Abstract
Two decades ago, with Walter Sundberg, the author brought out a history of modern interpretation of the Bible (from Spinoza to Käsemnann, and then, in an expanded edition a decade later, this was brought up to date with Brevard Childs replacing Käsemann as the terminus). As before in this work, there is a mixture of biography of these scholars in more or less chronological order, but, unlike his previous attempt, the author seems a good deal more positive about the operation and legacy of the historical-critical method.
Luther and Calvin and Müntzer(!) are presented as reasonable scholars, whatever their fideism, and committed to scriptural objectivity. The great white hope of anti-Enlightenment, Hamann, is also given a chapter of his own. Yet curiously the writing comes alive more in the postscript that concerns J. C. Edelman, a pietist who lost his faith, and there seems for the first time to be genuine intellectual curiosity in this figure, who thought Ezra wrote the Bible.
In the long chapter that follows (‘The Modern Period’) the largely descriptive journey takes readers from Semler to Schleiermacher and Baur, then shuttles back to Jonathan Edwards. The book is strongest when these comparatively neglected figures are introduced: Moses Stuart at Andover employed a moderate form of historical criticism to arrive at orthodox conclusions, while asserting that Genesis did not concern geology. Yet Stuart was too grammatico-historically minded to be any hermeneutical use – on the issue of the Bible and slavery. Charles Hodge, known for his mid-1830s commentators’ battle with Stuart on Romans 5 and ‘original sin’, allied himself with Tholuck and went on the offensive against German rationalism and its effects.
Leaping to the twentieth century, the standoff between Barth and Bultmann is central, with the latter’s voice getting more of a hearing. Harrisville demonstrates how for Bultmann it was the text of the New Testament that provided any interpretation with theology, while insisting on the requirement of ‘the question of God’ in the interpreter’s pre-understanding. While the Barth–Bultmann difference is tantalizing, however, it is not altogether clear in its conclusions.
As the book goes on, the style gets increasingly looser and messier. There is a page or two on Structuralism; then a few more on Deconstruction, but how all these scholars and forces relate to each other – let alone those ‘names’ who lived centuries earlier – is unclear.
The end of the book suffers from successive ‘and finallys’ which serve to throw in more theories or authors. Thirteen pages from the end, after a discussion of Luther’s ‘mistake’ in affirming Mary’s perpetual virginity in the Smalcald Articles, Brevard Childs is introduced – and then quickly we are back with Luther. The last two paragraphs witness to the force of the Word of God, whatever the critics say. The idea seems to be that there remains hope in a living God, whatever messes human methods get us into, all the while trying to trace the path of the God of history. A safeguard against Gnosticism, historical criticism must be valued because Christianity is a diachronic religion.
As a sum of its parts, this book has useful descriptions and much that is otherwise hard to find, but as a whole seems, if not quite sad, then more than a little confused. It is less polemical than the last edition, but more in need of a firm editor or a better thought-out controlling idea.
Mark W. Elliott
University of St Andrews