Notes on “The Story of the Bible” Class No. 12
Links to Other Classes
Previous Class:
No. 11 —
Next Class: No. 13 —
Index
Preliminaries
Luke Timothy Johnson, Emory University, lecturer
Lecture 21: The Historical-Critical Approach
Official outline from The Teaching Company
The Enlightenment gave a new way to reading the Bible
- the effects of world explanation in the 15th and 16th centuries showed how small the Bible geography was
- it also revealed civilizations older than those described in the Bible
- everybody began to see that there was a real gap between the real world and the Biblical world
Another aspect was the continuing religious wars in Europe, especially Christian vs. Christian
Third, there was constant theological debate between Catholics and Protestants
- religion should foster kindness, etc.
- this was not the case
The fundamental premise of the Enlightenment is that “human reason is the measure of all truth”
- Protagoras believed that man was the determiner of truth
- Plato believed that God was the determiner of truth
The assumed truth of the Bible is no longer obvious
Francis Bacon 1561-1626
- we can only call “true” that which can be empirically verified
- anything but verifiable facts are imagination
Now history can be declared the same as science
The triumph of historical consciousness is that the Bible is historical
- worthwhile, but no necessarily a true story of what happened
Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)
- pure rationalist
- Bible sentences are reasonable, but not necessarily true
Herbert of Cherbury/Cherbourg
- book: On Truth
- book: On the Religion of the Nations (1645)
- five principles of all religions
- belief in the existence of a deity
- the obligation to revere that deity
- the obligation to act morally on the basis of the worship of the deity
- the need to repent from sin and abandon it
- punishment or reward in this world or the next
- all of these principles are reachable not through revelation, but through reason
This is the historical-critical method
- Bible value is in its moral teachings, not its historical stories
- this is the overwhelming view today
Enlightenment Premises
- the truth of the Biblical text is reduced to its verifiable history
David Strauss
Protestant Theological Perspective
- in prophecy vs. law, prophecy wins
- origins vs. development, origin wins
Use of scientific methods
- assess things for their historical value as opposed to their religious value
- assumption: not only are Biblical stories written by humans, but those humans were subject to all human frailties
Historical-Critical Approach vs. Church and Synagogue
- easy to accept some of history-critical approach
- “history lite”
- but never challenge accepted premises
- the h-c approach was a Trojan horse that could bring down traditional religious institutions
Three Examples
- the study of ancient Israel reveals inaccuracies in history as detailed in the Bible
- archeology becomes a model for reading the Bible
- can confirm or refute truth of stories
- Biblical compositions are dissected based on other documents
- conclusion: compositions reflect the interests of their authors
- e.g., Daniel is not prophesizing the Greek civilization, he’s reporting it
Problems
- if Abraham did not exist, how can we talk about the God of Abraham?
- if Adam and Eve did not exist, how can we accept the rest of Genesis?
- and many, many other examples
For early Christianity, there is no archaeological evidence of things before 180 C.E.
The most intense search is obviously that for Jesus
- from the start, this quest was as much about theology as it was about history
- Jefferson snipped out all superstitious material and ended up with a simple moral teacher: Jesus
- there have been many, many interpretations that ended in highly diverse results
- however, there has been a better understanding of the Gospel
- Gospels were never meant to be historical, but allegorical
- the degree to which Christians find the quest important or even critical
Lecture 22: The Bible in Contemporary Judaism
Official outline from The Teaching Company
For Jews, as for Christians, the Enlightenment was a mixed blessing
Persecution decreased
- 1791 in France
- 1796 in Holland
- after revolution of 18xx
However, anti-Semitism was not eliminated
- the Dreyfus Affair 1894-1906
- trial that dragged on and on
- reveald anti-Semitism
Also increase threat of assimilation
- not through conversion, but thorugh intermarriage
- 5% in Germany per year were lost through intermarriage
Responses
- translate traditional texts
- grounding in synagogue
- return to Diaspora situation
Three answers to Diaspora question
- the Reform movement, 19th century Germany, very popular in Ameria
- rejection of Hebrew and Talmudic tradition
- rejection of kashrut
- rejection of synagogue in favor of temple
- return to the Bible alone as a measure of Judaism
- focus on the prophets and the call for social justice
- focus on prophetic as opposed to legal nature of the religion
- put emphasis on the individual
- rested on historical context
- gender equality
- understanding of “tikum olam” as social engagement
- 35% of Jews were reformed in 1930s
- this movement pulled back due to developments in Germany
- reconstruction was driven by desire for identity
- Orthodox
- deeply conservative, read Bible only in Hebrew
- all practices of the Talmudic tradition
- connected to European cultural practices
- extreme examples are Hassidim
- Hassik transcends all other authority
- novels of Chayam POtok
- about 10% of Jews in census
- Conservative
- affirms talmud and observance like Orthodox
- assimilation in cultural matters like Reform
- Solomon Schector
- 26% in census 1926
Zionism
- contemporary adaptaion of ancient Messianic Judaism
- had more to do with restoration of the land than the messiah
Moses Hess
- first to speak of Jewish homeland
- anti-Semitism in Europe gave impetus to this movement
Theodor Herzl 1860-1904
- believed that the only way for Jews to be safe was to have their own homeland
Holocaust 1933-1945
- began with Nuremburg Laws
- yielded a crisis in religious belief
- “was not Christian anti-Semitism, but built on that by Nazis”
“Are the Biblical promises empty? Are we really the children of God?”
- one response: it is impertinent
- After Auschwitz by Richard Rubenstein
- fundamental challenge to Jewish identity
Modern responses
- the survival of the children is paramount
- midrash (ways of reading scripture) is astonishingly elastic
Establishment of the State of Israel (1948)
- many opinions on what Israel should be
- the state itself is a focus of anti-Semitism
Reading the Jewish Bible
- Emil Fackenhaim book: The Jewish Bible After the Holocaust
- it is impossible to read the Bible in the same way
- he takes the birth of Israel as the resurrection of the dead
- thus, the Bible should not be read in religious terms, but the history of the Jewish people
- the heart of the Bible should be the Book of Esther because:
- it does not mention God
- it showed Jews rescuing other Jews
Contemporary Jewish Biblical Scholarship
- some maintain long-standing commitment to the study of historical nature of Jewish life
- involved in excavation, etc., including Masada
- engage Bible through its literary dimension
- new translations of Torah
- Rober Alter: The Five Books of Moses and The Art of Biblical Narrative
- Meir Sternberg: The Poetics of Biblical Narrative
- Michael Fishbane: inner-biblical exegenisis (reinterpretation)
- Jon Levenson: The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son
- James Kugel: The Bible as It Was and In Potiphar’s House
- “thus, at least within the halls of universities, apologetics has been replaced by mutual respect and the desire to learn from one another”