Minding Scripture, Part 7: Bible Criticism

Episode Topic: Bible Criticism (https://go.nd.edu/df7e14)

This month, Minding Scripture, which brings together the life the mind and the life of faith, asks guest speaker Nathan Eubank and one of our hosts, Tzvi Novick, how historical-critical scholarship in both the Hebrew Bible and in the New Testament has developed over the last two centuries and what its current place in our understanding of the Bible should be.

Featured Speakers:

• Nathan Eubank, University of Notre Dame

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This podcast is a part of the ThinkND Series titled Minding Scripture. (https://go.nd.edu/dee1b4)

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Transcript

Introduction to Minding Scripture

Speaker 0:15

Scripture shapes the lives of billions of people around the world, yet scriptures, both the Bible and Quran only gain meaning when they're interpreted by the human mind. Minding scripture. A podcast from the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame explores the meeting of reason with the Scriptures of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. I am Gabriel Saeed Reynolds, professor of Islamic Studies and Theology in the World Religions World Church Program at Notre Dame. Joining me, our professor, Francesca Murphy. Welcome.

Speaker 2 0:48

Hi,

Speaker 0:48

professor Svi Novik.

Speaker 3 0:50

Good morning.

Speaker 0:51

We're delighted to welcome Professor Nathan Eubank. Associate Professor of New Testament and the Department of Theology at Notre Dame and the author of Wages of Cross Bearing and Debt of Sin, the Economy of Heaven, and Matthew's Gospel, which is published by Deiter in 2013. Professor Eubanks Research centers on the synoptic gospels and Paul, as well as ancient biblical interpretation. He's currently working on merit and early Christianity and its role in the construction of Christian origins. Welcome Nathan.

Speaker 4 1:23

Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1:25

Minding scripture brings together the life of the mind with the life of faith. And to that end, we are delighted today to explore the importance of critical scholarship on the Bible. How has scholarship on both the Hebrew Bible, old Testament and the New Testament changed through the years? What are the major questions that shape Biblical scholarship today? These are some of the questions which Francesca and I will be discussing with our Bible scholars, SWE and Nathan. And I think Francesca is gonna start us off.

Historical Criticism: An Overview

Speaker 2 1:54

I'm very interested in this question of whether there is progress in historical criticism, and I'll tell you the background to my interest. As an undergraduate at Manchester in the seventies, I must have taken six, seven courses in Old Testament and New Testament. And for example, we studied the documentary hypothesis and I colored it into Genesis. I have all, my Bible still has colored blocks showing JDP and the same for New Testament criticism. I thought there were some things which we'd learned. I thought all of this was settled science. So then I go away and I do my PhD, which is in systematic theology. So I'm not hearing anything about historical criticism for maybe 5, 6, 7, 8 years. Then I come back, I start teaching. I learned that, that things are changing and all kinds of things that I thought were settled, science were being questioned. And this sort of shook me, shocked me. and this has gone on over the years and just recently in a, in one of our seminars on scriptural reasoning, I mentioned that the idea of the resurrection of the body or the afterlife is late within Judaism. And the said, well, not necessarily. And I thought, oh, we have to discuss this question because, you know, in the way I was taught it, there was a definite, you know, there was an evolution of this idea where first you had a little bit of an idea of a soul, and then later you, you've got a slightly more firm, you know, I know my redeemer live than job and so on. And so there's a definite evolution of the idea of the afterlife within, uh, Judaism. in, in Hebrew Bible over a thousand years. The idea that this evolution could even be questioned, you know, it shakes me to, to the core. So I wanted to talk about that in this podcast, and I thought we should begin by saying, well, what is historical criticism? If we're gonna talk about whether there's progress in historical criticism, whether there's anything such as subtle science and historical criticism, which is first of all say what is it? Which century did it begin in? What are the main names? You know, who are the main people? Did he do Bible criticism start first and then New Testament? Or how did it all come about? So maybe first, and then Nathan, tell me how did it all come about?

Speaker 3 4:19

sure. Um. And, uh, there, there's a lot to say. I suppose, with respect to the, the background to your question, and I, I guess part of the, answer to that would be to think comparatively about historical criticism as a method in comparison with other areas of inquiry. I might say scientific inquiry, but the whole question of to what extent historical criticism is scientific as, as itself. An interesting question, but, uh, but as to the narrower question of the, um, of what historical criticism is and. How it develops, I suppose I would define historical criticism as an approach to the study of the Bible that attends to the fact that books of the Bible, uh, were produced in specific historical contexts and. This makes a difference for, uh, the meaning of the Bible, the audience for whom the Bible was written, new things, the producers of the Bible could assume knowledge by that audience that, uh, the current readership of the Bible, uh, doesn't possess because of changed circumstances. So, uh, I mean, if we define historical criticism. In that way, or even more generally as the inquiry into where do these texts come from? Who wrote them, uh, under what circumstances? then you can think of historical criticism as having, uh, very deep roots. I mean, in a certain respect, historical criticism begins in the Bible itself when, for example, the Bible is. trying to, is suggesting that the Song of the Sea, uh, was sung by Moses at the Splitting of the Sea. That's kind of an attempt to, situate a traditional poem, uh, that doesn't assert itself as having been written by Moses and give it a, a, an historical location.

Speaker 5:56

This is

Speaker 3 5:56

Exodus 15 or 16. Uh, the Exodus 15. Uh, yeah. So, um, or, or the, the idea of specific Psalms, having been. Uh, recited by David under specific circumstances. There's a kind of, uh, ar arguably a, an historical framing there, or an attempt to locate these texts in specific circumstances in, in the, in the medieval period. Also, numerous medieval Jewish exudes, for example, are attentive to the fact that there are sort of, uh, references in the Bible that are. Unintelligible to us, uh, but seemed to have, the Bible seems to assume that they would've been understood by their audience. So for example, Aaron, the high priest, uh, right, it says that his son marries from, the daughters of this man named, put. Someone whom we have no idea. Uh, the, the Bible makes no reference to this person otherwise. Uh, but the fact that the Bible bothers to mention it suggests that the audience, uh, of this text was aware of this person and he had some kind of reputation. and so medieval commentators will note, well, he must have been some, uh, some famous person in his day and we don't know about him. And that, that in itself, there is a, uh, an historian's attitude over there. And you find those sorts of, uh, observations, uh, kind of throughout, uh, medieval Jewish exegesis. Can I,

Speaker 7:07

can I interrupt? Just, just to ask, I mean, does this mean you're locating the roots of historical critical scholarship within the tradition? Not as a response to certain things, say going on in the 19th century. You see it as an organic development.

