Critical Scholars or Wannabe Philosophers?
What if I told you that the two most popularized models for dismissing the traditional view of biblical composition are not really “scientific” analysis of the text at all? In fact they are textbook cases in what we would today call “confirmation bias.” In other words, conclusions were not reached by observing unexpected features of the text. Instead, patterns were made to fit the mold of the spirit of the age. That age was the nineteenth century and principally in Germany.
One example has to do with criticism of the Old Testament and the other of the New Testament. I refer, first, to the so-called Documentary Hypothesis (or JEDP Theory) formulated by Julius Wellhausen which challenged Moses’ authorship of the Pentateuch; and then, secondly, to F. C. Baur’s deconstruction of the New Testament canon as a third to fourth century “synthesis” of what had previously been a more diverse collection of books with the conflicting theologies of Petrine versus Pauline Christianity.
These have captivated “biblical scholarship” for over a century or more. Long story short, Wellhausen was nothing but Darwin’s evolutionary theory applied to the Hebrew canon and Baur was simply Hegel’s dialectic applied to the Epistles. How so?
Assumptions, Assumptions, Assumptions
Let us start with that JEDP Theory. What do those four letters stand for? The term for this is “source criticism,” so that these are four proposed alternative sources—none of them actually Moses—and each of which had to insert their own agendas back into the development of the Hebrew Scriptures.
J stands for the Jawist. This individual or group originated in Judah around 950 B.C. Since he was the most primitive, his religion was tribal and so he used the name of Israel’s local deity, YHWH (‘Jahweh’ being the German rendering).
E stands for the Elohist, so named for the other name used for God in Genesis 1 and 2. Since this is the more general word used (Elohim) this religion is getting more general because the people group is covering a wider terrain. Here both monotheism and morality are taking shape, all by around 800 B.C.
D stands for Deuteroist. A more specific date is given here (app. 621 B.C.) because this coincides with the reformation of the Southern Kingdom under Josiah. Our German superiors told us that this is where the book of Deuteronomy comes from. How convenient that the king’s priests “discovered” this book of the law which so emphasized the pure religion centering on his capital! Actually it emphasized much more than that, things which did not interest our superiors quite as much. But as that book was allegedly being completed, Judahites needed an explanation for why they were going into captivity; and there is a remarkable similarity between the end of Deuteronomy and their fate. The critic’s anti-supernatural bias leads to the view called vaticatum ex eventu, or “prophecy from [basically, after] the event.”
Finally the P stands for the priestly redactor who came in some time between 500 and 400 B.C. to reinterpret whatever else was in such need. Genealogy, worship, ritual, and law was more naturalized to account for all of those supernatural explanations that hadn’t quite panned out. This priestly class would preside over this new society making the usual transition from mythos to logos, as all societies moving from their infancy to maturity must do.
Now did you notice a predictable modern story being told? Even if one is not familiar with the details of the Darwinian theory or how it might apply to realms beyond the material sciences, the logic is simple enough to grasp.
1. All things are evolving from most simple to most complex.
2. The religion of mankind is a thing.
3. Israelite religion is a religion.
∴ Israelite religion evolved from most simple to most complex.
The “findings” were conveniently what those doing the finding wanted to be found.
And More Assumptions
What about New Testament criticism? Ferdinand Christian Baur traded in his more basic theological liberalism for the popular philosophy of his day, that of G. W. F. Hegel, specifically his Philosophy of History. There were already some very radical criticisms being made of the origins of the Christian faith before the 1840s. But here we must understand what has been called the “dialectical” explanation of history.
In the simplest terms, what Hegel proposed was that each generation has some basic set of beliefs, their “thesis,” and then the next generation counters this: an “antithesis.” As humans evolve in their thinking (notice that this is simply an evolution of reason), we chew the meat and spit out the bones, so to speak, taking the best of the prior thesis-versus-antithesis conflict, and derive a “synthesis” in the next generation. Naturally this becomes the new thesis for that third era, provoking yet another antithesis—and so on, ad infinitum, until one reaches what Hegel called the Absolute, or Spirit (Geist).
Now it just so happens, said Baur, that in the New Testament we find an original faith expressed by the Jerusalem community, represented chiefly by Peter; but then just as suddenly an innovation by this other Apostle Paul. The former was Jewish; the latter Greek in orientation. The former emphasized law and community; the latter grace and the individual. Any cursory reading of Acts or Galatians bears out some sort of conflict between them.
What we have finally at Nicaea was the Catholic canon which had removed all of the books that could not resolve this tension. In other words, “Christianity” was the synthesis for which Peter’s Jewish Christianity was the thesis and Paul’s Gentile Christianity was the antithesis. Again, we must ask: Sound familiar?
Sadly, none of this is familiar at all to most eighteen year olds that fill the lecture halls and classrooms (or, now, binge “research” YouTube videos) of our landscape, as they are confronted with ever newer angles of what, unbeknownst to them, is mere debris from these long-since discredited nineteenth century fantasies.
The results are predictable. No one can answer. No one knows the questions. The only questions are the “new” and “scary” and “exciting” and “brave new” questions that are being asked of their “uncritically” accepted texts. When the church does not teach on these matters, that which is second-rate and frankly boring, if viewed from the wide-angle lens of history, is left unexposed and remains tantalizing to those itching to escape the weight of the living God.
