Who Can It Be Now?

What is quoted here is from two blog posts at Thought Criminal; they are linked separately below.  What follows is in no way a reference to anything TC has to say about these passages.  I'm just "stealing" his work insofar as he has transcribed this.  Otherwise, the faults are all mine, and the direction of my comments is toward the material quoted, and nothing else.

A Confused State of Scholarship

"Confused" is the key word there; because this analysis is too simple by half.

In a simple version of the culture war, hostile criticism would be pitted against belief, and each position would be located in the appropriate social settings.  Criticism would find its home in the academy, and belief in the Church.  But the reality is that the social locations of biblical scholarship are diverse,  and the question of its precise purpose very much an open one.   To properly locate the present situation, a rapid review of the development of critical scholarship within and outside the Church may be helpful. 

Start with that "simple version" of the culture war.  It is the simplistic version that the "culture war" proponents prefer, be they political warriors or ideological/intellectual ones.  The very concept of a "culture war" is itself a reductio ad absurdum that posits a simple culture (the "right" one) against another simple culture, but one more nefarious and tentacled like an octopus (always a metaphor for evil), one that must be fought by striking at the head, not the many nasty, insidisous arms.  Yes, the simplistic version of any analysis of religion in the West today is dominated by the cretinous dichotomy that criticism is housed and welcome in the Academy (although not among the pointy-head elites!) and mere belief ("believin' what you know ain't so!"), i.e., credulousness, is lodged firmly in the church.  Flapdoodle.

Are the "social locations of biblical scholarship" diverse?  Yes,  But they are primarily located in the Academy, and carried out by criticism as rigorous as any scientific analysis is (well above the standard of the pop science and pseudo science of people like Dawkins and  Pinker, or the paltry philosophizing of Dennett, which is all as rigorous as "belief" is usually defined to be).  But you won't get that here.

Before the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, biblical scholarship was carried out exclusively in service of the Christian faith, within its framework in the canon (the official collection of biblical writings)  the teaching authority of the church, and the creed.  Much of patristic and monastic interpretation in fact, took the form of homilies to be delivered at worship.  Even when the medieval universities developed out of monastic schools as independent centers of learning, biblical scholarship was done within the framework of theology the "queen of the sciences," and the threefold norm of church, canon and creed held sway.

Accurate so far as it goes, but it clouds the differences between groups, too.  Franciscans were hardly fans of the Thomistic scholars; Jesuit scholars took their own tack, and the Augustinians were as fundamentally important as the Thomists, but were no more in control than any other group.  This kind of fractiousness i often papered over; and the analysis of Protestantism that follows ignores the divisions between Calvinists, Zwinglists, and Lutherans, as well as the rise of the Quakers, the Methodists, the Mennonites, the Campbellites, and so on.  Too much for the brief sketch intended by Johnson?  Perhaps.  But sola scriptura and individual interpretation didn't give rise to anarchy in the churches in the 15th century. and weren't even the dominant ideas of Protestant movements.  For many churches control of the interpretation shifted from the monks and priests to the congregation.  Many Protestant churches in America were run by the elders of the church, who sat in the pews immediately before the pulpit, and critiqued the preacher and corrected him, later, on his doctrinal and scriptural views, the better to keep him in line. The "free for all" was tightly contained in some denominations, even as it led to an explosion of them across Protestantism.  But that was largely because the central control of the Pope and the church hierarchy which supports the Papacy was not recreated by Luther or any other non-Catholic, and therefore by definition, Protestant church.  Within the Catholic (i.e., "universal") church various sects thrived.  In Protestantism, each sect set up it's own denomination, even if that denomination was ultimately only a few scattered churches.

The Reformation, especially through the work of Martin Luther changed everything.  Luther opposed Catholicism's emphasis on tradition as norm for Scripture by elevating Scripture to the exclusive font of revelation (sola scriptura).  This made the key to right living dependent on the right reading of Scripture. The context of ecclesial interpretation was weakened further by the principle of individual interpretation,  for the first time made practical by translations from the original and above all the invention of printing, which made Bibles readily available to the laity.  Now the New Testament is not heard mostly in Latin within the liturgy and as expounded by clergy, but can be apprehended directly in one's native language and is open to private interpretation.  It was a combination filled with potential conflict.  Everything essential rested on the reading of a text, but that reading could be carried out by individuals!

