MetaCatholic

James Crossley offers a suggestion that traditional historical and literary critical approaches to the Bible may be approaching their sell-by-date.

Here’s the speculation… The Bible obviously remains culturally popular but, a few exceptions aside, the majority of traditional criticism is limited in its popular appeal and there is some degree of irrelevancy. … The Bible is seriously important in politics and popular culture right now in so many ways and this is not getting studied to anything like the extent that we see in traditional criticism. On the other hand, how long can the NT be studied in the traditional historical sense? Will it soon be done to death?

Jim West, in a response (while he ponders whether to enter the sex shops of Chester and Sheffield) leaps on this with rapacious vigour (no connection with his shopping tour, I’m sure) and takes the idea in a passionate embrace.

To put it in my own words- historical criticism as interpretive method has seen its best days and is now on the decline, heading towards the methodological graveyard where it will be buried, withered, wretched, and depleted of all the life force that once made it vital and vibrant.  But what will replace it?   Something must, because it most certainly is correct that the historical-critical method is now bankrupt and devoid of further usefulness.

I must somewhat demur (especially from Jim’s stronger assertion about James’ speculation), but first let me state where I agree. The wide variety of ways of reading, and studying the reading of scripture that are around are generally to be welcomed. Those ways include feminist, post-colonial, and queer readings among the more ideological, but also bring in aspects of popular culture such as movie and musical interpretation, and studies of the actual use to which people put (and have put) texts.

I would note however, that a wide diversity of older ways of reading and appropriating scripture remain in play. Some forms of literary approaches which discern patterns in the text are reminiscent of typological readings. Devotional readings have always existed side by side with critical readings: today there is more opportunity to bring them into play with each other. Lectio divina is making something of a comeback in spirituality and prayer. Generally, the more the merrier.

But … I think there is still a case to be made for the role of historical criticism. I do not think that a pure reader response criticism will win out in the literary field so that there will always be a sense that texts are communications of meaning and not just repositories for readers to raid. In the historical field this means also that the study of texts as historical artifacts will always remain part of the literary study of ancient texts. The fact that the discipline of biblical studies would not exist without a collection of ancient texts to study means that the disciplines of historical study and literary study will continue to shape the discipline of biblical study. Biblical studies departments may well also make new links with cultural and political studies and so on, but I see this as supplementing and augmenting its long-standing links to historical and literary studies.

Now it may be that I am influenced by my own theological desire to see historical criticism remain a key discipline. I do not mean any particular critical method, but the sense that the text’s fundamental meaning is tied to its historical context, sensitive to its cultural genre and construction, and open to intersubjective exploration of its original meaning. In my view that also enhances the claim of biblical studies to be a public academic discipline. I think, in the end, it will be post-structuralism and its progeny that is seen as intellectually bankrupt, and historically sensitive readings that will continue to be seen as credible, not least because they can be publicly disputed. After all, the roots of the university, long before the rise of the Enlightenment, lie precisely in public disputation and the persuasion of others.