MINIMALISM VS. MAXIMALISM AGAIN:

"History" and "Writing" (Bible and Interpretation)


Did the authors and editors of Scripture ever intend to write what we define as "history?" If they did not, many of our arguments about the historicity of the Bible in modern terms become meaningless.


By Charles David Isbell [not "Isabell" - JRD]
Director of Jewish Studies
Louisiana State University
August 200

If one rules out the extremists in both Christianity and Judaism, fundamentalists and black-hat haredim, it is virtually impossible to find anyone who believes that there is such a thing as �objective� historical truth. All history is somebody�s opinion. Still in all, �history� is perhaps the one word most frequently misunderstood and misused by scholars and students of the Bible. Too often, the source of this misunderstanding is a presumption that the Bible should meet the standard of something called �history� in the modern sense of the word but that the authors and editors of the biblical narratives were simply not sophisticated enough to understand what is meant today by �history.� The sad fact is that this dismissal of the ancients is likely to be done by modern writers whose own grasp of �history� is itself seldom clearly enunciated.

Two of the questions posed by Professor Provan leap to the fore here. �What is the nature of our knowledge of the past? What are historical �facts�?� And Provan is correct that as a group pursuing this discussion, we have not produced answers that are plain enough to allow us to be sure that we are all talking about the same thing. The compelling �Minimalism� debate among biblical scholars unfolding on this site involves more than anything else a definition of �history� as found in biblical texts. Far too often, even this debate among scholars centers around modern theoretical models and personal ideologies. Often too, we read the conclusion that it is the lack of sophistication of the ancients that stands in the way of our ability to perceive the true meaning of their writings just because we are so modern. That is, in their simple and pre-modern state, they may have thought they were writing history, but of course we know that they were not.

But although Provan�s questions are compelling, I believe there is another question that should be answered first: Did the authors and editors of Scripture ever intend to write what we define as �history?� If they did not, many of our arguments about the historicity of the Bible in modern terms become meaningless. As we attempt to set ideology aside and as we inquire after the Bible�s own internal witness to its purposes, the evidence is surprising.

The rest of the article is very difficult to excerpt, but the concluding paragraph reads:

If the Bible is read only as a search for �facts,� then most of its message will be lost, for the authors of the Bible were not interested in �just the facts.� They looked at the ways in which �facts� which they assumed true influenced people to live. That is why the Bible is so difficult to read and understand. We want to know facts of a kind that the Bible most often does not give. But it does not follow that because their interest in �history� was different from ours we may pronounce them at fault, even less that we may accuse them of twisting the truth to create out of whole cloth a piece of writing they themselves knew to be false and did not believe. We may be so arrogant as to assume that we know better than they did what they should have put in their �Bible.� But I doubt that they were so arrogant as to presume readers would be so gullible that both their present and all later generations [including us] could be fooled by ideas they themselves knew fully well to be mere fiction.

This is a very interesting and thought-provoking piece. Allow me to respond on a few issues. If the point is that the biblical writers thought that they were describing real historical events, of which they were giving us the true interpretation, I agree completely. However, isn't it important that from our perspective as critical historians the evidence for many of the stories they tell is so weak and problematic that we would never consider believing they really happened if they were from anywhere but the Bible? This is a point virtually universally agreed upon by specialists, the difference between minimalists and maximalists begin one of degree. The good faith of the biblical writers isn't in doubt (at least to me). Their competence as historians by our lights is another matter entirely.

If Professor Isbell is saying that the authors knew they were writing edifying literature rather than history, I agree. If he is saying they knew they were writing fiction (and I'm not sure whether he is or not), I disagree. Their moralizing was based on what they thought were the actual facts, even though they knew they were not writing history per se. At least some of the point of their moralizing would be lost if the events didn't happen. If he is saying we can't tell whether much of what they tell really happened or not, I suppose I agree, but then we have no business trying to use it as history for our own purposes (and it's perfectly reasonable for us to ask our own historical questions of the text for our own agenda).

It seems to me that a false dichotomy between moralizing and history is being set up here. The biblical writers thought they were giving true theological interpretations of events and facts that were real. Their interpretations are ultimately unfalsifiable but we can still test the veracity of the alleged events and facts they were interpreting and we may well decide they were wrong about some of those events and facts. It's important for us to understand and appreciate their agenda but it's also important for us to evaluate their work for ours. This is not grousing or declaring the biblical writers to be failures. It is not haranguing them or pronouncing them at fault.

But don't accept my interpretation! Read it all yourself and see what you think.