My friend and one of my pastors, Hunter Ruch, sat me down after lunch not too long ago to record two sessions for the Williamsburg Community Chapel Institute. The Chapel Institute is a ministry of the Williamsburg Community Chapel, in my hometown, Williamsburg, Virginia.
Just a few comments about what you will see and hear. First, Hunter introduced me as the senior networking “director” of IT at the College, which is not accurate. I am more properly a “senior network engineer,” part of a team of IT staff, though my main responsibility is in the area of architecture and design. Secondly, I got a little lost halfway through the second segment, explaining some of the problems associated with “Christian universalism,” but hopefully I got back on track!! Please let me know what you think in the comment section below.
Shocking truth claims: Did you know that the four Gospels were not based on eye-witness testimony, and that perhaps the Gospel of John was written as late as the second century, and not by the Apostle John? Or that the Apostle Paul had no knowledge of the doctrine of the Trinity? Or that a good chunk of Paul’s letters were never even written by him in the first place?
While Dr. Barton is not as well-known on this side of the Atlantic, A History of the Bible is well poised to become a standard exposition for contemporary scholarship rooted in historical criticism, aimed at both believer and non-believer alike. This popular presentation of Barton’s vast research of the Bible over many decades, published by Penguin Books, one of the most reputable book publishers in the world, will surely impress many readers, and in many respects has much to offer. However, one wonders why Dr. Barton continues to describe himself as a Christian believer, and even an Anglican priest, after he dismantles a long history of confidence in the Bible being the very written Word of God.
In an interview since that broadcast, Barton does not go as far as Bart Ehrman does, in labeling the four Gospels or the “disputed” letters of Paul as outright “forgeries” (many scholars believe that Ephesians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Timothy, 2 Thessalonians, and Titus were not written by Paul), but rather as an Anglican priest he is still able to say that Christians can find these New Testament books “useful” as part of the accepted canon, even if they were not written by the people who claimed to write them.
Really? Why would a Christian find certain writings to be “useful” that had the explicit purpose of deceiving their readers? How can one treat such writings as being authoritative, under that kind of shadow?
Dr. Barton admittedly has some qualms about all of that, but he forges ahead to try to make some kind of defense of the Bible.
Where John Barton’s A History of the Bible is Helpful
First, let us consider some of the benefits provided by Dr. Barton’s book. Just from these abridged readings of A History of the Bible, the reader is intrigued to learn more about how the Old and New Testament texts came together, how these texts have been preserved over the centuries, how Judaism and Christianity eventually parted ways, and the importance of allegory in the history of Bible interpretation. You can find this type of material elsewhere, but one sure benefit of A History of the Bible is that this is all assembled together in one volume.
John Barton rightly corrects the common misunderstanding that the early Christian church had a completed list of what constituted the books of the entire Old Testament portion of the Bible. To the contrary, the definitive listing of the books of the Old Testament was not firmly established in the Western church until the 16th century, when the Roman Catholic Church officially adopted the books of the “Apocrypha” at the Council of Trent, while the Protestant Reformers officially rejected the “Apocrypha,” declaring it to be inappropriate for establishing church doctrine. In other words, books in the “Apocrypha” like 1 and 2 Maccabees, which are unfamiliar to most Protestants today, were actually well-known to Christians for the first 15 centuries of the church, though their canonical status was unclear across Christendom.
Furthermore, the ordering of the books in the Old Testament differs between Jews and Christians, and there is a theological reason for the difference. Christians place the prophets at the end of the Old Testament, which fits in with the overall Scriptural narrative. The story moves from creation to fall to the promised hope of redemption, where the prophets anticipate the coming of the Christ, who will accomplish that redemption. In fact, the Book of Malachi, which ends off the Christian Old Testament, itself ends with a vision for the coming “Day of the Lord,” with the prophet Elijah announcing that time of judgment. It is no mystery that John the Baptist, the herald for Jesus the Redeemer, emerges in the Book of Matthew next, as the “new” Elijah. Furthermore, the figure of Adam is central in the Christian story of the Old Testament, the created human who suffers a terrible fall, where Jesus becomes the “second Adam,” restoring Adam to his original created purpose, according to the New Testament.
