoken word to the sacred text and back to the spoken word again.

Ricoeur looks back, yearningly, to the early decades of the Church, when the community was highly creative in generating novel interpretations of the life of Christ:

The text was frozen and the process of interpretation stopped because of the fight against heresies; this was, I think, a very destructive activity. (p. 69)

Thus Ricoeur laments the closing of the New Testament canon.

3. Letter vs. spirit:

Having closed the canon, the Church then fixed its interpretation of scripture. Ricoeur doesn't note (at this point I move beyond Ricoeur and offer my response to his provocative essay) that this development constitutes a betrayal of the Protestant ideal. The Reformers had a motto, semper reformanda — always reforming:

A shortened form of a motto of the Protestant Reformation, Ecclesia reformata semper reformanda est secundu Verbum Dei ("the reformed Church must be always reforming according to the Word of God"), which refers to the Protestant position that the church must continually re-examine itself, reconsider its doctrines, and be prepared to accept change, in order to conform more closely to orthodox Christian belief as revealed in the Bible. The shortened form, semper reformanda, literally means "always about to be reformed", but the usual translation ["always reforming"] is taken from the full sentence.

First the text was fixed (the canon was closed) and then the interpretation of the text was fixed. The result, in many churches, is the preservation of a dead word. As St. Paul put it,

For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
(2Co. 3:6)

Here is an echo of the scripture with which I opened this post; Paul (like John) asserts a positive correlation between spirit and life. Moreover, Paul assigns the written text (the letter) to the "death" side of the ledger.

The written word correlates with death because it is fixed and therefore static. It cannot respond to the express needs of the community; a closed canon is, by definition, unresponsive. Here Ricoeur can claim a biblical ground for his observation that a closed, immutable text is incapable of revealing God.

Conclusion:

My response to this problem is certainly not to repudiate the Bible. Rather, I would argue, with Brueggemann, that the biblical witness is multivocal; pluriform.

Let us begin by recognizing that the biblical authors do not all represent a single perspective. Then we can find the right biblical text, the right voice, to address the express needs of the community in any given instance. Thus we preserve the life-giving power of scripture; whereas those who would collapse the multivocal testimony of scripture into a single, harmonious system effectively neuter the text. In many instances, well-intentioned believers shut out the very voice of God.

I share Ricoeur's regret that the interpretation of scripture is essentially fixed. Certainly among evangelical Christians, it is, as we see (for example) in the backlash to the "new perspective" on Paul. Human knowledge advances, but the Church's first instinct is always to resist new insights. As Ricoeur puts it, "Revelation is a historical process, but the notion of sacred text is something antihistorical" (p. 72).

As a preacher, I have observed the life-giving power of the spoken word. Admittedly, there have been stages of my (rather convoluted) pilgrimage when I have not been very effective from the pulpit. But on numerous occasions, the response to my preaching has actually startled me:  my words were clearly "life" to the congregation to an extent that seemed to go beyond the content of anything I had said.

Those are humbling experiences, when the preacher realizes that s/he is not responsible for the spiritual dynamic. The preacher has been the conduit for a mysterious external force:  a power (ruach) that cannot be summoned at will, but comes and goes at the pleasure of Another. And then the preacher shares in the experience of Jesus, delivering spoken words which are spirit and life.


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.

²In Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination, Fortress Press, 1995, pp. 68-72.

The account of creation in Genesis 2

Chris Tilling is hosting an interesting discussion on evolution vs. creationism, and whether Genesis 1-2 should be interpreted literally or regarded as mythology.

(As usual, Chris provoked the discussion and then vanished into the cyber-ether. I'm beginning to wonder whether he really exists.)

I have a couple of posts on this topic that I've been meaning to publish. Actually, I've posted my first observation before, as a guest blogger on Jewish Atheist's blog. I'm referring to the middle section of that post, where I argued that there are two variant accounts of creation in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2.

Both accounts insist that humankind is the focal point of creation. Genesis 1 makes the point by recounting that humans were created last — the crowning jewel of creation. Genesis 2 makes the point by recounting that humans were created first — thus taking precedence over everything else:

These are the generations
of the heavens and the earth when they were created,
in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.

When no bush of the field was yet in the earth¹ and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up — for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land … then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground….

(Genesis 2:4-7a)²

There are at least two variant details in the accounts of creation.

	Genesis 1	Genesis 2
"days" of creation	7	1 — "in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens"
order of events	humans created (day 6) after vegetation (day 3)	humans created before vegetation, "when no bush of the field was yet in the earth"

Sceptics might suppose that the editor of Genesis was sloppy, and didn't notice the hopeless contradiction between the two accounts. This is a constant temptation:  to suppose that "primitive" peoples lacked intellectual sophistication.

