Historical Criticism

I realize this may be more than you ever wanted to know about the process of studying the bible, but there will be some of you who think this is interesting so . . .

 

Audio:

 

Okay, we have been through the idea of hermeneutics and exegesis.  I have asked you to think about your own presuppositions and assumptions and your own social location.  We have talked about different translations and the importance of reading several. Now let’s talk about actual techniques of reading or interpretation or exegesis, or whatever you want to call it.

In reading the bible we use a variety of techniques to try to understand what the original authors were trying to communicate.  We call these techniques “historical criticism.”  We are general trying to understand things like the historical context out of which the text came, the cultural context that the earliest hearers or readers of the story lived in, etc.

One of the techniques that has been used extensively is what has come to be called the “Documentary Hypothesis.”  Those of you who have had Disciple Bible Study  may remember this.  In its original form it applied only to the Pentateuch (the first five books) but the basic idea has been applied to almost every book of the Bible, Old and New Testaments alike.  So let’s take a closer look.  I have never tried to do this online before, so please ask if something doesn’t make sense.

When people really started reading the bible again for themselves, and started looking at the original Greek and Hebrew texts, they began to notice certain things about the text. For instance, a French fellow named Jean Astruc noticed that different sections of the Old Testament, in particular the first five books, used different names for God.  If you want to look at that for yourself, then read Genesis 1 and 2. (BIG HINT: When the English translations write ‘Lord’ in small caps then that word is translating the actual Hebrew word for the personal name of God which in English we transliterate as Yahweh.  When it writes the word ‘Lord’, in regular letters, it is translating the Hebrew word Adonai, which literally means Lord. When the English text has the word ‘God’ it is generally translating the Hebrew word “Elohim.”)

Astruc he thought he saw a pattern to how the names were used.  Other people noticed that the bible seemed to repeat stories with only slight variations and that sometimes those variations used the different names.  [Read Genesis 6 and 7; and Genesis 12:10-20 and 20:1-18.] Without going into excruciating detail (which, once again, you can find in your friend and mine, Wikipedia) scholars came to the conclusion that there were four basic strands of stories in the Torah, coming from four different original documents. They labeled these documents J (for Jahwist); E (for Elohist); D (for Deuteronomist) and P (for Priestly).

 

This theory, most clearly stated by a German named Julius Wellhausen, was called the “Documentary Hypothesis.”  Each of the four documents had characteristics and could be traced to a particular time in Israelite History. For instance, the Jahwist called God Yahweh, anthropomorphized God and presented a God that talked directly to human beings, tended not to moralize, but was interested in the origins of the family of David, i.e. in the tribe of Judah.  The Jahwist was generally dated to about 1000 B.C. (or B.C.E.) or essentially the reign of King David.  The Elohist used Elohim as the name of God, presented a God who appeared in dreams and visions, was concerned with a “prophetic” point of view and focused on the Mosaic tradition.  This is usually dated from about the 750’s B.C. and people think that it was brought to the Southern Kingdom when the Northern Kingdom was taken into exile.  The D strand was basically Deuteronomy. The Priestly tradition is usually dated from the time of the exile, uses the name Elohim for God, reflects the concerns of those who were responsible for worship and the cultic traditions of Israel, things like a concern with order, with dates and names, with sacrifices and worship.

 

These are only a few of the characteristics that Wellhausen and others thought they saw in the different documents but you get the idea.  Someone, maybe those priests, put these documents together into the final form of the text that we have today.  This theory can get very complicated and some scholars see a whole lot more different documents.  Also, a lot of people in the more conservative Christian traditions, think Wellhausen was sort of like the anti-Christ because he was the one who made all of this famous.  But the scholars were really just trying to answer questions that they had about the text and the documentary hypothesis seemed to answer those questions pretty well.  Now we see problems with this hypothesis, at least in its details; but I think it is fair to say that most modern scholars in the mainline Christian traditions accept that the bible has developed over time from multiple documents and contains multiple voices.  For those of us who think that God inspired the bible, this is no problem, because we think that God also inspired those who wrote down, edited, redacted and shaped these stories into their final form.  We think that these multiple voices are a gift from God to show us all the many ways that human beings have heard the voice of God and responded to it; both in good ways and in less admirable ways.