Speaker 3 7:21

Well, I wouldn't say that there's an organic development between this sort of, inner biblical or medieval exegesis on the one hand, and the sort of developments that occur. In the 19th century. Uh, I I think it's probably, what are

Speaker 2 7:35

those developments that occurred?

Speaker 3 7:36

Yeah. In the 18th, 19th century. Yeah. So, so, so, so yeah, those are, those are, I think, are, are somewhat different. But on the other hand, um, again, it's helpful to realize, to appreciate, the continuity, but Right. But in the 19th century, well, really, really, even before the 19th century, Spinoza is a very, very important figure here already in the 17th century.

Speaker 2 7:52

And he was Jewish, wasn't he?

Speaker 3 7:53

Uh, Spinoza is Jewish, uh, though with a, with a, with a, a very interesting background. His family is a Murano family. so having converted under compulsion to Christianity in Spain, and then having later moved to Amsterdam. Where they were free to practice their religion. and it's long been thought that this sort of background, this Murano background of having converted under compulsion to Christianity and then living as Christian publicly, but as Jewish or resistance in any, in any case, privately, leads to a kind of, uh, free thinking, a kind of freedom from, from tradition. Because when they return to the, the Jewish fold, they do. So having formed, uh, their Jewish thinking. Independent from a Jewish community. and so you see sort of a free thinking emerging, uh, in that context. Spino, in any case, uh, certainly was, uh, quite bold in his thinking, and he, he posited that much of the Pentateuch couldn't have been written by Moses. It's not such a bold idea when you think about it. I mean, the Pentateuch, uh, the five books of Moses in tradition. Don't actually attribute, uh, their own, their authorship to Moses. They speak of Moses in the third person. Moses dies before the Penta is over. And so it's not so bold an idea, uh, when you think about it, but for traditional Jews, certainly. and then more broadly, traditional Christians, this was a, a bold idea. So one could think of him as a major early figure in modern historical criticism. And then after that, you get to, kind of other ma major figures in the 18th and 19th century Jean Astr in France. Julius Behen is an important name in, uh, in Germany in the 19th century. And then you get to modern historical criticism, as we, uh, as we know it with these names in the, in the 18th and 19th c.

Speaker 2 9:37

So what comes about then in the late 18th, early 19th century is what you could call an exclusively historical criticism. That's what's new about it, is that it's exclusively historical.

Speaker 3 9:49

When you say exclusively historical, what do you mean by that? To exclude to the exclusion of what it

Speaker 2 9:53

claims to be exclusively historical.

9:56

No,

Speaker 3 9:56

I mean without, without an attempt to tradition. Right, exactly.

9:59

Outside

Speaker 2 9:59

of tradition and theology. It's exclusively historical.

Speaker 3 10:03

Yeah. I mean, I'd be curious to hear kind of Nathan's views on this, but, but I would say that, the, the, these figures as certainly, uh, someone like Spinoza and Jean Astro who kind of f first develops this idea of distinct sources, say in the pentitude that, uh, have been wound together and can in principle be unwound, are, are certainly very theologically in inclined and in part, uh, doing their work to defend against. More, more radical views. So the, the, the relationship between historical criticism and faith in this period, uh, I think is a, is a, is a, is a complicated question. And I, and I think it's fair to say that for the most part, we're not dealing with secularizing radicals, in, in the, in the, in this early period.

Speaker 4 10:43

Yeah, that's right. In the early modern period, the relationship between history and theology becomes fraught in a way that it wasn't safe or. To, to use an ancient Christian example, Augustine, who said that, you know, it's very important that one interprets a saying in light of its its context and the culture, and you should know the language and you should compare manuscripts to make sure you have the right reading. And that sort of work was either done, or at least the importance of it was acknowledged for centuries. But what starts to happen, I think, in the early modern period is it became apparent to some people that history might impinge on theology. Or might limit what theologians are able to do, but it, it certainly isn't the case that the historical critics were simply anti theological. So, to, to give two examples before we get to the 19th century. Richard Simone, an orator priest, a French priest is, is sometimes called the the father of historical criticism, which probably isn't quite accurate. But he thought that digging into the historical study of the old and New Testaments was a way of. Refuting, Protestant emphasis on the Bible alone said, you look closely at this historically, and it falls apart. You know, you, you need, you need

Speaker 12:00

tradition.

Speaker 4 12:00

You need a tradition.

Speaker 12:01

Yeah.

Speaker 4 12:02

Right. And his, and he wasn't exactly thanked for his efforts, by, by, by other Catholics including the, or auditors. So, so quite how this all, sifts out was, was disputed at the same time. You already have, say, in the 18th century English deists. Who seized on these methods, sharpened by the Renaissance, sharpened by classical studies. So we're gonna read the Bible the same way that we read anything else, you know, Homer or Plato or whatever. And they use these tools to try to, offer kind of radically revisionist accounts of, Christian origins of, of sacred history. And so it could, it, it could go both ways. It continues into the 19th century when in Germany, especially the historical critical paradigm starts to reign supreme in the universities. And you have some people saying it's necessary to do the historical work first, so we can understand what the Bible really says, and then you can build your dogma off of that.

Speaker 12:59

So, um, just to, sorry to jump in, but I mean, it sounds like the beginnings are pretty chaotic and that's a word that comes to mind because you have, you have believers. I mean, the case of Spinoza sounds like basically a believer. And the case of the, the French priest you mentioned

Speaker 2 13:16

Richard Simon.