So, yeah, a bit more complicated than that.  As is Luther, who is not just "a passionate lover of the texts," but an excommunicated Augustinian monk.  Augustine's works run through Luther's teachings like pure gold runs through a golden ring blended with other metals so it is strong enough to hold its shape, but can still be called "gold."  Luther didn't throw over the Roman church, he took much of it with him, including Augustine's emphasis on sin.  Yes, Calvin took that further than even Luther did, but the point is the "revolution" was in some ways fundamental, and in some ways just a continuation of what Christianity had been doing for a millenia at that point. 

As for that line "the recovery of original Christianity," that was the goal of the Reformed movement, which means primarily Calvin.  Luther wanted to reform the Catholic church, which is why Lutheran worship to this day is so nearly like Roman Catholic liturgies (the Anglican church, likewise, kept most of Catholicism's worship practices).  Calvin and his spiritual descendants discarded Roman liturgies, even Roman religious holidays, in their efforts to return to "original Christianity."  Again, Protestantism is more diverse and complicated than this summary is admitting.

As for the recovery of the original Greek texts, that was largely a factor of scholarship.  The Vulgate replaced the original texts and became the standard text in churches.  The Protestant churches couldn't adopt the Vulgate, which after all was a translation into the common tongue of its day (hence the name), so they had to make their own translations.  Where better to start than the original texts, which have only become more available and reliable thanks to centuries of Biblical scholarship.  Open the Nestle-Aland, the accepted standard Greek New Testament, and you'll find notes to almost every verse noting variant readings in "original" texts.  Those variants are known only because of Biblical scholarship.

Then again, until recently many Protestant churches thought the KJV was the standard text for worship.  Most people still recite the "Our Father" (most Protestants, anyway) in the KJV, or a slightly updated RSV (not the newer translation, the NRSV), and who recites Psalm 23 in any version but the 400 year old KJV translation?  If you know it at all, I guarantee that's the one you know. The Vulgate persisted longer because there were fewer resources for printing other translations, and less interest in doing so.  Bibles became popular in common tongues because of Gutenberg.  Luther translated the scriptures into the German of his day (I have a copy, a 40 year old or so printing, on my bookshelves).  But the history of that change is another fraught with complexity and, sadly, soaked in blood.  Again, it wasn't a straightforward move from the 95 theses to Tyndale's English translation.  And Tyndale's reliance on the Hebrew and Greek scriptures was more a rejection of Catholicism than it was an urge at "purification" and "reform."  Even the Puritans were less defined by their "purity" than by their animosity toward anything they thought "Papist" or just not in agreement with their ideals.

Luther was from beginning to end not only an interpreter of the Bible but a passionate lover of the texts and of the One to whom those pointed.  Nevertheless, his approach to the New Testament (which was to prove overwhelmingly influential in the development of critical scholarship) was deeply if unconsciously affected by the intellectual climate of the Renaissance.  This can be seen not only in his preference for the recovered Greek text over the Latin Vulgate proclaimed in the Church (note here the implicit authority of the Greek reading scholar over the latin dependent clergy).  The recovery of the original text was the key to the recovery of original Christianity.  Just as Renaissance scholars, once classical texts were recovered, could measure the inadequacy of late-medieval society against the grandeur of Greece and Rome, so could the theologian measure the inadequacy of medieval Christianity against the norm of the primitive church, or even better, the figure of Jesus, himself.

The "grandeur of Greece and Rome" is a Renaissance notion, not an absolute historical one.  There is much to criticize about medieval Europe; there is equally as much to criticize about the "grandeur of Greece and Rome," especially as Greece included everything from the city state of Athens, where only male Greek citizens had any political or legal power (and young boys were subject to pederastry the better to prove the men were above their "animal desires".  That's where the Greek love of reason went, in part.), to the military barbarism of Sparta.  And the "grandeur" of Rome included the gladiatorial games around the empire and in the eternal city itself.  Blood sports in which slaves and gladiators (who were slaves, too) died for the entertainment of the masses.  Panem et circenses.  It's not a phrase that calls up a governin, or even social, ideal.  There is a great deal to admire about Greek and Roman culture; and a great deal to criticize.