So, just knowing this much, if I tell you that Genesis 1 and 2 come from different strands, that Genesis 6 and 7 have the strands all mixed together and that Genesis12:10-20 and 20:1-18 come from different strands, could you take a guess as to what strand matches which part?  Try it!  Which text comes from what strand? (You can use a strand more than once)

Questions – the importance of

Audio:

So, here is the procedure so far;

1) Read both alone and together with others (whether in a group or with books).

2) Recognize your own assumptions and presuppositions in reading.

3) Read in multiple translations

Now for the next, and in some ways most important step:

4) Ask questions:

a.      All critical techniques have grown out of people asking questions.

What is the literary context of this passage? What comes before and after in the text?

b.      What are the actually words used; not the words I think should be used, or the words the preacher sticks in there to make it easier to understand, but the actual words of the text?

c.      Why is the story told exactly this way, and not another way?

d.      Who are the characters in this story?  Or is it poetry and I need to ask why these particular images are use

A     Are there stories in other religious traditions that are similar? Or in other places in the bible?

Well, maybe you get the idea.  I usually tell my seminary students that if they have no questions about the passage they are preaching on, they should find another passage for the week!  This sounds basic, but you would be surprised at how many people leave out the question part.  They assume that the text means one thing and one thing only and once they have learned that meaning from an “expert” they have no more need to question.

If you want to know the academic underpinnings for all of this, you should know that I am influenced by Paul Ricoeur.  His talks about  a cycle of reading: reading “naively,” then doing the work on a text, and reading once again in a fresh way.

Another way to look at the issue of questions, is that questions give the Holy Spirit space to work in you.  The overarching question for me is always, What is God trying to say to me in this passage? but I find that out by asking lots of other questions.

And the type of questions that you ask determine the type of resources that you go to in order to find the answer to your questions, as well as the type of critical techniques that you use.

As we will talk about, different forms of biblical criticism grew out of different kinds of questions that people asked about the text.

 

 

 

But What Translation do I use?

Audio:

One more issue in reading the biblical texts: because they were written in other languages, in order to read them at all most of us have to read in translation.  Now comes MMR number three:

Every translation is an interpretation, so you must read more than one translation.

Try to read this sentence:

Ilkrdbks

What does this say?

I like red bikes.

I like to read books.

I look at rude books.

I lick your databanks.

How do you know?

The Old Testament was written in Hebrew and a little bit of Aramaic.  The New Testament was written in Greek. The ancient Hebrew was written with only a few vowels and mostly consonants.  The consonants were not added until a long time after the texts began to be written down.  Thankfully the proper readings were also handed down orally, so we do know how to read the texts—mostly. I say mostly because in some cases, there are discrepancies in how the vowels got added.  Some folks read it one way and added the vowels to match their reading; some read another way and, consequently, came out with a different set of vowels.  It isn’t necessarily a terrible problem, but it is one that you should know exists.

Just remember: Nobody had word processors, lots of storage space and spell check back then.  Even in the Greek, which does have nice things like vowels, those who copied manuscripts triedtosavespacebyrunningthewordstogether. (Think of text messaging these days.  Do you know what a BFF is?  Or what it means to ROTFLOL? If not, ask your local teenager.)

When folks started to translate the Hebrew and Greek into other languages, they ran into other problems.  If you are from East Texas you might know what it means to say that something is the “cat’s meow,” but if you are not you probably have no clue.  Even though I know what someone means (specifically my father) when he says that, I would have trouble translating it.  “Well if that ain’t the cat’s meow” means something like, “Well, isn’t that amazing—I have never seen anything like it before.”  You can see that an exact translation into something like French, or Spanish would not capture the essence of what was really being said.  So do I translate word for word and then footnote, or do I translate the sense of what is meant?

Some translations are more likely to translate word for word (what is known as “formal equivalence”) and others are more likely to get the sense of what is said (“dynamic equivalence”).  But then you have to ask yourself: Would another person from East Texas even agree with my interpretation of that sentence in English?  If someone different translated according to the sense of the sentence, he/she might translate according to a little bit different understanding of the sense of the English.