Speaker 13:17

Yeah, thank you. And but then you have people coming outside of sort of the community and so it's not like there's an. An organized effort by a community of faith that says, let's move forward with this sort of scholarship because it can enrich in our life of faith or something. It, it sounds a little chaotic,

Speaker 4 13:33

very chaotic, and it happens in fits and starts. For example, on the Catholic side, when you get into the 19th and early 20th century, there were many scholars who were strong believers who thought that their work was there to, to build up the church who were silenced. If you read the work of Catholic Biblical scholars, even in the early 20th century, uh, oftentimes you can find them tiptoeing around certain issues because they'd been told that they, you know, certain conclusions such as that Moses didn't write, the Pentateuch were, were ruled out of bounds. And so it is, it's always been a a, a, there's been a difficult give and take and I think people in religious communities who are not themselves, historical critics, many have always been unconvinced of the value, I think.

Speaker 3 14:15

Right. And it's also, I think, um. Tempting to take a position on the findings and methods of historical criticism that are somewhat opportunistic. So I think for example, of the, You know, the discovery in the Near East, in the 19th century of the Epic of Gilgamesh and, uh, the discovery that there is evidence of a, of a flood narrative, uh, beyond the Bible. And this can be, uh, welcomed by believers as a confirmation of the truth of the Bible. On the other hand, the one digs down into the implications of this and more generally into the kind of the methods that inform a, a kind of a. A comparison, or a situ situating of the Bible in its ancient or eastern eastern context to get a much more complicated portrait. And so sorting out to what extent this method and these findings, challenge faith, uh, to what extent they confirm it was and is a complicated question.

Speaker 4 15:02

Some historical critics have managed to, um, work out an implicit philosophy or even metaphysic, uh, the relationship between God and creation from historical criticism and have thought that the, the day-to-day work of historians necessarily excludes God. I mean, a famous example of this is Aaron Tre's essay on the distinction between historical and theological method. And, and he said, look, if we read the Bible like anything else, we read it like any other text. The way that we're reading it necessarily cuts God out of the events of human history. That's, that's just the way that we work. And so to be consistent, you know, you need to leave God out of things, completely. And so, I mean, that, that's an example of somebody taking this the same task with other people around him in the same time and place thought that they were doing. God's work for Trech, he could push it in a very radical direction.

Speaker 2 16:00

So those are methodologies, I mean that that's not part of like the content of historical criticism, that's part of the methodology of one historical critic.

Speaker 4 16:09

Well, I mean, Trech thinks that any honest historical critic should come to the same conclusion that he does.

Speaker 16:16

Many scholars have felt that way. Should we get onto content? Maybe a bit.

Speaker 2 16:22

Second, second, second

The Documentary Hypothesis

Speaker 16:23

question. Yeah. Right. So we have the second question, which leads us more to think about what were the subjects or the particular insights that we're developing. The thought of biblical scholars in the 19th century, and I think we've brought up two of them that I, I wonder if you could elaborate on, we'll start maybe with svi, and the first is the question of the documentary hypothesis. We mentioned JEDP, the four supposed sources, I think developed by VE Hausen, but maybe you can correct me on that. So, um, maybe you could touch on that. And then the question of ancient iris, generally discoveries in the world of aerology that somehow of importance for biblical criticism.

Speaker 3 16:58

Yeah. So, uh, uh, as far as the documentary hypothesis is concerned, so, so this is a hypothesis that's specifically about the Pentateuch. So it's not about the Bible generally, but about the five books of Moses and ve Hausen, kind of formulates a hypothesis, a particular view of the development of the Pentateuch that becomes, to some extent canonical for a number of decades afterward, but he is doing more of a synthetic work, synthesizing work on sources of the Pentateuch that had, uh, already begun. Uh, more than a hundred years before his key work was published. In the second half of the 19th century. But basically as this, as this hypothesis emerges, the claim is that there are distinct tellings of the early history of Israel from the creation of the world to the death of Moses. And there are different. Groups of Israelites telling the story in somewhat different ways. And then you have the work of a redact or an editor who's bringing together these sources or perhaps, uh, multiple editors at different points. One brings together a couple of sources. Then another one adds a, adds another source. To produce what we know of as the Penta can write. And then in, in its classical form for veh, uh, we have these four sources, J-E-D-N-P, the Yawe Source, J and E, this Alo source. Uh, that are distinguishable on the basis of the names that they use for God, right? And so this is thought to be a, a major kind of clue to unlocking the Pentateuch. Why does the Pentateuch use different names for God? Sometimes it refers to God by a generic Elohim God, uh, and sometimes it uses the proper name of God, the Tetragrammaton. Which scholars, uh, hypothesize, is pronounced Yahweh. And so, uh, goes by j pronounced in in German y. And then, uh, there's a distinct source behind Deuteronomy. And then there are priestly authors who are producing this fourth strand. And so this is this, uh, hypothesis in its classical form. It also, uh, makes certain assumptions about. The order. Right? Which one is earlier, which one is later? And there are a lot of theological assumptions encoded into this hypothesis about which are earlier, which are later. Uh, and I could get, get into that, uh, if we'd like. But this is all about the Pentateuch. So, so it, it's a small part of historical criticism. It does have also, uh, very early, uh, roots in a certain respect. You have, again, to advert to medieval Jewish exegesis. And this is something that Jewish scholars today looking to try to find a path forward for. Traditional Jews who both want to accept the authority of the Pentateuch, uh, because the Pentateuch is so central for Judaism as the locust for biblical law. So for traditional Jews who both want to accept the authority of the Pentateuch, and to acknowledge the findings of historical criticism, so they do advert to these kind of early. Traditional kosher, medieval exe, right? If they believe it, then surely we can Who, who do suggest, or complicate, uh, the simple assumption about Mosaic authorships ship? So, I'll just give one example. When Abraham arrives in the land, in Genesis 12, the Bible notes that Abraham travels around until she, uh, the, and the Canaanites were then in the land. so this is a troubling passage because it implies that the, the author of the Bible is saying the Canaanites were then in the land, but they're not there now. Uh, but if Moses is writing the Bible, uh, why should he be saying the Canaanites were then in the land? The Canaanites were in the land at the time of Moses, and so you have a fantastic creativity devoted to trying to solve this problem. But a medieval ex IRA says. Of course this may not be the case, in which case there is a secret here. and the wise person will keep silent. So he is kind of gesturing toward, uh, toward an awareness that the traditional narrative needs to be complicated. So that's one kind of, yeah, major set of findings, uh, or one major result of early historical criticism, but with, specifically with respect to the Pentateuch. But then there's a whole world of historical criticism and attentiveness to the Bible as an historical artifact. Uh, beyond the documentary hypothesis, all of the findings of the ancient Near East that are occurring beginning in the 19th century largely, and then throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century, were constantly by Giles. Uncover New text was also discovered, Gil, right? So Gilgamesh, which, which, uh, offers, uh, uh, tremendous insight into the earliest chapters of the Bible. Genesis one to 11, the kind of prehistory or mythic prehistory. Which, uh, which is a, a Babylonian creation, uh, myth that sheds great light on Genesis one. There are findings from various, I mean, it, it, it's innumerable really. There, there isn't, there isn't a, uh, a book in the Bible that is not illuminated, in, in the Hebrew Bible that is not, uh, illuminated, uh, by. The findings of the ancient or east,

