hedrick@topaz.ARPA (Chuck Hedrick) (07/01/85)
I would be interested to know the reason you think there is no
difference between the accounts in the Bible and various mythologies.
You have made a number of statements that take this as a given, but
have not shown supporting evidence. I can imagine two very different
ways of coming to this conclusion (both of which I think are wrong,
but for different reasons). One is that you believe that the Bible
was not intended as history, and the other is that it was intended as
history, but has so much legendary material in it that in practice we
will never be able to separate the truth from the fiction.
Let's look at the first issue first -- whether the Biblical authors
were doing history at all. I'm afraid that I have not read anything
recent in the history of religions area. But as I recall, scholars
such as Eliade claimed that many religious myths really did not
intend to be history as we normally mean it. Rather they formed an
otherworldly pattern that gave meaning to life, by allowing men to
view their lives as a continual reliving of that eternal pattern. A
number of scholars make similar claims for the apocalyptic genre.
But it appears that both the OT and NT "historical books" are not
mythology in this sense. For one thing, they do not have the
cyclical nature of most mythology. For another, they do not
annihilate current history by removing our lives into the eternal
realm. Rather, they claim that history itself has value. God's
actions are not seen as an eternally-repeated pattern, but as a key
that allows us to assign the proper valuation to history. (In fact,
Eliade makes this distinction in the last chapter of "The Myth of the
Eternal Return.") It is not a coincidence that modern secular
civilization grew in the Christian West. Incarnational theology was
based on valuing the world and its history. I see the Christological
crises in the early centuries as a battle over this issue. You are
certainly right to see neo-Platonic mythology hovering over the early
centuries of Christianity. But I think that Christianity largely
rejected it. The church insisted on a God that really became subject
to history, rather than one that annihilated it.
The second issue is more difficult, and I confess that I do not have
an entirely satisfactory answer. Having said that the Biblical
writers intended to do history, I have to admit that there appear to
be some legendary components in what they have written. They also
had a general view of the world that is somewhat more oriented
towards supernatural explanations that I am. Ideally, one might like
to ask for some sort of methodology that would allow one to separate
out the legends and mythological influences, and leave behind some
sort of "pure history". Past efforts in this area ("the quest of the
historical Jesus") have not been entirely encouraging. But I don't
think this entitles us to jump to the conclusion that the Bible is
historically useless. To do that, we end up placing entirely too
large a rift between ourselves and other cultures and periods of
history. There are few historical sources that are immune to this.
Other ancient writers were also superstitious and credulous by modern
standards. I would hate to end up rejecting all history written by
anyone other than a 20th Century scientist.
My own use of the Bible is governed by two basic "hermeneutic axes",
as you put it. First, although critical scholarship has not managed
to produce a pure "historical Jesus", I think it does have some
things to tell us. For example, when we read John, it is now fairly
clear that large parts of Christ's sayings are based on John's
enlightened Christian imagination, illuminated by the resurrection,
and are not historical. That is not to say that they are valueless.
They are in fact based on quite sophisticated theological
understanding by a person who was presumably well-informed on Jesus'
ministry and teaching. Similarly, critical analysis of the Synoptics
has helped us understand such phenomena as the toning down of Jesus'
eschatology and the emphasis of his Messianic role.
Second, I am perhaps less worried than you are about being naive. To
me, one of the biggest benefits of critical scholarship is that it
establishes sort of "error bars" for us. The truth is somewhere
between a naive reading of the text and the results of studies such
as Perrin's "Rediscovering the Teaching of Jesus" (which is
intentionally overly sceptical in its methodology). It is natural
for a 20th Century man to be frightened of being naive. Who wants to
be suckered into believing in even one supernatural event that didn't
happen? If this is our only motivation, then of course the only
reasonable thing to do is to throw out the whole thing and say we
have no historical data here. Because quite honestly I am unable to
tell you whether any given item in the Gospels is history or later
elaboration. But that is not my only concern. I am interested in
whether I can get a reasonably accurate account of what Jesus
preached, and the significance of his death and resurrection. While
there are certainly shifts in emphasis if we accept the critical
view, I don't see anything that would cause a serious effect on
theology or on my appreciation of Jesus as Lord. At worst, I end up
believing that a few supernatural healings, etc., happened that
didn't, and I end up thinking of Jesus' resurrection as being a
physical event when it was actually a spiritual one. (Note: I am not
denying the empty tomb. I am simply noting one limit in the "region
of plausbility": the idea that Jesus' disciples saw what we might
call a "vision", and it later got translated into more physical
form.) So in practice, what I do is adopt a relatively naive reading
of the NT, modifying it with whatever critical insights seem
convincing. I realize in doing so that I am probably believing
things here and there that didn't happen, but I would much rather do
that than reject the whole thing.
You say that I am being less consistent than either the
fundamentalists or you. That is certainly true. That's because my
position admits the uncertainty that exists in historical evaluation
of the Bible. It is always easy to be consistent by defining a
problem away. I believe that both the fundamentalists and you have
done this. The fundamentalists define it away by saying that there
can be no error, and you define it away by saying that the whole
thing is not worth taking seriously (except perhaps as a source of
folklore). As Van Harvey points out in the final chapter of "The
Historian and the Believer," the job of the historian is to interpret
history. To accept the sources without question or to reject them
completely are both actions which refuse to do the job.
As a final comment, I would feel much better about your contributions
if you would spend less time pulling the mantle of modern scholarship
around yourself, and a bit more giving us specific information. It
is certainly true, as you have said, that the Society for Biblical
Literature is no longer solely populated by believing Christians and
Jews. However I do not agree with you about the significane of this
fact. Within universities, there is a great desire for disciplines
to seem independent and mature. Looking back over the last few
decades we can see Biblical studies freeing itself from service to
the seminaries and becoming an independent, secular discipline. This
is not necessarily a bad thing. But it is also not that different
from computer science's separation from mathematics and engineering,
or from the social sciences' struggle to become "respectable" (which
all too often seems to mean quantitative). The mere fact that
Biblical studies is now a secular subject does not prove that the
Bible is an unhistorical document. Nor does it show that "faith
seeking understanding" is dead. It simply complicates the issues for
men of faith who also want to do justice to scholarship. It is now
necessary for them to do justice to two different responsibilities:
their faith and their integrity as scholars. I attended an annual
meeting of the SBL a few years ago. It is true that faith was very
much absent from the formal presentations. But it was certainly
present among many (though certainly not all) of the participants.
In one message you presented us with a vision, not unlike that in
Ezekiel, where the shekinah departed from the Temple and ended up
resting with the SBL (who, you assure us, are the true inheritors of
the scholarly traditions of the Church). Let me reassure you that
there are plenty of us who still combine scholarship and faith. Our
willingness to allow scholarship to proceed according to its own
canons does not mean that we have given up our faith.