Jews, on the other hand, place the two books of Chronicles at the end of their “Old Testament,” their Hebrew Bible, and not the prophets. The last phrase of the last verse in the Chronicles is “Let him go up,” which refers to the promise of the restoration of the land following the Babylonian exile. This is an invitation to the faithful Jew to dwell in the Promised Land. For the Jew, the story of Scripture is more about God establishing the Law with His people, with the promise that if they remain faithful as His people, they will dwell in that land. As for Adam, his presence is largely forgotten after the first few chapters in Genesis, according to Jewish theology. Dr. Barton brings that point out nicely, but I only learned about that difference after being a Christian for about 35 years. Why had it taken so long for me to learn about that?
Plus, Dr. Barton is quite right to say that you can pretty much find whatever you want in the Bible, as the teaching of the Bible has been “shape-shifted” to take upon the concerns of whatever age or culture the reader is in. That really is not a compliment towards readers who use the Bible that way. Simply consider how much effort was made to find out where the COVID-19 virus came from, just by looking at the Bible. Uncomfortable realities like these are sprinkled throughout A History of the Bible. Like taking a cold shower, A History of the Bible will challenge a number of cherished, yet erroneous beliefs.
Where John Barton’s A History of the Bible is NOT Helpful
Unfortunately, Dr. Barton’s liberal bias reveals a persistently bad habit by those who lean too heavily on historical criticism to adjudicate the ultimate interpretation of Scripture, by supposing that a contradiction in Scripture exists, where a reasonably plausible alternative actually makes better sense of the text, within the whole message of Scripture.
Barton makes no attempt to hide his liberal bias. This bias permeates and distorts much of his otherwise helpful prose. For John Barton, the doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation fall under the category of adiaphora, or “disputable matters,” from Romans 14:1, which the ESV translation renders as “opinions.” Would any truly historically orthodox Christian find that acceptable? Absolutely not. Nor does any historical creedal document in Barton’s own Anglican Church agree with him. Stretching “disputable matters” to this degree is essentially useless.
Here is another example: In the story of the rich young man who comes up to Jesus, Mark tells us that the man asked Jesus, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus answers the man with: “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.”
It is an interesting thing to consider why the Gospels differ here. But Jesus’ response to the young man in Mark’s version does not necessarily imply doubt about Jesus’ divinity. Jesus’ question back to the young man most likely means to get the young man to think (as well as should modern readers), and consider the implications of what he is saying. For if only God is good, then Jesus’ question back to the young man is quite relevant to Jesus’ identity. Mark focuses more on Jesus’ identity, whereas Matthew focuses more on ethical action, that flows from one’s relationship with God. Matthew complements Mark, and vice-versa. To read a contradiction between Mark and Matthew here is to read something into the text that need not exist. Because the discipline of historical (or “higher”) criticism sometimes trains even the best of scholars to look for contradictions, it becomes easier to see such contradictions, when a more nuanced, and far more interesting solution is available to the reader.
When it comes to the common scholarly proposal that many of Paul’s letters were not written by him, Dr. Barton manages to ignore the conservative argument that differences in writing style and vocabulary, tailored to a specific audience, using different secretaries, might sufficiently account for “discrepancies” between the “undisputed” and “disputed” letters of Paul. Nevertheless, Dr. Barton seems okay to live with the “taint of forgery” (p. 186) in such questionable letters, where he can find certain teachings to be persuasive in certain areas, while acknowledging this does take away from the full divine inspiration of these New Testament texts.
This is a bit of an aside, but an important one, nevertheless: Barton’s position regarding what he misleadingly calls the issue of “women’s leadership in the Church” (p. 186), in which his Church of England affirms women serving as elders/presbyters, actually is enhanced by his ambiguous view of Pauline authorship of disputed texts. When it comes to the disputed 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy and Titus, the so-called Pastoral letters, where most arguments take place regarding whether or not women may serve as elders in a local church, Barton is easily dismissive of what is taught here. “The Pastorals have no place in attempting to reconstruct the thought of Paul” (p. 186), but acknowledges this regarding what he calls regretfully the issue of “women’s leadership in the Church“:, where conservatives oppose women serving as elders, and liberals affirm women serving as elders”:... conservative opponents who appeal to Paul tend to rely on 1 Timothy, and more liberal believers reply that this letter is not really by Paul anyway. Along these diverging lines, little meeting of minds is possible” (p. 187).