Challenges and Controversies in Biblical Criticism

Speaker 21:37

just I was thinking because of the I IRA narrative. Yeah. Which it seems he was sort of used as a way of justifying the legitimacy of biblical criticism, saying this is not something totally foreign to the tradition. But I just want to ask then generally about, so what was the social context as scholars were advancing these ideas, um, was there a resistance, among other scholars from a religious perspective? Where they, labeling this as somehow heretical Blas, fundamentally problematic. Maybe Nathan, you could comment on this too, for. New Testament scholarship. Otherwise, I mean, yeah. Was, was this like a, a vivid, intense, polemical debate?

Speaker 3 22:14

Sure. Well, I mean, within the Jewish context, I'd say, I mean, Mo most of this work is occurring, uh, as Nathan had mentioned, kinda in, in any university context. And, uh, in its early stages in the, in the 19th century, Jews are, are not involved in this to any significant degree. Uh, but they are consumers of it. and, there is very strong traditionalist. Opposition. and that's it's grounded in part in tradition and the commitments of faith. It's also grounded in part in, uh, recognition, uh, that I think modern scholarship has come to also, uh, that many of the assumptions of. Historical criticism in the, in the 19th century, really and beyond, they came with their own assumptions, right? There is a kind of a, a hope for objectivity, historical objectivity in approaching these questions. But, uh, scholars are people too, and they come with their own, uh, theological assumptions. So, historical scholarship in the 19th century, many of those assumptions are anti-Semitic assumptions form, uh, formed by traditional understandings of. the New Testament and its reception. So, for example, to get back to Il Hausen, uh, his view was that the last of these four documents, uh, that came together to produce the Pentateuch was the priestly source. and in his narrative, you begin with these early sources that have a, a robust anthropomorphic kind of conception of God, and then it becomes, fossilized in the exilic period because he dates this last source, this priestly source, to the exilic period. It becomes fossilized and ritualized in the work of priests who are in, uh, in his conception clearly, proto Pharisees. So, so he's encoding a, a kind of assumption about. The sort of Judaism and the Jewish context that Jesus, emerges in, and critiques. He's encoding those assumptions about what Judaism is fossilized belief system, whose, whose end has come, whose time has come, or whose, whose time is over into his reconstruction of the development of app Pentateuch. And so you get, for example. Solomon Schechter, who is a, a famous, uh, juris scholar, very important in the early history of the Cairo Za, which is, I suppose a, a topic for a different day. But he delivers a famous lecture in the beginning of the 20th century, 1903, I believe, in which he calls higher criticism. That is to say this methods, uh, biblical criticism that looked to the origins of the text, higher criticism, he says is simply higher antisemitism. so, uh, so there you have a, a critique that is, I think is, uh, does, correctly diagnose the, the, uh, infiltration of certain anti-Semitic premises into the work of some, some of historical criticism.

Speaker 24:44

Right. And we're not speaking of, maybe the point isn't that Sen was personally anti-Semitic or something like that, but that there are certain biases that come from the, the position of the background of each individual scholar. That, and maybe the culture of. Of the timing.

Speaker 3 24:59

Yeah, absolutely. And this doesn't, this, this didn't, it, it, it, it, it, it was, it, it, it was a convenient way to dismiss historical criticism or historical attentiveness to the Bible. We don't need to deal with this in the tradition because the people who are doing it are simply motivated by antisemitism. And so, eh, we shouldn't be, allow that kind of, those kinds of biases to dismiss the project as a whole. But we have to be, uh, aware of them. Right. Nathan, you add something.

Speaker 4 25:23

I just wanted to add that on the, on the Christian side. while there's always been pushback from, believers for various sorts, for understandable reasons, a lot of the, the new scholarship on Christian origins in 19th century Germany proceeds on the assumption that, the Christian movement started with something good and often proto Protestant. Either with Jesus or Paul or, or both. And then, quickly lapsed into a kind of a judaizing, um, mixture of authentic Christian thought with, um, aspects of, of Judaism and also paganism, and then decline from there. I mean, I, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that some version of a, that decension narrative into, you know, mixing, say. Appalling theology with, with Jewishness is, is ubiquitous in the historiography of early Christianity in the 19th and in to some extent in the, the 20th century as well. So while, I mean, I, I hope we're gonna talk about some of, some about the, um, the enduring contributions of historical criticism. Uh, so it doesn't sound like the whole thing can be dismissed. It can't. I think if you, if you pick up the works of people like FC Bauer and the, in the 19th century, the really important people with this in mind, um, you won't be disappointed. I mean, you, this is, this is the, the kind of the founding myth that drives a lot of the historical study.

Speaker 2 26:56

But can I push back a little bit? Okay. I just wanna push back from the point of view of my undergraduate self, Manchester 1977. like what I took away from JEPD, from the idea of these four sources was that the Yahweh and their lowest have a really childish, concrete, anthropomorphic idea of God and Yahweh closes the door of the ark, you know? Whereas the priestly author who's supposed to have, say, written a Genesis one, very nice, low, ritualistic slow, that he has a more transcendent distant idea of God. And so as it came into English Bible Scholarship, it may have dropped the heavy Protestant antisemitism. And it, it's not all about P is legalistic. And Pharis say it's just more like, p has a transcendent idea of God and j and e have a more useful childlike, dear God.