Do you see the problem? Translating the text is partly science and partly art, and there is just no way around that.  So, as I said before: Every translation is an interpretation.

Most translations will tell you in their introductions what their guiding principles were in making the translation.  They will tell you if a committee did the translation or if it was all done by a single person.  For instance, the NRSV, the NIV, and the NJB are all committee translations, the Living Bible and the Message are both done by individuals.  It is helpful to read from the different families of translation.  Look at this Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_English_Bible_translations for different translation families and more information on them.  Also skim the introduction to your own bible that you read.  What does it say about who translated, why and how?

When you read one text in several different translations you start to see where the translators have disagreed.  You can be sure that is a place to look more closely at what the text says.

Now for a look at the real text of the bible!   Read Genesis 1:1 in multiple translations (I suggest at a minimum the NRSV, NIV, NJB, and Tanakh). Also, look at the footnotes in the NRSV translation. See any differences?  Comment if you like!

 

 

 

The difference between hermeneutics and exegesis.

Audio of this post (remember this is from the class!)

 

Here is a little test—read the following sentence out loud to yourself:

a woman without her man is nothing

Now, how did you punctuate that sentence as you read it? Like this?

A woman without her man is nothing.

Or like this:

A woman: without her, man is nothing.

Do you see the difference?  (warning: English grammar lesson to follow)

In the first example the subject of the sentence is ‘woman’ and the predicate would be ‘is nothing’.  Another way of saying this sentence would be: A woman is nothing without her man.

 

In the second example, the subject of the sentence is ‘man’, indicating that it is the man who is nothing without the help of a woman.

 

How you read this sentence depends on one of two things:

1.   Your own hermeneutic—what presuppositions you make about the world

2.      Your assumptions about my hermeneutic—what presuppositions you think I make about the world.

Our hermeneutic is our set of presuppositions about the world, our “world-view” you might say.  It is how we put together and order the otherwise disordered scenes of life in order to make sense out of what we see.  In the example above, some of us might see the world as dominated by men and thus any statement made, we automatically assume has a bias toward men and against women.  This could be true whether we are male or female (though how we feel about that might be different based on our gender).  Some of us might think that women rule, or that as a woman, I might think women rule.  That might lead you to the second way of reading.

 

Or you might have no clue and simply be waiting for more information.  If so—good for you! The more information you can learn about a text, and about the context in which the text was produced, the better you are able to make an educated guess at the hermeneutic of those for whom the text was written.  Learning about the hermeneutic of a particular era in the church’s history might help you understand why a text has been read in a particularly way. Understanding your own set of assumptions and presuppositions—your own hermeneutic—will lead you to understand your own reading.

We cannot know how the original writer intended a text to be read without knowing the hermeneutic of that writer, though we can make some guesses.  However, in interpreting the text—in doing our exegesis—we can and do know certain things about the text.  In the above example, we know what each of the words mean, as long as we know English.  We know that in some way it concerns the relationship between men and women.  If we are able to learn the perspective of the author, then we might be able to make those guesses, but we also have to know the context: Is the author quoting someone else?  Is the author expressing his/her point of view or that of a particular character? Is the author speaking “tongue-in-cheek” as it were? By reading other texts written by the same person, we might gain some of that perspective that we seek.  By reading the text in which this snippet is placed, we might find out if it is in a play about male-female relationships, a hate-filled speech written by a man seeking to deny women the right to vote, or a dissertation about how words are used!

People of radically different hermeneutics can use the same techniques of exegesis and come out with different understanding.  After learning more about where this snippet of text comes from, you might learn that it does in fact come from a speech by a man seeking to deny women the right to vote.  If you agree with that stance, and you believe the speaker to be a fount of wisdom, then you might interpret the statement as a pearl of wisdom and quote it as justification for some point that you want to make.  If you think that the speaker was an old-fashioned and out-moded thinker and that the world has thankfully moved on, you might interpret it as a bit of foolishness.  My point here is not to argue about the relative merits of men and women, but to get you to see that point of view makes a difference in interpretation.

