Wellhausen's resignation

In his own words:

I became a theologian because the scientific treatment of the Bible interested me; only gradually did I come to understand that a professor of theology also has the practical task of preparing the students for service in the Protestant Church, and that I am not adequate to this practical task, but that instead despite all caution on my own part I make my hearers unfit for their office. Since then my theological professorship has been weighing heavily on my conscience.

For details (this quote is taken from a James Kugel speech), see Menahem Mendel.

I wonder if this has anything to do with the following quote from that genius, Paul Minear:

it is increasingly difficult for the historian, within the domain of conventional historiography, to deal with texts that claim to embody God's address to mortals. on the one hand, the Bible presents us with stories of God's eternal power working in, with, through, under, and beyond temporal events. On the other hand, historical methodology suggests that these stories are best dealt with if that power were not present. This methodology is weighted in the direction of a historicism that A.E. Loen has described in these terms: "Historical reality is complete in itself and God as a transcendent reality must be bracketed out" (in The Bible and the Historian, 38).

Pod-Cast Interview with James Kugel

Hadassah links to a one hour interview with James Kugel on his recent book, How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture then and Now.

From the little I've read of Kugel I've not been impressed. He made a lame critique of Christian confessional scholarship which I posted here, followed by my own critical response here and a suggestion here that a canonical approach could fill the gap a New York Times reviewer felt was left gaping.

Nevertheless, he seems to be popular amongst those wishing to embrace both modernity and Jewish orthodoxy so he will be an important dialogue partner for the future. I intend to listen to the interview at some point, whenever I can fit him around the mountain of other audio material I'm collecting (e.g. here).

J. Kugel and the 'groaning' of New York

James Kugels approach to biblical studies and faith has also attracted the attention of the New York Times. You can read their review of his book, How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture Then and Now, here. What is particularly interesting are the concluding three paragraphs:

"How to Read the Bible runs through the entire Hebrew Scriptures,matching modern scholarship and ancient interpretation. The journey is fascinating enough to render frustrating the author's conclusion. Although he admired both approaches, Professor Kugel writes, they are "quite irreconcilable."

Is this conclusion as unavoidable as he makes it sound? Modern minds still seek deeper meanings and still want relevant instructions for living. As for the ancient worry about seamlessness, modern minds,sensitized to multiple perspectives, often find more coherence in contrasting accounts than perfectly harmonized ones.

The ancient interpreters' boldness in rewriting was motivated and justified, Professor Kugel writes, by a fresh apprehension of God and the corresponding need to flesh out the command, found in the Book of Deuteronomy and elsewhere, "to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul. Is it so impossible that modern scholarship, too, could be put to that service?"

It would seem that Kugel's stark compartmentalization of interpretation into 'ancient' and 'modern' has left the Bible locked into a reality unable to touch that of the modern world. I wonder whether other approaches, such as Childs and Seitz's 'canonical approach', are able to still the frustration that this modern journalist is expressing? Isn't answering this longing part of what the Bible is about in the first place?

My Response to Kugel's Critique

Yesterday I posted on Kugel's critique of confessional Christian approaches to the Bible. It would appear that Christians respond to the challenge of historical criticism by qualifying its apparently destructive findings with a "yes, BUT ... ", followed by arguments that the Bible really is special after all. Apparently, it seems that in order for the Bible to be preserved as Sacred Scripture, some kind of special property has to be attached to the Bible itself, such that it really is unique in the Ancient Near East, or that it really is great literature.

Whether Christians really do respond in this way or not, I think it misses the point. As always (well, for now at least) ,I use B.S. Childs to orient myself on these issues.

For Childs, the Bible has a special function within the church, namely the 'canonical' one of offering "a critical theological norm for the community of faith on how the tradition functions authoritatively for future generations of the faithful". As "critical theological norm", it would seem to be rather irrelevant whether the Bible is literarily and theologically distinctive from other ancient sources. Even the vague concept of 'superiority' is secondary to this critical function of the Bible. So what if it's literature is poor or sophisticated, profound or shallow, unique or typical? It is the confession of the church that the God of the universe has come to us in Jesus, and that the prophetic witness to this Jesus is the matrix in which he is understood. Aesthetic or moral judgements come second to submitting to whatever form this textual witness to our Saviour makes. What ever makes the Bible 'great' is its ultimate subject matter, not its surface presentation.