Speaker 3 27:55

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right. I mean, IE even, right. With respect to this, to this suggestion right, about the different theologies of the sources. They're in, I mean poisoned by their, by the particular assumptions of, of certain 19th century scholars. Uh, there is a lot to say about. Whether j is early and, and all that course, but, but, but

Speaker 2 28:17

putting it aside, it's, yeah. Why should the anthropomorphic come first?

Enduring Contributions and a Break

Speaker 3 28:20

Right. But Yeah, but, but, but, but putting it aside of where the, the ab Absolutely. I mean the, the, the findings of, uh, of, of historical criticism more generally are, are, are absolutely, essential to, to the understanding of the Bible. And as much as things have changed. Uh, there are enduring contributions and it's a, it's a robust field,

Speaker 28:38

so we're gonna return to these enduring contributions. I think now is a good time to take a break. We're gonna move up to the 20th century. And maybe even get to the 21st century, which would be great. Now is a good time for you friends to think about raid my new scripture. You have stars there. I suggest you put down five and we'll be back in a moment. Welcome back to minding scripture. So svi, I just wanna follow up. We were speaking about the enduring contribution of biblical criticism and making the point that it's not all bad. There is good there. So just in that regard, what about the two specific ideas we were addressing? Contributions of biblical, criticism. The first being documentary hypothesis. Four sources for the pent. The second being connection to Ancient Near East, the, the contributions of Aerology. did the, did these endure, these two ideas, did they still shape biblical scholarship?

New Testament Studies: Historical Jesus and Paul

Speaker 3 29:49

So, sure. So on the, on the first documentary hypothesis, the documentary hypothesis in its classical form, these particular four documents, this particular way in which they were combined, that is no longer a reigning hypothesis. There isn't the same sort of consensus, but there is consensus. That the Pentateuch has complicated origins, and I'd say there is a consensus at about a certain kind of documentary hypothesis, namely a distinction between priestly material and non priestly material. That seems to be a part of the hypothesis that really does hold up. And there's a fundamental distinction between these two different, uh, groups of texts at how to further divide the material. How to date the material? that is a question. there, there are neo documentarians that offer something like the classical hypothesis, albeit with a different set of assumptions about the order, in which they, uh, in which they were produced. But, uh, even alongside that, beyond the neo documentarians who are are relatively small group, there is a pretty strong consensus, I would say about this insight, uh, a distinction between priestly and non priestly. As for the ancient Near East, I, I, I think the importance of the ancient Near East for understanding the Bible, has only increased as new. Texts have been uncovered after the original, discoveries in Iraq. Uh, there are, many other, uh, discoveries at other sites at Ugarit, for example, right along the Mediterranean, is a tremendously important site for understanding. The Bible and the theological questions about the relationship between, Yahweh and Baal. Right, right. So, uh, so the, yeah, the, the contributions of the ancient iris are enduring and there, there is no question that, uh, one can't understand, uh, the Hebrew Bible, uh, without a thorough grounding in, ancient Eastern text cultures, uh, languages.

Speaker 31:39

Right. Thank you.

Speaker 2 31:41

What about the New Testament, Nathan? it keeps, it's well known that the life of Jesus movement keeps running into the sand and then starting up again. Uh, right now we're on about the fourth quest for the historical Jesus. Every time they have one, they give up, and then they start again, and they give up and they start again. Do we know more about the historical Jesus now and then we did in the 18th century? Do we know more about the composition of the Synoptics and John? Do we know more about the Pauline Corpus? When I was an undergraduate, we were taught pretty much the old fashioned, the old Paul, uh, the old look on Paul, where he'd been a terrible, miserable Pharisee and he was struggling to redeem himself. And then he saw the light and he threw away all that pharisaic garbage. And then, you know, when I returned to teaching biblical studies 10 years later, there was the new look on Paul and Phariseeism was good. And so, are we actually making any progress in this field? Can we date the gospels? Can we,

Speaker 4 32:42

it's a good question. I think one place where we clearly have made progress in the study of Jesus and the gospels is in taking seriously the gospels themselves. As literature, what kind of literature they are, what kind of historical information we can mine from them and what their relationship is to each other. So we take it for granted now that say between, um, Matthew, mark, and Luke, the so-called synoptic gospels, you know, there is extensive verbatim agreement and Greek between them. And, um, rather than trying to harmonize the four gospels into one great meta story. We put them side by side in columns and, you can see that, you know, people disagree on who's reading whom, but that they are reading each other and that there's a lot that we can work out about the individual concerns of the different authors. That's usually called, um, well source criticism leading to redaction criticism. That's good. I should know that. That's not completely new either. I mean, Augustine does something similar to this. So it's, it's a recurring, uh, motif in a conversation like this. A lot of what we celebrate is new, has actually been around for a long time. We've come to an increased appreciation, especially toward the end of the 19th century starting, I think especially with Verda and his famous book on the Messianic Secret. Verda asked the question, you know, why is Jesus in Mark's gospel telling everybody to shut up all the time? The demons people, he heals. Why does want any anybody to talk? I don't know anybody who thinks that Veda answered that question correctly. But what he did that was, that was really important for the study of Jesus and the gospels, is he said, I, I don't wanna just take the gospels at face value. I want to know what did this mean for Mark, for the author and his historical setting? So scholars have started to look at all four gospels as windows into the world of their composition. Which makes them then a, a resource for understanding, uh, later first century Christianity. And then also refines our sense of what we're able to know about Jesus from the gospels. If you read 19th Century, I mean you could call it historical Jesus scholarship, a lot of it assumes that we can, figure out, you know, Jesus' inner psychological progression from one passage to another. You know, Jesus went up on a mountain because something made him sad and the previous passage, and we, we have an increased sense that that's, that, you know, that the, the gospels are not like modern biographies giving us that kind of psychological development. So that's a real advance. I think we have a better sense of the genre of the gospels and their relationship. With each other. With Paul, it's, it's a little bit more difficult. I think. You know, there's a, there's a, a famous saying often misattributed to Albert Schweitzer, that when one looks at the history of historical Jesus studies, it's like a person looking down a well and seeing his own reflection. So you're describing something else, but you're actually describing yourself. It's actually said by George Terrell. a, a Catholic

Speaker 2 35:40

modernist.