More likely, the editor considered that he had two creation stories which approached the topic from two different vantage points, and he was loathe to lose either of them. The presence of variant details was simply immaterial.

Why was it immaterial? Because neither account of creation is a lab report:  they belong to the literary genre, myth. Myths are "metaphorical [nonliteral] narratives about the relation between this world and the sacred."³

Alternatively we could set out to describe the literary genre in more nuanced terms, as the evangelical scholar Gordon Wenham⁴ struggles to do:

Whereas the layman tends to see the issue in simple categories of myth or history, theologians have for various reasons tended to avoid this polarization. … Von Rad and Westermann call Gen 2-3 simply narrative (erzählung) and Coats calls it a tale.

Similarly, Otzen (Myths in the Old Testament, 25) states, "The narratives in the opening chapters of Genesis do not have the character of real myths." But the garden of Eden story does fulfill functions often associated with myths in other cultures. It explains man's present situation and obligations in terms of a primeval event which is of abiding significance. Marriage, work, pain, sin, and death are the subject matter of this great narrative. And this narrative is replete with powerful symbols — rivers, gold, cherubim, serpents and so on — which hint at its universal significance.

Yet for the author of Genesis it is clear "that here a factual report is meant to be given about facts which everyone knows and whose reality no one can question" (von Rad, 75). The introductory formula "This is the history of the heaven and the earth" (2:4) not only links this cycle of narratives with those which follow (e.g., 5:1 or 11:27), but implies that the characters who appear in Gen 2 and 3 are as real as the patriarchs.

But to affirm that Gen 2-3 is "a factual report" is not to say it is history, at least history in the normal meaning of the term. …

If earlier commentators tended to think in terms of the writer of Genesis putting into words a vision of the garden which was disclosed to him, or recording a primeval tradition for posterity, modern writers … prefer to think in terms of divine inspiration working through the author's creative imagination. …

Whereas a modern writer might have been happy to spell this out in abstract theological terminology — God created the world good, but man spoiled it by his disobedience — Genesis puts these truths in vivid and memorable form in an absorbing yet highly symbolic story. It is argued that such an understanding of the story's composition can account for its use of mythological motifs from neighboring peoples and its points of connection with other parts of the OT, particularly the covenant and wisdom traditions.

You can see Wenham struggling here. It's easier to say what the genre isn't than to say what the genre is:  it isn't myth, or history "in the normal meaning of the term", or abstract theology, or pure "revelation" as understood in previous generations, or mere tradition.

The opening chapters of Genesis borrow motifs from the myths of neighbouring peoples, and they fulfil the function of mythology, and they use archetypal symbols (e.g. the serpent) — yet Wenham still wants to deny that myth is the right literary category. He prefers to think in terms of "divine inspiration working through the author's creative imagination". This seems to bring us back to von Rad's label, narrative, albeit an inspired narrative.

In my view, Wenham's unease with the label myth is unnecessary. It's better to acknowledge that these chapters are Israel's myth, while carefully explaining what one means by the term. Wenham himself admits that the writer borrows motifs from the myths of neighbouring, pagan peoples:  not in agreement with their theology, but rather in a deliberate effort to subvert their accounts of creation:

The known links of the Hebrew patriarchs with Mesopotamia and the widespread diffusion of cuneiform literary texts throughout the Levant in the Amarna period (late 15th century) make it improbable that the writers of Genesis were completely ignorant of Babylonian and cognate mythology. Most likely they were conscious of a number of accounts of creation current in the Near East of their day, and Gen 1 is a deliberate statement of Hebrew view of creation over against rival views. It is not merely a demythologization of oriental creation myths, whether Babylonian or Egyptian; rather it is a polemical repudiation of such myths.⁵

Well-meaning believers thus miss the point when they get hung up over a literal seven days of creation. The point is, not Marduk (or Ra, or whomever) but YHWH.

Moreover, that YHWH is no tribal deity, but Lord of all the earth, which is his handiwork. And we might list other "points" as well. The opening chapters of Genesis are a fount of multiple, foundational doctrines. One of the characteristics of myth is its capacity to hold a "surplus of meaning":  more layers and depth of meaning than a merely literal use of language can sustain.



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.
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¹"Earth" is the alternative translation given in a footnote to the English Standard Version. In the main text, the ESV translation is, "When no bush of the field was yet in the land".

²Unless otherwise indicated, scripture is quoted from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version.

³Marcus Borg, Reading the Bible Again for the First Time, p. 71.

⁴Genesis 1-15, Word Biblical Commentary vol. 1, discussing the form/structure/setting of Genesis 2:4-3:24.

⁵Genesis 1-15, discussing the form/structure/setting of Genesis 1:1-2:3.