At least Barton is right about that. The gulf between conservative and progressive Christianity seems to widen with each passing year. It is important to note that evangelical egalitarian arguments in favor of both Pauline authorship of the Pastorals AND the affirmation of women serving as elders do not even register a blip on John Barton’s radar. More on that in a future blog post in this series, or for a more in-depth look, read this earlier Veracity posting reviewing a recent book by historian Beth Allison Barr.
Anyway, here is what Barton says on p. 187, as his way of making a conclusion on the “forgeries” of certain letters associated with Paul:
‘A lot depends on how we define the authority of biblical books. Are Paul’s letters authoritative because they are by Paul? If so, then establishing that one of them is in fact pseudonymous presumably reduces or even annuls its authority. Or are they authoritative because they are in the Bible? If so, the question of who wrote them might be regarded as irrelevant.’
All of this comes from the pen of a scholar hailed as writing “the definitive” book on the Bible for the 21st century.
Why does Dr. Barton neglect to tell his readers the following?: The Gospel writers and Paul probably were not aware that they were writing “Scripture” when they were composing their work. But this need not preclude others from recognizing the inspired nature of their texts. Paul himself was quite forceful in claiming that his message was received via divine revelation, and not a product of man’s (Galatians 1:11-12). It would have made no sense for his readers to have rejected his occasional letters as inspired, and at the same time come to recognize that Paul’s Gospel verbal preaching came from God.
Does A Liberal, Historical Critical Approach to Defend the Bible Really Work?
Speculating on “contradictions in the Bible” may make for interesting scholarly discussions, as a more sophisticated response to a wooden, rigid dogmatism. But this does little to inspire people to have confidence in the Bible as God’s Word. Furthermore, the underlying posture towards the Bible adopted by Dr. Barton is nothing new. For example, doubts about the authorship of several of Paul’s letters are derived from the ideas of early 19th century German theologian F. C. Baur, but the whole project of historical criticism goes back to 17th century philosophers, like Baruch Spinoza, or even earlier.
Making ill-conceived judgments about the sincerity of John Barton’s progressive Christianity would be out of place. In other words, Dr. Barton clearly identifies as being a Christian, and there is no compelling need question to that. But one must consider the ramifications of his teachings. Based on the arguments presented in A History of the Bible, it deserves asking why one would want to become a Christian after reading this book.
“As the Bible fades into the background from the general culture it acquires a power to shock and influence which its previous familiarity has reduced. We might ponder as evangelicals for example on the extraordinary case of Jordan Peterson, who gives 2- to 3-hour talks and draws millions by lecturing mainly on the Bible, without even being a Christian at all…. There is a growing demand to learn about the Bible and what it says to us today from the general public…. Maybe some great biblical scholar can write a book like this, about the Bible from an evangelical perspective, aimed at the general public?“
To answer Marshall’s question, I say, “Here! Here!” If only our churches were to address the topics found in John Barton’s A History of the Bible, from a more historically orthodox perspective, framed within a compelling story, we would not only curb the tendency towards a progressive drift in evangelical churches, we would also unleash the power of the Bible itself to dramatically change the lives of people, who have a hunger to know the God of the Bible better. If we fail to take up that task, then we will find our young people looking to books like Dr. Barton’s, and then wonder why anyone would make any fuss about the supposed revelatory “faith” being promoted in the Bible.
If the church fails to take up that challenge, then we might as well tell folks to read books by agnostic/atheist scholar Bart Ehrman, and avoid the complicated efforts to try to “rescue” Christianity from the jaws of skeptical “historical criticism,” as John Barton tries to do.
Attempts like A History of the Bible to somehow rebuild a more flexible form of the Christian faith from a brittle fundamentalism might convince some people reared in the church, searching for a reason to continue to believe. But for the vast majority of folks for whom the Gospel remains opaque, a staunchly progressive approach to the Bible leaves those readers flat. That type of apologetic simply does not work.