Speaker 4 35:41

Yeah, yeah. Modernist. Yeah. I think that that's even more true with Pauline studies. A lot of New Testament scholars clearly have more of a vested interest in getting Paul right than they do with getting, getting Jesus. Right. Jesus. Right. Which seems strange, but I, I think it's true. So we have come to, as you said, Francesca, to an increased sense of Paul's Jewishness, that defining Paul as the pure antithesis of what is Jewish. That, that, I think that is a real advance, something analogous has happened with the study of Jesus. But it's important to point out as we're, assessing gains and losses or credits and debts, that that's partly just a, a correction of, of a problem that was created by historical critics themselves.

Speaker 36:27

Hmm. Yeah.

Speaker 4 36:28

You know? Mm-hmm. So historical critics set up Jesus and Paul as a radical antithesis to Judaism. And then, you know, a century later realized they were wrong and congratulate themselves for doing it.

Speaker 36:37

May, maybe there's been some overcorrection. I don't know if we wanna jump into current debates, but I mean, ha have we made, emphasized too, too much the enduring continuing Jewishness of the early, that's reflected in the lives of, of Paul and, and Jesus.

Hypothetical History and Etymology

Speaker 4 36:53

I feel less confidence in pronouncing on that because we don't have enough, distance to talk about it in the same way that we're talking about some of these 19th century developments, because this is still very much in New Testament studies, a live debate. I mean, if, so, if you look at, you know, Jesus Paul, or the study of individual gospels, for example, like Matthew. Many scholars would like to say that Matthew is completely within the world of Judaism. Other people would want to say that, you know, we see Matthew and the other gospels moving outside into a, you know, kind of a different phenomenon. So, so we, we don't agree, on this. So some scholars would argue that there's an overcorrection. Yeah, I, I don't think so myself. It.

Speaker 2 37:36

What do we know about the historical Bible today that we would not have known if historical criticism had never been invented? About 20 years ago, a guy called Nile Ferguson developed these, this hypothetical history, uh, it was a big thing. And so I want you to do a, kind of like both of you to do a sort of hypothetical historical, uh, reconstruction. What would the hypothetical, um, world of scholars not know about the historical Bible, which we do now know if historical criticism had never been invented? So imagine a world in which 18th and 19th century, there's no spin ozer, there's no wellhouse, and now for some reason it just never takes off and we're in the same world, except for that never happened. Now, what would we not have as we and Nathan.

Speaker 3 38:33

Well, that's a, yeah, it's an interesting question. Uh, it would really look, uh, right, quite different. We'd be out of jobs, I suppose. You would still exist. You would still, there would be No. Um, but, um. Well, for one, our, our dictionaries would be, would be, uh, very impoverished. there there are so many biblical words that are, unintelligible or have been un understood incorrectly, because, the,'cause we didn't have the data from, Acadian, from Ri, from these ancient near Eastern languages that, uh, enabled us properly to understand them.

Speaker 39:10

I don't wanna put you on the spot, but do any examples come to mind of specific words that we relearned maybe in the 19th, 20th century through biblical scholarship?

Speaker 3 39:19

sure. well, there is, uh, one of the, one of the tribes, one of the 12 tribes of Israel is Zebulon. And, uh, his, etymology, the etymology that's given for him in the. Bible is, uh, Leah Leia. She, she says after his birth that, uh, now that Zein has been been born is my husband will. Ble me. Uh, but what exactly does that mean? Uh, you don't really have much in the Bible to go on because that route isn't, uh, really used elsewhere. except, uh, in, in our references that don't seem to seem immediately applicable. But in ugarit, these myths about Baal, the God, Baal, who's well known from the Bible, but m mu, uh, mu much enlightened by. he is, referred to as Prince Baal, uh, and al this, this root, this, this, the same, sequence of consonants is used there to describe Baal as a, as a prince, piecing this together with other data from Acadian and then. We can appreciate in light of that other words in the Bible that are connected to it, uh, but which we wouldn't have known without this data. we can understand that this root means to exalt, to lift up, to raise up. So that sort of Baal as prince is exalted. and so that's just one example. I mean, there are, there are endless examples. Uh, so I'd say one, one big difference, uh, and, and that is the work of, of Mosha held who's a great, uh, a great semit. Study a student of Semitic languages who, pieced together, that relationship between these roots?

Speaker 2 40:50

Are you saying, going from what you said overall? Are you saying. That, uh, we wouldn't have the big theories and the meta narrative, but we would have the philology and the study of languages.

Speaker 3 41:04

no, no. My, my point is that beyond the big theories that we've been speaking about, yes. How the Penta two came about, what is the, uh, an awareness that this flood narrative that's in the Bible, is not just the Bibles, but it's, uh, but it's the Bible's take on a more general mythic motif. Or that, you know, the account of Eden is, again, the Bible's take on a set of possibilities for narrating the early history of human beings that we find elsewhere in the ancient East. Beyond those very fundamental questions, the very meaning of words, many, many, many words, uh, would not be possible without the contributions of historical criticism. So, uh, so yeah, I'm locating that as one, uh, enduring. Contribution of historical criticism and in the world without historical criticism, we'd be fumbling about in the dark when it comes to a lot of words in the Bible. So simply at the, at the purely etymological level, the kind of dictionary that we can produce, a modern dictionary of biblical Hebrew, uh, will make reference to words in Acadian or tic, you know, many times in any page. So that's one enduring difference. I, I, perhaps I, I, I note another one, another way in which our understanding of the Bible would be different, and I think. for myself anyhow, impoverished, uh, would be that as, as much as the documentary hypothesis say to come to the Pentateuch in its classical form is no longer accepted, uh, there is this understanding that the Bible, including the Pentateuch reads as a single narrative. But if you bore down, you see here. Conflict, different theological visions coming into a, a conversation with each other. and so it's a very different, uh, and for me anyhow, in, in terms of my own kind of theological explanation, a much richer portrait. But in any case, truer to history, a much richer portrait of the development of these basic questions about, uh, that, that the Bible is interested in. Who is God? What is God's relationship with the world? What, what does it mean for God to be intervening in the world in developing a relationship with Abraham? A Covenant, these are all categories questions that when you read the Bible a historically, you get, uh, what looks like a single answer on, or at least when it comes to the pent, you get a single answer on. and historical criticism enables us to appreciate that. What you can really find is, a whole symphony of competing, discussing, debating voices.