Having said that, on a personal note, I have recently been experiencing the Old Testament narratives in a rather profound way (for me at least). It comes in phases; sometimes the Bible really is incomprehensible to me. At other times, I feel that I've been situated in such a way that the narrative world of the text and my own confused horizon seem to fuse, such that I find my own situation inexplicably illuminated by that which I read. I'm not just saying this because that's what some confessional theologians say happens, I really do experience this.

Who knows, maybe I just haven't read enough. Maybe, once I start submerging myself in the world of ancient pagan literature, I'll start having the same illuminating and convicting experience with Marduk as I currently have with the Lord. Who knows. Maybe.

Ancient Hebrew Poetry makes other criticims of Kugel and provides a directory of current blog-debate on the man.

Kugel's Critique of Christian Confessionalism

As if by some mysterious working of divine providence, Emerging from Babel has decided to post on James Kugel, exactly the day before I decided to do the same. The content is different, as Stephen focuses on Kugel's suggestions on the essence of Judaism, and how that helps him cope with the challenge of historical criticism. The 'substance' of Judaism, as Kugel sees it, lies in the ongoing attempt to work out the implications of a single command: that Israel must serve the LORD. Everything else would seem to be peripheral, such that whatever the Bible actually says or whatever historical criticism throws at us is not relevant to the pragmatic task of obedience. The essence of Jewish faith preserves it from attacks from the outside.

This provides a nice bridge to my post. On an online forum recently, a commenter cited Kugel's critique of Christian attempts to come to terms with historical criticism. My aim today is simply to post what he said (with permission). I'd love to know how others respond to what Kugel has to say. On Monday I'll post what I wrote it response. Here it is:

I haven't seen much comment on biblioblogs about the online appendix to James Kugel's new book, How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now, which is entitled:"Apologetics and `Biblical Criticism Lite'"http://www.jameskugel.com/apologetics.php.

But I think it's well worth some responses. Hopefully this post will stimulate some.

Kugel notes that people have grown used to the idea that the Bible really wasn't written by those figures long claimed to be its authors, that it is full of contradictions and editorial overlays, etiological narratives and invented history. Notwithstanding the fact that they admit this, most Christian and Jewish biblical scholars tend to immediately turn around and argue that the situation is "not so bad – in fact, it's not bad at all. We embrace the truth about the Bible as we now know it."

But when you scratch a little deeper into this common response by confessional biblical scholars one finds that--instead of genuinely accepting the results of modern biblical scholarship--they have in fact only adopted an apologetic reflex to the findings. They really automatically downplay or minimise the implications. They have adopted a series of qualifications which overrule the findings which they ostensibly affirm. That is, their response is: "Yes, it's true, modern scholars have shown X, BUT ... "

As Kugel's first example: despite the fact that parts of the Bible have been shown to be derived from ancient Mesopotamian texts and are `invented history' (such as the Flood Story)—bible scholars spend endless energy in trying to downplay the implications. In respect of the Flood Story itself, he gives a series of revealing quotations from biblical scholars who are intent on downplaying the many similarities, in order to defend the literary and theological distinctiveness and `superiority' of the biblical version. Why do they do this?

"The answer is obvious. They feel torn between what they would like the Bible to be – an utterly unique, divinely inspired book given to mankind – and what modern scholarship has sought to show about this particular story, that it is essentially copied from a Mesopotamian source (and therefore not, on the face of things, an utterly unique, divinely inspired composition). So there has to be a world of difference between the biblical and Mesopotamian versions despite the obvious similarities. The differences commentators fix on, however, are really not very convincing."

Kugel also has some damning comments about the current trend for viewing the Bible as `great literature'. He rightly observes that this method is often misused by apologists:

"Ultimately, this is just another form of apologetic, an attempt to save something special about Scripture in an unbelieving world. Strange to tell, while many of today's literary critics of the Bible are avowed secularists, their writings sometimes hold a particular appeal for people of rather conservative religious beliefs, Christians or Jews eager to celebrate the Bible's merits. For them, its selling point lies not only in its capacity to push aside modern scholarship, but as well in its attribution to Scripture of a kind of artistry and design bordering on the miraculous, something that only "the great novelist in the Lord" (as Norman Mailer once put it) would be capable of composing. It might seem unfair to compare the appeal of this approach to that of a truly crackpot domain, the discovery of secret "codes" in the Bible that are held to have predicted various historical events. What both have in common, however, is their ability to convince ordinary readers, at least those eager to be convinced, that there still is something special, indeed, something deeply hidden or infinitely complicated about the Bible that fully reflects its divine origins."

The rest of this provocative essay is here:http://www.jameskugel.com/apologetics.php

So, what do people think of that?