…. In our next blog post in this series, there will not be a book review, but we will consider how some of the thinking behind “historical criticism” has shifted from the 20th century, to the 21st century, where the prominent 20th century biblical scholar, Rudolf Bultmann enters the story. Stay tuned for that………. Muslim apologist Paul Williams, at Blogging Theology, interviews Dr. John Barton about his book, A History of the Bible. If you want to get a feel for how a highly intelligent, knowledgeable, progressive Christian employs “historical criticism” when reading the Bible, you might find the following interview educational… but you might find it disturbing as well. There is just enough really good stuff in A History of the Bible, that it can easily overshadow the spiritually damaging elements in it that can sneak up on you, and knock out the legs from underneath your faith:
In our next blog post in this series on “historical criticism,” we give another example of how historical critics can sometimes distort the Bible, based on certain methodological assumptions brought to the text. This fairly brief case study concerns how the unfolding of historical events as told in Paul’s letters differs from the story told by Luke in Acts. But it helps to put a finger in Acts and another finger in a letter of Paul’s to track with what is happening. What are we to make of these kind of “disconnects,” as some have put it, that we find in the Bible?
Paul in prison, by Rembrandt (credit: Wikipedia). Paul wrote some detailed letters, but do they contradict the story that we find in Luke-Acts?
The discrepancy is very minor, but it serves as a useful illustration. Here is a sample of a blog post written by Bart Ehrman, a professor at the University of North Carolina, a former Christian, and probably the most well known New Testament Bible scholar living today. Dr. Ehrman has developed quite a following, particular among those who are skeptical of the Bible as being the Word of God:
In virtually every instance in which the book of Acts can be compared with Paul’s letters in terms of biographical detail, differences emerge. Sometimes these differences involve minor disagreements concerning where Paul was at a certain time and with whom. As one example, the book of Acts states that when Paul went to Athens he left Timothy and Silas behind in Berea (Acts 17:10-15), and did not meet up with them again until after he left Athens and arrived in Corinth (Acts 18:5). In 1 Thessalonians Paul himself narrates the same sequence of events and indicates just as clearly that he was not in Athens alone, but that Timothy was with him (and possibly Silas as well). It was from Athens that he sent Timothy back to Thessalonica in order to see how the church was doing there (1 Thessalonians 3:1-3).
Although this discrepancy concerns a minor detail, it shows something about the historical reliability of Acts. The narrative coincides with what Paul himself indicates about some matters (he did establish the church in Thessalonica and then leave from there to Athens), but it stands at odds with him on some of the specifics.
Just from reading this, it is easy to get the sense that the Bible is contradicting itself. Dr. Ehrman correctly points out the differences in historical detail between 1 Thessalonians and Acts, but he does so with a little twist. Did Paul really not meet up with Timothy until after Paul left Athens and arrived in Corinth? Is it possible that Timothy left Berea to travel to Athens to meet Paul, before going back to Thessalonica? …. Mmmm…… Let us look a little closer….
Depending upon how you approach the text, your evaluation of the differences in the text will, of course, differ. If we take the two documents, 1 Thessalonians and Acts as separate articles of literature, and set the divine inspiration of Scripture aside, it is quite easy to conclude that there is a contradiction between Paul and Luke. This more skeptical view is implied by Dr. Ehrman.
On the other hand, if there is a fundamental unity that exists between these texts, a way of harmonizing the details emerges, without having to go into some rather contorted twists and turns. In fact, there really is a better way to make sense of what we read.
1. Paul goes to Athens (“Now those who escorted Paul brought him as far as Athens” Acts 17:15).
2. Silas and Timothy come to Athens. This is not mentioned in Acts. However, Luke does write that Paul told them “to come to him as soon as possible” (Acts 17:15). Paul writes, “We sent Timothy… to strengthen and encourage you” (not mentioned in Acts; 1 Thess. 3:2).
3. Timothy goes back to Thessalonica to check on them (“we sent Timothy… to strengthen and encourage you as to your faith” 1 Thess. 3:2).
4. Paul leaves Athens and travels to Corinth (Acts 18:1).
5. Silas and Timothy come to Corinth with money from Macedonia (Acts 18:5). They also come to Corinth with good news about the church of Thessalonica (“Timothy has come to us from you” 1 Thess. 3:6).
6. Paul writes 1 and 2 Thessalonians from Corinth. This might be what Luke means by writing, “Paul began devoting himself completely to the word” (Acts 18:5).
This example of a Bible “contradiction” is not too difficult to harmonize. True, there are instances where an attempted harmonization of certain discrepancies are not as easy, and one should be careful not to immediately gravitate towards an ad hoc solution that feels forced.