Speaker 2 43:25

And Nathan, the same question. In a world in which historical criticism had not come about, what would New Testament scholarship be lacking? Or how would we know less about the New Testament if we'd had no form criticism? No, none of this.

Speaker 4 43:43

I think something analogous to what SVI just said about the Hebrew Bible would be true. We would have a much poorer sense of the the world of the New Testament text. We'd have a, a much poorer sense of the world of first century Judaism, out of which the New Testament texts, come even down to something. Again, as simple as the meaning of words. One of the easiest places to show the benefits of historical criticism is when it comes to just the addition of new data, new texts. Literary texts, non-literary texts, you know, uh, documentary papyri receipts, contracts, things like that greatly enrich our understanding of the language of the New Testament, which is often written in a, in a Greek that, uh, resembles the kind of, um, sort of work at a Greek that you find in, in that kind of literature. Um, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, has greatly advanced our understanding of, of, of the Jewishness, of, of many New Testament texts. So, I mean, we would be, we would be in big trouble. We've also advanced, new techniques, which in some cases just are better. Sometimes combining new data with new techniques, this is easiest to show with New Testament textual criticism, which is sometimes distinguished from historical criticism that's a little bit artificial. It's, it's really part of the, the overall process. So if, for example, if you sit down with a King James Bible, you look at the, at the New Testament. And compare it to a modern translation like the NRSV or the the NAB, you'll see lots of, lots of differences. And that comes from the fact that we, we just, we do have a much better understanding of the way that the New Testament, um, manuscripts, the way they looked in antiquity, we're able to positively identify, um, certain things that are, say, printed in a King James Bible as later accretions. And so that's a, that's a significant advance. that also then in turn aids our theological understanding of individual authors. I mean, to take a very famous example, Mark's Gospel famously ends in the, in the oldest and best manuscripts with the women running out from the tomb. They've just been informed that Jesus has risen, though they don't see him, and they're supposed to tell the disciples that he has risen. And they say, and, and Mark ends by saying, and they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid. And of course people in antiquity found that that ending unsatisfactory and so multiple endings were, were written and added. And actually one of them is, is canonical for some Christian groups. But the text critical work that reveals that Mark himself well maybe wanted to end there or maybe was just stopped for some reason, then contributes to our understanding of, of Mark's own theology, Mark's own way of, of telling the story. So we, we, you

Speaker 2 46:33

just ended abruptly. I do that too. And they, they, they just, you just like to end abruptly. I would I just say the end and that's it.

Speaker 4 46:41

Well, it, it is, it is true. You can debate. I mean, there's always, there's always, uh, the devil's in the details. I mean, many techs, uh, in antiquity do end with an abruptness that we would say we would dock our students for if they did. And, and, you know, maybe he just got tired or ran out of money. So it's, it, you can't debate how much to build on that theologically.

Speaker 46:59

So ask. we spoke about enduring contributions. I want to ask about enduring resistance because we've heard about some ways in which biblical criticism has been a good thing, even at the basic level of understanding vocabulary better, but a richer understanding, for example, of the world of the New Testament. So that's great, and in many ways, biblical criticism informs what we do today. Even at a place like Notre Dame, of course, mining scripture. comes from the Department of Theology at Notre Dame, and when we teach in the classroom, and when I teach foundations, I introduce the students to the documentary hypothesis, although apparently both among Catholics and Jews and others, there was a time where that went, that would not have been cool. Right. That would, that's right. Would not have been early 20th

Speaker 4 47:39

century. Yeah.

Resistance to Biblical Criticism

Speaker 47:40

So, um, but now, you know, at Notre Dame, which, you know, we don't only play football, but we also teach, theology in the Catholic tradition, that's, that's expected. Right. If you were, if you said Moses. Is the author of the Pentateuch, you wouldn't be taken seriously on a scholarly level, I think. But there, there must still be resistance. And I was thinking you were speaking about boring down deeper to detect the granular aspects of the biblical text free. And then Nathan, you spoke about later Accretions in Mark, and I just wondered, there's some people who say that more granular view or that more maybe precise but critical view of Mark that doesn't actually get us closer to truth. Where does resistance come from in biblical scholarship?

Speaker 3 48:22

Just to clarify, resistance in biblical scholarship, you mean traditional resistance to biblical scholarship, or is that

Speaker 48:28

fair? I'm guessing that today there are academic scholars who, for philosophical reasons, object to the usefulness of biblical scholarship and getting closer to truth, and there are perhaps people within believing communities who have more confessional objections, so

Speaker 3 48:43

yeah, sure.

Speaker 48:44

Is that right?

Speaker 3 48:44

Yeah. Okay. Well, I mean, I'd say within, within scholarship, I mean within. The field of biblical scholarship to say the sorts of people who will end up at the. At the annual gathering of the Society of Biblical literature, historical criticism as an enterprise is, is taken for granted. And, and that there is no, there is no opposition to that. And I think, for, for good reason. But there was relatively recently we had on an, on an earlier podcast, Robert Alter. Uh, who we, who just produced a, a, uh, a translation of the entire Hebrew Bible. There, there was a reaction say among, uh, scholars who were, and this is in the, uh, in the seventies and eighties, scholars coming from. the field of literature, uh, who felt that historical criticism, source criticism in particular had a kind of a tin ear for the, for the literary quality of the Bible and some of the judgements, uh, that source critics were making. The criteria that they were using failed to account for the quality of the Bible as literature. Right. And so,

Speaker 49:43

and I mean, I, maybe this is saying the same thing, but I mean, if you keep breaking it apart into smaller original pieces, you just get fragments, right? I mean,

