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A Brief History of Old Testament Criticism: From Benedict Spinoza to Brevard Childs, by Mark S. Gignilliat
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Modern Old Testament interpretation arose in an intellectual environment marked by interest in specific historical contexts of the Bible, attention to its literary matters, and, most significantly, the suspension of belief. A vast array of scholars contributed to the large, developing complex of ideas and trends that now serves as the foundation of contemporary discussions on interpretation. In A Brief History of Old Testament Criticism, Mark Gignilliat brings representative figures—such as Baruch Spinoza, W.M.L. de Wette, Julius Wellhausen, Hermann Gunkel, and others—and their theories together to serve as windows into the critical trends of Old Testament interpretation in the modern period. This concise overview is ideal for classroom use. It lays a foundation and provides a working knowledge of the major critical interpreters of the Old Testament, their approaches to the Bible, and the philosophical background of their positions. Each chapter concludes with a section For Further Reading, directing students to additional resources on specific theologians and theories.
- Sales Rank: #479090 in Books
- Brand: HarperCollins Christian Pub.
- Published on: 2012-06-10
- Released on: 2012-06-10
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.02" h x .47" w x 5.98" l, .55 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 192 pages
About the Author
Mark Gignilliat (PhD, University of St. Andrews) is assistant professor of divinity at Beeson Divinity School in Alabama, where he has taught Hebrew, Old Testament Exegesis, and Biblical Theology since 2005. Before coming to Beeson Divinity School, he taught at Wycliffe Hall, University of Oxford. Gignilliat is the author of Paul and Isaiah’s Servants and Karl Barth and the Fifth Gospel: Barth’s Theological Exegesis of Isaiah. He has articles published in Scottish Journal of Theology, Horizons in Biblical Theology, Westminster Theological Journal, Biblica, and The Journal for Theological Interpretation. In his pre-doctoral days, he served as youth director at North Hills Community Church in Greenville, South Carolina. Gignilliat and his wife, Naomi, have two sons.
Most helpful customer reviews
13 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
Immensely interesting summary of the modern view of the Bible
By Derek Leman
Disclaimer: I received a complimentary review copy from the publisher.
The question underlying the biographical and explanatory chapters of this book is simple: is academic study of the Bible at odds with faith in its message? Gignilliat alludes several times to another excellent volume, Michael Legaspi's The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies. Legaspi concludes that reading the Bible as scripture will always be contradicted by studying it academically, because the two forms of reading have such different strategies. But Gignilliat wonders if we must consign ourselves to that conclusion.
I did not anticipate how much I would enjoy reading A Brief History of Old Testament Criticism (which I will call BHOTC). It's surely not a book that all readers will resonate with, but I would suggest especially if you have taken religion classes on a college level, this book could be for you. If names like Wellhausen, Gunkel, Albright, and Childs came up in your reading, or issues such as the J,E,D,P theory (the Documentary Hypothesis of the Pentateuch), this book may put the puzzle together for you.
I not only read the book, but limited myself to one chapter per day just to spread out the joy and benefit of reading it. I highlighted and color coded points for later reference and decided BHOTC will be a ready reference at times when the history of academic study of the Hebrew Bible is an issue for me. I found the entire reading to be a spiritual journey for several reasons. First, like the author and like his clear favorite of all the scholars summarized (Brevard Childs), I read the Bible confessionally (as scripture, I believe somehow in all of it God is speaking to Jews and Christians today). Second, also like Gignilliat and Childs, I read the Bible critically. I take time to notice details, which often lead to discovering discrepancies and problems that make a simplistic reading of the Bible impossible. Third, by raising throughout the different issues that have surfaced and different theories through modern times, BHOTC helped me think about possible approaches along the way.
Not everyone will be a close reader of the Bible. Many will prefer drawing surface comforts from cherry-picked scriptures and pretending this is adequate. That certainly has been the popular religious approach I have witnessed. Yet, as a favorite "faith and science" blogger (RJS, as she calls herself, on Scot McKnight's popular "Jesus Creed" blog) said recently: our faith is not fragile to investigation.
I believe academic study of the Bible can work with scriptural belief in the Bible. I believe the paradox between the two, which Legaspi documented so well, can be bridged.
BHOTC, begins with perhaps the greatest skeptic (Spinoza) and ends with perhaps the greatest believer (Childs) in the spectrum of paradigm-changing critics of the Hebrew Bible. I will briefly summarize the personalities and approaches as Gignilliat develops them in each chapter.
Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677) was banned by his own Jewish community and regarded as a heretic in his day. He was an original philosopher who learned from Descartes and went off on his own directions. Regarding the Bible, Spinoza was determined to read it in light of natural reason without presuming infallibility or that there was a true heavenly source to its words. He observed that the Torah says Moses heard God's words and told the people what God (allegedly) said. The gift of prophecy, said Spinoza, was imagination. The Bible can be read as a piece of literature, a set of ideas, but not as the living voice of God in any sense. Spinoza was very daring and ground-breaking in saying such things publicly.