Bart Ehrman (Agnostic/atheistic critic of the Bible)
Not all “historical criticism” is bad. It is important to reiterate that. Yet the method someone uses to try to sort out what is (a): a difference that can be reconciled or harmonized, versus (b), a difference that can only be regarded as a contradiction, is absolutely crucial when doing scholarship.
Unfortunately, there are many people, including many Christians, who tend to see only one side of the story, such as the popular description told by Dr. Ehrman, thus neglecting a perfectly reasonable approach that resolves the difficulty, without sounding forced, or otherwise implausible. As Proverbs 18:17 wisely states, “The one who states his case first seems right,until the other comes and examines him” (ESV).
….. In this next blog post in this series, we will examine how some progressive Christians make the same type of methodological assumptions about the Bible, as non-believers like Bart Ehrman does, in an effort to try to “rescue” the Bible from critics and skeptics. Does this type of Christian apologetic really work? Wait for a week for the next blog post and judge for yourself.
Baruch Spinoza is often thought of as the father of the modern world. But in the 17th century, he was not alone in bringing in ideas that would take advantage of the confusion in post-Reformation Europe, and challenging traditional Christian ideas about the Bible. As we explore how the rise of “historical criticism” developed, we can consider the stories of Isaac La Peyrère and Thomas Hobbes, and how they tie in with Spinoza’s story.
Isaac La Peyrère, like Spinoza, had a “conversos” background, with Jewish family roots. La Peyrère grew up in France as a Protestant, but felt forced to convert to Roman Catholicism towards the end of his life, once he published some of his views on the Bible. La Peyrère was deeply interested in the question of where the “Indians”, the native Americans in the New World, actually came from, as it was not obvious from the Bible as to where such people originated.
Many thinkers during the colonial era, up through the 19th century, tried to figure out the origins of America’s native peoples. Most famously, Joseph Smith popularized the speculative hypothesis that the Native Americans were the descendants of the “Lost Ten Tribes,” who disappeared after the Assyrians conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel, as described in the Bible. Smith’s “Book of Mormon” continues to enamor people today, though few 21st century anthropologists find any evidence to support the claims presented in the Book of Mormon. Still, it is a fascinating question.
How did Native Americans get to the Americas in the first place?La Peyrère proposed a solution that he believed was consistent with Scriptural teaching that could explain the origin of Native Americans, in his book Prae-Adamitae. Much of La Peyrère’s thesis fits within an orthodox view of the Bible. However, La Peyrère went onto explore more radical ideas about the Bible that would influence Spinoza, and stimulate all sorts of speculations, primarily that Moses had nothing to do with the writing of the Pentateuch. This is what got La Peyrère into trouble.
La Peyrère had been influenced by the Englishman, Thomas Hobbes, who just a few years prior to Prae-Adamitae published his Leviathan. Hobbes had lived his mid-adult life during the intense conflict of the English Civil War, between Puritans like Oliver Cromwell and Roman Catholic sympathizers like King Charles I. Hobbes argued in Leviathan that a strong centralized government was required to prevent civil war, particularly when the participants in the civil conflict were motivated by contrasting theological perspectives. Thomas Hobbes believed that theological dogmatism should always be tempered by a commitment to reason. This appealed to La Peyrère, who had such a family history, where the nature of one’s theological commitments were suspect. It is easy to see how La Peyrère and Thomas Hobbes therefore became intellectual companions to Baruch Spinoza.
Among conservative evangelical scholars today, the more extreme conclusions about the Bible made by Baruch Spinoza, and his philosophical friends, are largely rejected. However, some insights made by Spinoza, and his followers, have been incorporated into a more nuanced description of how the Bible came together. A number of evangelical Bible scholars today adopt what might be called variations on the “supplementary hypothesis,” which contends that the substantial core of literary material in the Pentateuch can be traced back to Moses, but that later editors of the text made certain changes in order to keep the material “up to date.” Such changes were made over several centuries until the Pentateuch’s placement in the Old Testament canon became fixed, in the manner that we now have it.