I hope I haven’t lost you by now!  I also hope you are getting a sense of the complexities that we have in reading the biblical text—well, really in reading any text.  Most of the time we just do all of this automatically, and that works fine for us.  But if we really want to study a text, especially an ancient text, and get the most out of it, then we have to take these things into consideration.  Really, we don’t even need to think about all this every time we read the bible; sometimes we can just read devotionally and let God speak to us.  But other times, we need to struggle with the text and see if God is speaking in a different way.

 

Why I am here and what I think I know

Audio of this post (Note that this is from my online class and is slightly different from the written post):

I am here because I am the pastor and this is my blog!  But I am here in another sense because of the life experiences that I have had.  I have taught the process of Biblical Exegesis (note: the fact that this is underlined in blue means that you may click on it and get a definition) for many years.  Over the years, I have been told by various teachers that:

I should just interpret the Bible as it stands without pulling it apart.

I shouldn’t “read into” the Bible because that is “eisegesis” instead of exegesis.

I should take into account my own social location because who I am determines how I read.

There is no one correct “reading” or “interpretation” of the Bible, there are only “readings” and “interpretations” that are more or less useful.

The Bible is the Word of God and is authoritative for Christians.

I have come to understand that there is some truth in all of these points of view.  Since I am the teacher/pastor, you should know my own point of view.  And I hope you will examine where you stand as well.  Why? Because we do tend to make assumptions about who we know and what we know, and without paying attention to those assumptions, we are never aware of our blind spots.

What the heck is social location?  Well, for instance, I am a white, 53-year-old female with a husband and three children.  Before I had children, I reacted to Mother’s day very negatively, because I thought I would be unable to bear children. My “social location” changing over time (in other words, my previous social location of being childless) helped me to understand what it is like for other people on Mother’s Day, who may not have the same joy that I have now.

The fact that I am white, female, well-educated and middle-class affects my reading of the bible as well.  I may think that I am reading in the only sensible way possible, but I really do need to pay attention to how others are hearing the text.  So I come to the first of Martha’s Rules for Reading (MRR) the bible:

1)     The bible belongs to the church, so at some point, read with others.

You may love to read the bible in your corner, by yourself, as your private devotion.  That is fine; but at some point you need to get in a group and share what you have learned.  You also need to hear how others experience the text.  Without doing this, you will always have blind spots in your reading and understanding.  We will talk a little later about how to use other books and resources to help, but there is no substitute for interacting with currently living human beings, whether in person or on the internet.

So what else do you need to think about?  What do you believe about the Bible?  For instance, I believe that the bible is the inspired Word of God.  In the United Methodist tradition we say that “the bible contains everything necessary for salvation” and that the bible is “the rule and guide for faith and practice.”  That’s pretty much all we say.

I don’t believe that the bible was dictated by God, but I do think that it was inspired by God, that in the text God reveals who God is and who we are as creatures made in the image of God, and that in reading it we encounter the living God, Godself.  I take every word seriously and try to understand how it fits into the understanding of God that I am building up over time. If you think of a continuum between those who consider the Bible the inerrant word of God and those who consider it a secular book written by human beings, then I am somewhere in the middle.  This means that I have to struggle with each text to see how much it really seems to reveal of God and how much it is culturally conditioned—which  makes my life harder, but there you have it.  That is what I believe, and I think the struggle is worth it. I also believe that it is authoritative for my life, but once again that involves a struggle to understand how that can be.

So MRR number two is:

2)     You must understand your own approach to the bible if you want to get the most out of reading it.  Spend a little time thinking about whether or not you think the bible is inerrant, inspired, totally a creation of humankind, or some mix of all.  Don’t get too hung up on trying to define this perfectly; your understanding and the way that you articulate that understanding will probably change over time.  But make a start on knowing where you stand.

If you would like to comment, maybe you can answer this question: what is your “social location?”  What determines how you read and understand the bible or anything else.  Are you a baby boomer, a Gen-Xer, a millennial generation person?  Are you married, single, with/without kids.  Did you grow up in the ghetto or the suburbs; or outside the U.S.?  All of those things will make your reading your own in some important way and will make all of us who read together with you richer for the experience.

Something else I would be interested in knowing: How much bible study, bible training, or bible reading you have done.  Where are you in your journey towards knowing the bible?