W.M.L. DeWette (1780-1849) is little known today outside specialist circles, but Gignilliat says of him "DeWette's influence on nineteenth-century biblical studies can hardly be overestimated." Wellhausen (see next paragraph) said that everything he wrote about was to found already in DeWette. DeWette accepted rationally that the Bible's history was unfactual. Yet he was a Romantic in philosophy and sought a way to value the text outside of scientific and historical approaches. It is the worldview of the ancient authors which should be valued. They may have got their history wrong, but their ideas soared with greatness. Israel's religious history is a set of great ideas of antiquity, not to be taken as infallible, but as building blocks along the way as humans understand God and the world. As the ideas of the Greeks and Romans inspire modern thought, so should the ideas of the Hebrews.
Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918) is a name well-known to any who have taken a college level religion class dealing with the Bible. He did not invent the J,E,D,P theory (Documentary Hypothesis), but is its best-known early expositor. Gignilliat says in particular what Wellhausen did that was new was to write a history of Israel based on his ideas of when the four source documents of the Hexateuch (he believed Joshua belonged with the first five books). He took the J,E,D,P theory and made it the basis of a historical sketch of Israel's supposedly evolving faith. Wellhausen quit his post at a seminary, to his own hurt, out of a sense of integrity, and sought a purely academic position, after realizing what his approach would be. Wellhausen showed that assuming the Hexateuch is the earliest writing in the Bible fails to explain numerous elements of other parts of the Bible (for example, why it was not deemed wrong for Samuel to make offerings as a non-priest and to do so at high places). He believed that the prophets were earlier than the so-called Mosaic Torah. His theories tended to be counter to Judaism, so that the priestly laws (and later the rabbinic laws) are a legalism opposed to the earliest (allegedly best) free worship in the days of the prophets. As Gignilliat puts it, he pitted "prophecy against institution" and espoused a free worship in a Protestant style.
Herman Gunkel (1862-1932) is the father of form criticism. So much of what is written in the Bible had to have existed in the form of ideas, songs, poems, public readings, and stories before being written down. Comparing the Bible to Near Eastern literature, all the more we can see and theorize about pre-literary forms, early and later written forms, and also the possible settings in which stories and poems were used. Gunkel's interest was in these pre-literary forms, especially for things like worship texts (Psalms) and myth-like language about creation (the Spirit hovering, Leviathan, pillars of the earth, etc.). Gunkel (much like DeWette and Wellhausen) wanted to discover what the ancient Israelites believed at different points in history, to look at Israelite faith as the object of studying the Bible. The Bible is not inspired, said Gunkel, but he clearly believed it was inspiring. He is associated with the term sitz im leben or the life-setting of parts of the text. So, for example, he categorized Psalms and might conclude that a particular Psalm began as a public song of praise but that a later author added a personal lament to the pre-exisiting praise Psalm. Or he might conclude that Israel must have had annual enthronement ceremonies for the king and that certain Psalms were written for such occasions. Like Wellhausen he believed the earliest forms were purer and simpler. The final form of the text is not what is to be studied, but the layers must be found and their life-settings theorized to study the history of Israel's religion and learn from it as from any other history or literature.
Gerhard von Rad (1901-1971) pioneered the tradition-historical approach. He was "listening for the word of God in Israel's scriptural legacy" according to Gignilliat. His students, including Brevard Childs, regarded him as a genius and a powerfully persuasive teacher. Von Rad aligned himself with the Confessing Church against Nazi ideology (along with people like Bonhoeffer, Niemoller, and Barth). He opposed anti-Semitic readings of the Hebrew Bible. He emphasized Deuteronomy as a book of grace. Von Rad took Gunkel's work in a new direction, being interested in the final form, the written form, of the Hexateuch. He sought a theory about the stages of its writing and the faith of Israel as it changed through the various stages along the way. Von Rad theorized that one layer was a "settlement tradition" about the occupation of the land and an entirely separate "Sinai tradition" formed. These two traditions were combined in ways that lead to many of the noticeable discrepancies in the text. The J author did most of the heavy lifting in von Rad's view, putting the traditions together near the time of Solomon and making the patriarchal stories fit into the final form. His theory was able to see the final form of the Hexateuch (and the Hebrew Bible) as a movement from promise to fulfillment with an openness to the future that left room for Christ. Von Rad's work can be seen as a powerful rewriting of the history of Israel counter to Wellhausen's ideas.
William Foxwell Albright (1891-1971) might be seen as the "dean of biblical archaeologists" and would perhaps be the most religiously conservative of all the scholars mentioned. His genius is undoubtable. Unfortunately, his theory was flawed. What he sought -- a confirmation in the record of Near Eastern and Palestinian archaeology that the history of the Bible is essentially factual -- by means of the comparative method (comparing Bible texts with archaeology and Near Eastern texts) has not been demonstrated. Albright expected the spade to confirm the book. In his lifetime, he thought in many ways it did. Few of his conclusions are widely believed anymore. In terms of technical contribution, however, Albright is unparalleled. He developed the field of ceramic typology (locating styles of pottery in various eras and cultures to date archaeological layers) to a high level of precision and his rules of pottery typing are still the norm today. He knew the biblical history was not accurate in all details but sought to prove its essential truth in the "verifiable data" of archaeology. His critics afterward recognized that remains dug up from the ground are just as subject to interpretation as words on a page. Much of the value of archaeology is actually to illustrate, not to prove anything. It seems that Albright located the authority of the Bible in the events themselves more than the text.