For a classic example, noted by Bible scholar Claude Mariottini, Genesis 14:14 makes a reference to the city of “Dan,” in northern Israel, the place where Abram (Abraham) rescued his nephew, Lot. The problem here is that the name for this city, “Dan,” did not exist during this time period, and the son of Jacob named “Dan” had not yet been born. Furthermore, Moses as an author certainly would not have known anything about the city of “Dan,” as he died before crossing the Jordan River, into the Promised Land. The city of “Dan” would only become settled by the descendants of Dan, during the conquest of the Promised Land described in the Book of Joshua. While scholars continue to debate the specifics of a solution, it is generally agreed that probably some later editor changed the original name of this area to “Dan,” which reflected a more recent understanding of the city’s location. In this sense, it could be understood that the text of Genesis was kept “up to date” by a later editor, as place names often changed names somewhat frequently over the centuries, as people moved around due to displacement by wars, etc.
One central idea behind historical criticism, articulated so controversially by Baruch Spinoza, is that we should analyze the Bible just like we would analyze any other ancient book. There is a sense in which Spinoza’s approach is to be welcomed, but yet there is another sense in which this approach falls flat. Like many of the great ancient books, the Bible is truly a great work of human literature, and historical criticism has done much to enhance our appreciation and understanding of the historical context of the Bible as literature. However, most ancient books lack a claim to being divine revelation, whereas the uniqueness of the Bible is founded upon the idea that it is the inspired Word of God. The tendency among certain advocates of historical criticism to divorce the human, literary aspects of the Scriptural text from the claim of divine inspiration is a bad habit of mind, that has had far reaching consequences over the recent centuries.
Historical Criticism: A Tool for Deconstruction … Or Reconstruction, for Christian Faith?
Steven Nadler, a professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in his A Book Forged in Hell, that was partially reviewed in a previous blog post, makes much of Spinoza’s intention to find a more “scientific” approach to the Bible, that supersedes the theological wrangling of different dogmatic commitments to the Bible. In 17th century Europe, where theological disputes often boiled over into heated political disputes, that even led to violence, Spinoza argued that a more rational approach to the Bible, based on “scientific” principles, would lead to peace between those who held different views of the Bible.
Spinoza despised superstition, assigned both traditional Judaism and Christianity into that category, and ironically argued that a belief in miracles was actually counter to the true knowledge of God. For Spinoza, the value of Scripture comes from its ability to move people to treat others with justice and charity, as would any other piece of great literature. It is in this sense, and only in this sense, of the Bible as a source for encouraging good moral behavior, that Spinoza would ascribe the notion of “divine” to the Bible. Spinoza’s views, radical for the 17th century, have become the assumed foundation for a secular worldview, in the 21st century, where science is often viewed as the only reliable, objective means for human thought and ethics.
The problem with this narrative is that it assumes that pure objectivity, when it comes to historical criticism, is rationally attainable. Professional historians are quick to say they deal more in the realm of historical probabilities, rather than historical certainties. Though a noble aim, the quest for certainty, in using the scientific tools of historical criticism, even for interpreting the Bible, does not result in the type of certainty that many would like.
Furthermore, the claim of the Bible itself, is not that it is a collection of morally inspiring thoughts derived from merely human authors. Rather, the Bible itself claims to be the inspired Word of God, surely written by humans, but not merely human, being divinely originated as well. However, if one follows the path of Spinoza that Steven Nadler admiringly portrays, that inherently corrosive terminus of deconstruction is all but guaranteed. Like pulling on the loose threads of a sweater, as one’s faith begins to unravel, some might try to salvage some of those loose threads, whereas others will simply toss the whole mess of sweater remains in the garbage. Is there yet not another path?
Towards the Reconstruction of Christian Faith
Jeffrey Morrow, the author of Three Skeptics and the Bible, was raised culturally Jewish, then became a Protestant evangelical, and then ultimately entered the Roman Catholic Church, and who is now a theologian at Seton Hall University. In Three Skeptics and the Bible, Morrow challenges the narrative that true objectivity, when it comes to historical criticism, is possible. Contemporary historical criticism rightly has explored the reception history of the Bible, as the message of the Bible has been received by different communities across the ages in very different ways. Nevertheless, Morrow argues that the discipline of historical criticism itself has had its own reception history, particularly since its genesis in the thought of Baruch Spinoza and his 17th century philosophical friends.