Speaker 3 49:51

uh Right, right. And there is, right one, one school of penal source criticism that uses that terminology of, of fragments and thinks of the Bible as kind of a, a, an agglomeration of fragments. And that can pose a challenge for theology. though to some extent it puts theology or the theological enterprise of making sense of biblical teaching on a different footing. It doesn't preclude it, uh, but it compels one to ask, uh, what are the theologies of these, uh, of these different voices? What is the, uh, theology of the editor who is, or the redactor who is combining them? But then also, of course, uh, whatever the, whatever the findings of historical criticism. The fact is that for traditional communities, Jews, Christians, the Bible, uh, whatever its origins does eventually emerge in the form that we know it, or roughly the form that we know it. and then it, and, and it's canonical and it, it's the foundation for Jewish self understanding, for Christian self understanding ever after. well, while a historical criticism is cons perceived as a, as a, as a threat, still in many traditional Jewish communities. The fact is that whatever the results of historical criticism you still do in the end have a Bible. and for me, for example, as a, uh, as, uh, as a Jew who, uh, kind of conceives of, uh, of, of himself as working as living within a tradition, the Bible as a whole is a theologically significant artifact. The fundamental theologically significant fact, irrespective of the. historical background. and so you have, for me anyhow, a, a theologically richer portrait where you have both these competing voices, uh, that are discovered through careful historical criticism. And then you have the, the Bible as a whole. But there does remain, undoubtedly traditional opposition in some circles to, in, in more, more traditional circles, Orthodox, uh, circles. In particular to historical criticism. I think that is definitely fair to say,

Speaker 2 51:43

though it does also work the other way for some conservative, believers, both Jews and Christians, in the sense that you can call it fragments, but another word for fragments is sources. Mm-hmm. And if there are no sources. And if the whole pentitude, for example, was written by one guy in the post exilic period with no sources, then it was just made up by one guy. And so you get conservative Jews and Christians arguing and defending sources. Um, I guess, and that must go back to Richard Simon, that actually the existence of sources is better than the existence. No, no sources and one Jewish hero. Writing in the Postex period means the whole thing is a fake

Speaker 3 52:32

right. And there had, it has been suggested, right, that these, and that, that the kind of neo documentarian source criticism does have the advantage of pushing back against the idea, say that the entire pentitude, uh, or much of the Pentateuch was an exilic Persian era phenomenon of the sixth or fifth centuries. Of course, this is to speak of the. Motivations of scholars. Scholars, which is a very tricky sort of thing. ultimately, uh, one hopes the, uh, one hopes the, uh, the, the, the, the, uh, the arguments stand on their own and can be evaluated on their own.

Speaker 53:05

So we're running out of time, but I think we maybe can give the last word to Nathan to comment on this question of resistance. Yeah.

Accomplishments and Future of Biblical Criticism

Speaker 4 53:12

I'm. Well, it's understandable that believers, um, and some theologians of my acquaintance would fear or resent historical criticism because it's, you know, you have experts with, information that they don't have telling them that things that they thought were true about the Bible weren't exactly true. I think some of the fault for this, at least on the New Testament side, probably lies with historical critics themselves. Biblical scholars often like to play the wet blanket. You know, we like to say, you know, you thought Jesus, you know, he was, he was laid in the manger because there's no room in the end. But actually there is no in. And, and Luke too. That's a, that's a good, that's a, that's a true, uh, an an accurate example, but also because I think we haven't done quite as good of a job with the actual interpretation of the New Testament text as we have with the world around the New Testament. So while historical criticism is obviously indispensable and has made real gains, not in the sense of inevitable progress toward a shining future, but maybe more like a ratchet effect, every now and then something clicks over and we can't go back. There's a real, a real gain, like recognizing the Jewishness of Paul, for example. While that has happened, when it comes to say, understanding a parable of Jesus. Often, I'm gonna say something that I'm sure other people in my field will disagree with. It is not at all apparent to me that if you pick up a, a book on the parables of Jesus, that you're gonna do any better than you would do if you just picked up Origin or Augustine, um, or the medieval gloss tradition on that same parable. It's unfortunate that there are still some, theologians who would like to get rid of this whole enterprise. I think it's obviously indispensable, even for just understanding the simple meanings of words. I do understand why some people question exactly what the payoff is, and I think that the onus is on historical critics to, to do better.

Speaker 55:04

Thank you. So today we've been speaking about the history of biblical criticism and some of the controversies and debates that have unfolded over the past, decades and even in the 19th century already. But it sort of leads us to the big question, which is what have we actually accomplished? Where have we gotten, I mean, what would you say, um, Nathan, about that? What, what real accomplishments have been made in the history of academic biblical criticism?

Speaker 4 55:28

That's a big question. I think we've made clear, progress in the acquisition of relevant information of data that, greatly enriches our understanding of. The languages of the Bible themselves, of, of the culture. I mean, it's, it's, it's been a, a gold mine, a wonderful success in the last, couple of hundred years. In some cases, we've refined techniques that help us do things like establish what the text itself might have been. With greater accuracy. Sometimes, um, historical critics really just change the question, but in ways that are fruitful. So we were interested in things that our predecessors and earlier centuries, sometimes we're not. Um, and, and some of those questions are very important at the same time. Um, I think it's, it's clear we can, we can say at this point that progress in this, in the study of the Bible is not linear. That it, that is, it's not always just getting better. It's not inevitable.

Speaker 56:31

So even regress is possible.

Speaker 4 56:33

There could be, right? Yeah. We can regress as well. For example, if you dig into the history of scholarship, amnesia is a problem. I mean, some, sometimes, you know, there are things that say a good 19th century scholars knew that then people in the 20th century forgot. There are also examples I think I, I would argue of, new problems, distortions that are introduced. By historians, for example. I mean, and this isn't surprising when you think about it, new biases. for example, there's always been a problem in Christianity of with anti Judaism, but you there, there have been times in the history of biblical scholarship when that anti Judaism grew and took on greater significance and, and played a, you know, serious role in distorting our understanding of, of biblical text.

Speaker 57:21

Thank you friends. If you like this, um, episode, you'll want to listen to our next episode on mining scripture, which addresses the question of critical scholarship in regard to the Quran. So we'll move on to the Islamic Holy scripture. Please spread the news about mining scripture. Don't forget to rate and also why not add review of our podcast and be sure. To join us for our next episode of Mining Scripture where Divine Word and human reason meet.