And "the figure of Jesus himself."  Pray, tell, who is that?  The tall handsome white man with flowing chestnut hair I grew up seeing pictures of in my Sunday School classes? (Somehow Jesus always had long hair and the disciples all had shorter hair.  Never did figure out why they went to the barber on the regular and Jesus didn't.)  The Jesus of Calvin, who waits to judge us all as damned, save for the small number of the elect which none of may know until it's too late?  The Jesus of compassion versus the "God of the Old Testament" bloodthirsty warrior?  But isn't Jesus God, and God Jesus?  How does that work?  Is Jesus the guy who can't stop talking in John's gospel, but can't say much that is clear because you either "get it," or you don't?  Or is he the teacher who explains his parables to his disciples, in Matthew?  Jesus has been the central focus of Christology since the earliest days of the church, literally since the letters of Paul (which focus far more on the nature of the Christ than on the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth).  What is this "figure of Jesus," after all?

This seems to be where Johnson is going with this:

Two important assumptions remain implicit in this commitment.  The first is that the recovery of origins means the recovery of essence; the first realization of Christianity is naturally the best.  It follows from this premise that any "development" of Christianity must be seen as a decline.  The second assumption is that history can act as a theological norm for the reform of the church; the recovery of "original Christianity" made available through the recovery of the "original Scripture" should naturally serve as measure and critique for all subsequent forms of Christianity.

So widely are precisely these assumptions held - and taken for granted - that it is perhaps necessary to pause in order to assert that they are, in fact, assumptions rather than necessary truths.  Only a little thought is required to realize the problematic character of the first premise.  Indeed, in most matters, we now assume that earlier forms are perfected by later development. Likewise, it is by no means our automatic instinct in other matters to measure the adequacy or integrity of present behavior against the norm of earlier behavior. Rather, we tend to measure adequacy and integrity in terms of other criteria. 

Which is sound, as far as it goes; well, the first paragraph, anyway.  What he's critiquing is strands of Protestantism, whole denominations in Protestantism, in fact, which think "original" Xianity was more pure and therefore both more virtuous and more authentic.  Think of the Puritans in all their overzealous glory.  I know a number of contemporary (as in, still around, though mostly grounded in the 19th century where they had their origins) Protestant denominations which claim to be the "purer" expression of "true" Xianity.  MO Synod and WI Synod Lutherans, who in that order think themselves more pure than ELCA and any other "Lutherans" and therefore closer to the "truth."  It's a good way to keep people out of your church.*

That's an idea among lay people and the pastors who lead them, however,  It has bugger all to do with Biblical scholarship.  Recovering "original scriptures" is the same nonsense, with the same application to scholarship.

As I mentioned, the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament lists every available variant  to the words of the canonical gospels and letters.  You can even find these kinds of notes in many annotated translations, where a footnote will direct you to "other sources" which have the word (or words)..... at that point in the scriptures.  I'm literally at a loss to know which "original scriptures" Johnson is referring to, since scholars don't recognize such a chimera.

His second paragraph is an insult to the scholarship of Dom Crossan or Rudolf Bultmann, or even Raymond E. Brown.  Brown is a Catholic priest and scholar whose work is closely in line with traditional Biblical exegesis; but his scholarship is quite modern and impeccable  He has, in other words, points where I disagree with him, but I do so with respect because his work is solid and if I think he has blind spots, it only reminds me I have my own I don't see.  Neither Crossan nor Bultmann are truly in the German historical/critical school from the 19th century, which is another problem for me.  Johnson is writing in the 21st century, and I assume the bone he has to pick is with Crossan and the Jesus Seminar.  Of the members of that group known to the public or who became familiar (briefly) for their popular works. Crossan is by far the most scholarly.  Bultmann is the German scholar without peer; his works are so densely packed with information it's like reading three books at once just to read one.  None of this means these scholars are without error; but you don't take them on with vague and glittering generalities and a few vague sentences explaining that "it's all like this!"