Morrow’s thesis is that the original development of historical criticism, pioneered by Spinoza, is rooted in the historical context of the 17th century, political church-state debate. The questions that Spinoza faced when reading the Bible were not new to him. People had been wrestling with such questions for centuries. What was new with Spinoza was his desire to take the control of Biblical interpretation out of the hands of spiritual authorities and place it in the hands of the political authorities of the state. In Spinoza’s historical context of living in the pluralism of 17th century Dutch society, this meant that every spiritual authority, whether it be Jewish, Protestant or Roman Catholic, would come under the secular authority of the state.
Did Baruch Spinoza really understand the drawn-out consequences of his own thesis? One specific critique of historical criticism, in its most skeptical form, is that in the effort to read the Bible like any piece of ancient literature, the tendency to set aside the claim that God had a hand in authoring the Bible, robs the text of its underlying unity. We all know that the Bible was written by dozens of authors, across many centuries, in many different specific historical and literary contexts. But what keeps the Bible together as a whole is buttressed by the claim that God is ultimately the divine author throughout, working through the human authors, in order to give us a coherent, unified text. Without that sense of an underlying unity, the tendency among some scholars is to divide the Scriptures into multiple, disparate parts, thus cutting away the coherency of the text, that has been maintained by Jewish and Christian readers for centuries.
Furthermore, this Scriptural text was meant to be read, studied, prayed through, and sung in community. The Bible was not meant to be merely a book. Rather, it was meant to be an invitation to experience the deep mysteries of life, within the context of corporate worship. Spinoza, prompted by La Peyrère and Hobbes, turned the Bible into a mere book, to be dissected.
As a Roman Catholic, Jeffrey Morrow comes down on the Protestant Reformers, contending that the trend away from more allegorical readings of the Bible, and a concern for a more literal approach to Scripture, inevitably led to the skepticism of La Peyrère, Hobbes, and Spinoza. This critique is difficult for a Protestant evangelical like me to hear, but it is still worth hearing. Morrow values the sacramental aspect of interacting with the Bible, something that many of my fellow Protestants tend to be weaker on than our Roman Catholic friends.
The main lesson offered by Morrow in his Three Skeptics and the Bible is that while historical criticism, properly understood, can indeed inform our understanding of the Bible, it nevertheless can not completely supersede the bias of the scholar. When we only look to scholars for the answers to our theological questions, divorced from a local Christian community, it can easily distort our vision of faith. Therefore, if left unchecked, such biases can lead to certain habits of mind that can cloud our understanding of the Bible, as it was meant to be understood by God. Instead, Christians need to be a part of a healthy local church, where people can wrestle with their questions about the Bible, in an atmosphere of worship, love, support, and understanding.
Historical criticism of the Bible has certain benefits, but it also has certain limitations. If we begin our study of the Bible with a certain radical skepticism of thought, that sets off any claim to divine inspiration to the side, then it is very difficult to get back to a genuinely historically orthodox perspective of the Christian faith. It often leads to a deconstruction of Christian faith. On the other hand, if we approach the text of Scripture with more of a trust in God’s ability to communicate through Scripture, and instead apply skepticism towards our own ability to understand the text, then it is more likely that this will lead to a reconstruction of faith, gaining a greater sense of confidence that God is truly speaking to us, through His Word in Scripture.
In our next blog post in this series, coming out in a week or so, we will look at a short case study (shorter than this current blog post), examining how the assumptions brought to the Scriptural text will make a difference when applying historical criticism. Stay tuned.
In the previous blog post in this series, we considered a useful definition of “historical criticism” of the Bible. Put succinctly, historical criticism seeks to understand the origins of ancient texts in order to better get at the world “behind the text.” As the most read book ever written, the Bible qualifies as one of the most studied book, in the field of historical criticism.
But what are the roots of historical criticism, when it comes to the Bible? Where did historical criticism come from? Or to put it another way, what are the habits of mind, associated with historical criticism, that can influence how even Christians today read the Bible, and where did these habits originate?
In this second blog post from this series (the first one is here), we look at the first of two books that explore the history behind “historical criticism,” as seen through the lives of a group of 17th century European philosophers. “Part two” will come out about a week from now. Stick around.