Finally, Brevard Childs (1923-2007) is perhaps the last paradigm changer of the period of modern biblical studies (as opposed to post-modern biblical studies, which is still relatively young). The primary paradigm he changed with his canonical approach is to assert that the final form of the Bible as received by Judaism and Christianity as scripture is where divine authority lies. Childs accepts the basic results of critical study of the Hebrew Bible (and New Testament), but confesses faith in the message of the final text. There is no need to isolate layers other than in assisting with interpretation of the final form. The word "canon" or measure refers to the corpus of texts accepted as scripture in Judaism and/or Christianity. Childs affirmed both academic (critical) study and confessional (reading it as scripture) reading as necessary and compatible. Childs studied many fields, including rabbinics and patristics, and was widely learned in numerous fields he believed would aid his exegesis of scripture. His canonical approach ran counter to the tendencies of the scholarly world and yet his work was deemed important because he had clearly mastered the material. He saw the critical study and its tendency to divide scripture into historical layers as providing a sense of the depth of scripture while the final form is what gave it meaning. He believed in the idea of writers and editors have an intention in writing which could possibly be discovered (so he would not agree with reader-response approaches in post-modern studies). He saw God's hand working in the many generations who received the traditions that ended up in scripture, revised them, passed them down for other generations to revise and also pass on, up until the final form. It is the shape they ended with, not the shape they began with, that makes them scripture.
What I find to be the greatest strength of Gignilliat's A Brief History of Old Testament Criticism is its ability to summarize complex ideas, get at essential points, and from the point of view of faith-based and yet critical readers, to evaluate the thinkers and ideas that most shaped modern study of the Hebrew Bible. Gignilliat does not address the more recent post-modern approaches. Yet for the student who wonders who modern ideas about the Bible developed, this is a short (186 pages), readable guide that is a pleasure to read.
- Derek Leman
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
A helpful introduction
By Ethan R. Longhenry
An investigation into the history of Old Testament criticism through biographical inquiries into many of the major characters involved: Spinoza, de Wette, Wellhausen, Gunkel, von Rad, Albright, and Childs.
The author admits that his investigation is limited, that he comes about things with a conservative viewpoint and a high esteem for Childs, and that there is plenty more to say about the subject and about other figures involved.
Nevertheless, for a beginner or the interested observer, the book does well at introducing some of the major characters involved in OT criticism, their backgrounds, the ecclesiastical, academic, cultural, and philosophical influences in their lives and how they were guided by those influences and/or reacted against them, the great contributions (for better or worse) of each character, the impact they had on the field, and their enduring legacy to this day.
If you've always been interested in how OT criticism has come to be as it is, and why it places so much emphasis on certain foci, this book will prove very useful and helpful.
**book received as part of an early review program
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
A wordy book on an interesting subject
By PL
As the title states, this book is an attempt to overview the history of study of the Old Testament in the modern era. The subject field is huge, so the author did what every wise historian does: he picked a few of the most interesting and helpful samples. The book is divided up into seven chapters, each one devoted to a different theologian or scholar, and bookended with an introduction and conclusion. The seven theologians are: Benedict Spinoza, WML De Wette, Julius Wellhausen, Herman Gunkel, Gerhard Von Rad, WF Albright, and Brevard S Childs. The first half of each chapter is a short biography and the second half is a summary and brief analysis of the scholar's work.
Overall, I have mixed feelings about this book. The biographical portions on each theologian are interesting, enjoyable to read, and provide a helpful context for each writer. The second half of each chapter, the summary and brief analysis of each writer’s work, are a mixed bag. Sometimes Gignilliat shines in this section, for instance when explaining the work of Von Rad or Child’s. At other times, I had difficulty grasping the concepts Gignilliat highlighted in a certain writer’s work, as in the explanation of Spinoza’s understanding of reason, theology, and philosophy. I left that chapter feeling that I couldn’t explain anything new about Spinoza. Certainly part of the difficulty is due to the task, not the writer: attempting to explain and analyse the life work of such important scholars in twenty pages is a significant challenge. However, at times I found Gignilliat’s writing unnecessarily wordy. Sometimes he used a long word where a short one would have done fine (contrary to CS Lewis’s oft-quoted advice!). Again, some allowance should be made for an author explaining technical details of scholarly work (e.g., the difference between Von Rad’s tradition criticism and Gunkel’s form criticism!), but I still felt that the language was overly complex in many places.
I would give this book 2.5 stars, but since that's not an option I rounded up to 3.
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