I've seen enough of that "school" of analysis on the internet and in recent Supreme Court opinions (draft and published).  I don't need any more of it.

Let's take up historical criticism for a moment.  It's pretty much the founding "school" of modern Biblical criticism.  As such, it is too prone to dismiss the work of saints and scholars before them (much as the Renaissance declared the time before it the "Dark Ages".  Nice work when you get to determine the definitions, isn't it?).  But historical criticism was trying to clear away millenia of mythology and mistake in order to read Scripture with fresh eyes in the 19th century.  That century must be remembered as the era of "God's Funeral," as Edmund Wilson put it at the end of the 20th century.  Historical criticism was not trying to return Xianity to its "pure" form; it was trying to find a way to understand scripture in what were then "modern times."  When I was young the vogue was to translate the scriptures (or just update the RSV) into more contemporary language.  There were the "Cottonpatch" gospels," and "Good News For Modern Man," and I think some versions in what was then called "Black English." Yeah, these all sound painfully condescending and clueless 60 years later; but this was partly due to the focus, frankly, on sola scriptura.  What was missing was a new focus on interpretation, which was the purpose of historical criticism in the 19th century.  When that school of analysis (and others; so many others) finally began to penetrate into the pews in the 1960's, it prompted people like Francis Schaeffer to explode in outrage.  Literally the first time I heard of Rudolf Bultmann was in a diatribe by Schaeffer (I tell a lie; I first encountered Bultmann in Robert Short's two books on the Christianity in "Peanuts."  He referenced Bultmann and Barth liberally.  Schaeffer got me interested in reading Bultmann; if he was so against him, Bultmann must be on to something.  Alas, it was seminary decades later before I finally started that reading.)  I've frankly forgotten the many schools of criticism that came out of German scholarship in the 19th century. Formalism was another; the analysis of stories to find "structures" in them (Structuralism came out of French anthropology in the 20th century, not coincidentaly because formalism became a tool of anthropology, folklore studies, and literary studies and criticism.).  So today even English teachers identify a fable, a parable, and a tale based on certain elements including length of story, complexity, and types of characters (talking animals, for example; or the realism of a Gospel parable).  After Jung, there is archetypal criticism; and so on.  There are several schools I learned something about in seminary, but never used for exegesis, so frankly I've forgotten them.  Picking on historical criticms now is only because the Jesus Seminar championed a new version of it late in the last century.

The Jesus Seminar was actually a fairly loose collection of Biblical scholars with one unifying principle:  to provide grounds for rejecting as much of Biblical literalism as they could.  It's a bit of an ambitious goal because ideas are both invisible and bulletproof, as well as being damned near immortal.  Consider Augustine's concept of original sin, one Paul himself probably wouldn't recognize. But more people recognize Augustine's framework (even if they don't know Augustine by name) than even know of Stendahl's work, so...there you are.  Still, the JS wrote and worked in opposition to literalism that tried to establish every word of the Gospels (especially, but also the words they liked from the Hebrew Scriptures. Literalists and fundamentalists tend to be a lot more selective about which words of the Law Matthew's Jesus says he came to fulfill, actually need to be fulfilled.) as true and meant just as they are written (i.e., translated) and especially as they are interpreted by modern fundamentalists and literalists.

This is where I say, now:  "Fine, fundies and literalists; you read it your way and I'll read it mine." And so I appreciate the tools scholars like the JS have given me.  But they are only tools.  Interpretation is, as ever, the contentious matter.

So the Jesus Seminar set itself a particular goal.  The infamous "red text" version they came up with, for example.  The Seminar publicized its practice of meeting to vote on the words of Jesus in the gospels:  red for historically accurate, gray for possibly the words of Jesus of Nazareth, black for words invented by a community or the gospel writer (the consensus among scholars is that the four canonicals are the products of a community of believers, not one scribe working feverishly under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit or just the need to make a record as a modern journalist or even diarist would today.  One hand may have written, but undoubtedly many voices had a say in the final product.).  My NT professor proudly regaled us with tales of being among the "skeptics" who dropped a black marble (that's really how they did it; colored marbles in a bowl, which were then counted) for almost all the words of Jesus in all four gospels.