Historical Criticism on the “Historical Criticism” Movement
Several books that I have recently read examines the question above in detail, by applying historical criticism to the development of historical criticism itself, by looking at the some of leading early figures of the movement, namely Isaac La Peyrère, Thomas Hobbes, and especially Baruch Spinoza. Steven Nadler, the author of A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza’s Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age, tells us the story of Baruch Spinoza’s most controversial 17th century book, that really kick started the whole historical criticism movement.
Baruch Spinoza grew up in the Spanish Portuguese Jewish community of Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. Western Europe had been engulfed in a series of religious wars, commonly known as the Thirty Years War, where nearly 1 out of 4 (or 5) Europeans died, prior to the Peace of Westphalia, in 1648, as Roman Catholics and Protestants fought against one another for control of various parts of Europe. The conflagration pretty much ended the medieval social order established by the Holy Roman Empire, resulting in the development of various city-states and regional governments, each one declaring adherence to one form of Roman Catholic or Protestant confession, or another.
Spinoza’s family had been “conversos,” Jews who had been forced to convert to Christianity on the Iberian peninsula. However, such “conversos” were often viewed with suspicion by more established Christians, as to whether they were truly converted. When Spinoza’s family left to go to Amsterdam, to take advantage of the growing religious diversity there in the Netherlands, they were hoping to re-establish their roots in the Jewish faith. However, at age 23, Baruch Spinoza was expelled from the Jewish community in Amsterdam, for expressing theological views at the time that did not agree with the local rabbis. Spinoza had been raised to take over the family import business, but he was able to release himself from these obligations in order to dedicate himself fully to the task of doing philosophy.
He had been left in relative obscurity, until the publication of his Theologico-Political Treatise, in 1670. In his various writings, Spinoza argued that the hotly contested theological conflicts of the day could not be resolved by spiritual authorities alone. Rather, Spinoza argued for a type of “scientific” enterprise that would seek to resolve the conflicts between Roman Catholics, Protestants and Jews on how to interpret the Bible. But the development of his ideas led critics to conclude that Spinoza had become an atheist, and that his book(s) should be banned.
Spinoza the Controversialist
The most well known controversial claim made by Spinoza had to do with the authorship of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. Like most pious Jews (and Christians) of the time, he was taught in synagogue to believe that Moses wrote everything we find in those five books. Spinoza did note, however, some problems with that entire teaching. But he certainly was not the first to do so.
For example, at the end of the Book of Deuteronomy, the last chapter describes the death of Moses. Scholars for centuries had concluded that Moses simply could not have written about his death, prior to dying himself. The most common solution to this was to suggest that it was Joshua who added in the part about Moses’ death, at a later point in time.
However, what made Spinoza so controversial is that he proposed a far more radical solution to some of the problems found in the Pentateuch. Instead of suggesting that certain parts of the Pentateuch were added in later or edited, by another scribe, Spinoza concluded that very little, if anything, in those five books could be attributed to Moses in the first place. In other words, much of what we read in the Pentateuch was written perhaps centuries after Moses even lived.
But that was just the start for Spinoza. Spinoza went onto say that the Bible was not literally the Word of God, that divine providence and Scriptural prophecy did not work the way most Jews and Christians thought it did, and that the miracles found in the Bible never happened. For most Jews and Christians alike, Spinoza’s views were scandalous. One particular critic of Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise called it “a book forged in hell by the devil himself.”
It would be several centuries before Julius Wellhausen would teach his students about the “documentary hypothesis,” but the ground work for such radical views about the Bible had been laid by Spinoza. Today, such views about the Bible remain standard teaching among the vast majority of departments of religion in secular (and sometimes even in some Christian) universities.
The World After Baruch Spinoza
The 21st century West lives in the shadow of Baruch Spinoza. Some historians speak of the world before Spinoza as “the Age of Faith.” After Spinoza, they say the world entered “the Age of Reason.” What will future historians think of the 21st century remains to be seen. Nevertheless, the impact of Spinoza’s ideas in the wake of the Thirty Years War, and the bitter strife between Roman Catholics and Protestant Reformers, continues to be felt today.
I will have more to say about Spinoza, and Steven Nadler’s analysis of Spinoza’s writings and life, in “part two” of the history behind “historical criticism” coming soon. Plus, I will also include a brief look at Isaac La Peyrère and Thomas Hobbes, two other 17th century philosophers who stimulated the thought of Baruch Spinoza, in reshaping the world we live in today. Stay tuned.
Veracity 