Were they right?  Were they historically more accurate?  That depends on what you make of their arguments.  I would argue you have to go to those sources for that discussion, and not take the third-hand report of Mr. Johnson, who wasn't at the table and has his own axe to grind.  It's really a rather simple principle of scholarship:  to examine a subject and critique it, you have to start with the subject itself, and get as close to the original or accurate form as possible.  If you're understanding of historical criticism is drawn from Mr. Johnson's diatribe, I contend you don't understand the subject at all.  Which doesn't mean you have to agree with me, or disagree with Mr. Johnson.  But honestly, his generalizations bear very little relationship to reality, in this case.

As for the aims of the Jesus Seminar:  they didn't really alter the trajectory of fundamentalism or Biblical literalism in America.  They published their Scholars Version (which I still admire), and then the band broke up.  It had pretty much stopped functioning by the time I was in seminary, and it's just another footnote now, if that. I understand now that, in academic circles and seminaries, it's already old news and considered quaint, at best.

So it goes.

Now, is Johnson wrong?  I just think his argumentsa aren't very good.  I have my critiques of Crossan.  He started out using literary critical tools and some tools from anthropology (formalism, mostly) to analyze the parables.  His The Dark Interval was especially important to me the first time I read it.  But Crossan was never of the majesty of Bultmann, whose The Gospel of John I could study for years, even as I disagree with much of it (Bultmann is dismissive of the canonicals.  I find Luke the most theologically subtle and humanly engaging of the four.  Go and please the world.)  Crossan abandoned biblical exegesis in favor of historical analysis, and not the stuff that came out of Germany in the 19th century.  This pursuit pulled him deeper and deeper into both Biblical historical studies and anthropology, and frankly he almost didn't come out the other side.  Both of those disciplines are deeply complex and not for dilettantes to play with (think Dawkins, with no genetics training at all, teaching the world about the "selfish gene," an idea no geneticist would touch with a club).  Crossan wasn't as shallow as Dawkins, but I always wondered what anthropologists and archaeologists thought of his work on the historical Jesus and the early church.  He teamed up with an archaeologist for Excavating Jesus and In Search of Paul, and I think those books are the better for it.  His books on Jesus and the early church are quite rigorous, but I'd welcome the support of an archaeologist or two (as well as an anthropologist) to be able to assess their rigor.  I don't, by contrast, doubt the rigor of Bultmann's scholarship; but he stays firmly in the realm within which he did all of his work.  Indeed, Bultmann's more "famous" work on "demythologizing" is, I think, his weakest, because he's almost literally out of his field (and treading on anthropology, psychology, and even sociology.

Historical criticism began as an attempt to understand scriptures and the "Biblical world" as we understand the rest of human history and historical experience.  It is a tool for exegesis; nothing more.  It does not determine the validity of interpretation, it provides another set of understandings and methods for interpretation.  Subsequent schools of scholarship, as they came along in the 19th and 20th, and now 21st centuries, have primarily the same goal.  Fundamentalism is literally a reaction to historical criticism, as is literalism (at least in its contemporary form). I don't mind having the tools to refute them; at least for my own satisfaction.  There are many ways of exegeting scripture; there is no one "right" way.  Mr. Johnson is quite right to have his own opinions about the validity of methods, even of outcomes.

But jeebus, dude, know what you're talkin' about, huh?  You're embarassing the rest of us.  Yes, we do "measure adequacy and integrity in terms of other criteria."  But those criteria exist in reference to other criteria.  You are free to disagree with the latter, but you first have to give them their due.  Lazy denunciations based on faulty representations don't feed the bulldog.

*The first church I pastored was literally next door (i.e., on the same lot with no road between us) to a MO Synod church. I was told not to introduce myself there as I would not be welcome, despite the fact the UCC has historical roots in the Lutheran branch of Protestantism.  MO Synod remains "pure" by not associating with any other churches.  WI Synod remains pure by not associating with MO Synod, whom they think aren't "authentic" enough.)