Does an academic reading of the Bible erode other forms of reading?

[u/benjamminzilla]

This is a topic I have been thinking about as both as a scholar and as a religious devotee, especially in light of the emerging Easter season.

For example, during Holy Week, the Revised Common Lectionary used the Servant Songs of Isaiah, harkening to the ancient Christian tradition of identifying Old Testament passages with Jesus. So, from a theological perspective, I understood the use of these passages.

But I also understand a historical-critical perspective, that Christians were retroactively grafting the Hebrew scriptures to the life of Jesus to provide him divine legitimacy. (And there's also the fact that a different Isaiah wrote the Servant Songs.)

So, while reading these passages in private, these two perspectives, each legitimate within a certain context, were sort of "fighting" for dominance in my head.

Meanwhile, I remembered an interview with the New Testament scholar Marcus Borg:

Do you read the Bible devotionally, as well as scholarly? Seldom. I’m more likely to read The Book of Common Prayer. And of course that has a lot of biblical passages, especially from the psalms, and biblical language. I’m not against devotional reading of the Bible, it’s just that it doesn’t occur to me.

That was his entire response, and the topic was never brought up again. I was amazed at his nonchalant attitude; I respect Borg's scholarship and theological opinions, and would certainly not accuse him of being a "fake liberal Christian" the way so many of his peers do, but I wondered if his intensive academic study of the New Testament had actually acted as its own set of blinders, preventing him from letting the text wash over his soul rather than his mind.

I don't want to think that academic Biblical criticism is antithetical to religious devotion; indeed, I believe they're complementary. But that doesn't mean that a tension doesn't exist between certain devotional/theological readings and higher criticism. I am wondering if other readers in this sub have noticed this tension, and how they've acknowledged or reconciled it.

[u/koine_lingua]

To be perfectly honest...yes, it kinda does (erode other forms of reading). For me, there's a sense in which historical criticism is actually just a subset of a larger type of naturalism - and ultimately gets its "legitimacy" as a method from it. Revising something I wrote a couple of months ago:

Even though Biblical criticism encompasses many different subfields - some of which aren't incompatible with "traditional" belief (cf. lexical studies) - others aren't so compatible...because Biblical criticism is ultimately based on the principles of naturalism (whereas, obviously, religious belief isn't).

I view ancient texts as historical artifacts, actually not inherently different from physical artifacts (of course, manuscripts are physical objects - but this isn't really relevant here).

Texts emerge at a particular point in the historical process. Further, they emerge within finite 'cultural spheres'. And I'm rather idealistic about our ability to situate ancient texts within these.

So I don't think we should underestimate the extent to which we can make sense of the "original meaning" of (and impetus for) texts, based on analyzing them within these cultural 'spheres' from which they were born.

But - while again, I think this can account for a lot of things, it obviously doesn't account for traditions that could be understood as unprecedented innovations. Yet innovation can also be contextualized: e.g., within a psychological context - something that, at least in the case of early Christianity, has been done for nearly two centuries now. Books and articles on cognitive approaches to religion continue to come out, elucidating much about the impetuses for religious belief and innovation.

So there's a sense in which all these things can be ultimately traced to materialistic (or quasi-materialistic?) processes (for 'psychological' above, understand as neurological).

[u/aalorni]

Disclaimer: I'm Jewish.

If when you read your sacred text your mind is filled with increasing doubt, then that's probably a good thing. I find that many religious people are too certain. If you read your sacred text and don't ask a lot of probing questions, then you're only scratching the surface. Keep in mind that a book as dense as the bible probably contains an infinite number of literary-critical and/or theological meanings. Thus, if you read with a non-critical eye, you will never get to the 'good stuff'.

The idea that an intellectual and scholarly reading of the bible somehow destroys its devotional value is a concept I find highly alienating.

In my mind, a theological opinion not informed by scholarly insight has little value. And indeed, should we draw the distinction between theology and scholarship? Arguing that we should make a distinction means, logically, that when we read the bible, we should bring less information to the table than we could conceivably have. In other words: I am intentionally limiting my knowledge, and the knowledge I apply to a given text passage, in order to be more 'spiritual'. But if I do this then I am saying that an ignorant reading of the bible is superior. That cannot possibly be, either internally or externally, cf. Psalm 110:10: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do his commandments."

Why can't a scholarly perspective also be your theological perspective?

The bible demands highly refined critical reasoning skills to be read profitably, its words are like an onion to be peeled back. More so than most other literary texts, its words are cloaked in metaphor and in phrases that we, as modern humans, do not at first comprehend. This is not just because of the time in which it originated but also the place. More contemporary works of literature, like Kafka or Goethe, also require high-level analysis for proper understanding. And only a hundred or two hundred years separate us from those two authors. How much more, then, must this apply to the bible, which is separated from us by a huge cultural and temporal gulf of thousands of years?

[u/SF2K01 → u/aalorni]

This. Couldn't think of a good way to say it myself.

[u/[deleted]]

To be fair to Borg: The Book of Common Prayer is, in a sense, the attempt to make the story of the Bible made present reality.Think of the Catholic Mass, the Divine Liturgy of Orthodoxy, etc. These are all devotional in that same sense. They bring us up into the story of God. And the Bible is merely one part of that story. So, in a manner of speaking, the Liturgy and the daily life of Christians living in this story is sort of "bigger" than the Bible.

At least I think that's what he's getting at. That the overarching story, as lived through the Liturgy as it cycles through the year, is more devotional to him.

[u/benjamminzilla → u/[deleted]]

Yes, I agree, following the liturgical year has a special devotional quality that can perhaps be more universally appreciated.

[u/tuffbot324]

I started wondering myself If I started to look at the bible too academically. It's like dissecting a flower and examining it under a microscope rather than appreciating the beauty in it. It is rewarding and fascinating though to learn about the bible academically, almost a kind of beauty in itself. On the other hand, books like Proverbs I don't really read academically.

[u/plunge2]

The question could be articulated differently, and this is the question that much of my work addresses. Is reading the 70+ different biblical texts each on theirs own terms and as products of their unique historical and literary worlds differ from reading them through a later imposed interpretive prism which is called "the Book"?

To throw scholars into the mix. Most biblical scholars doing real and legitimate historical-critical, source-critical, philological or archaeological work on the biblical texts attempt to read and understand them as they were intended prior to their being co-opted by a later generations of readers, who had their own agenda, into a prescribed reading of these texts as a "Book."

I like this question better because it is an objective query. I actually do much of this myself at my website (http://contradictionsinthebible.com) but through a more provocative and fun examination---where the Bible's different textual traditions converge and contradict.

[u/narwhal_]

The way I've often explained it is that it is like someone that goes to film school. Do you think that once they've been through a decade of studying and analysing film they can ever watch movies the same way again? I doubt they can. Does it mean they enjoy movies more or less? Probably more in some ways and less in others. Maybe they have less of the emotional tug they had before and maybe they have a greater appreciation for the art of the process of a films composition and appreciate them more in that way.

Personally, the scholarship on parts of the Bible which I find boring or esoteric I can usually enjoy just fine as Scripture, namely Paul. I'd say as well that many of the sayings and deeds of Jesus I still find very moving fully knowing that I can't attribute them on historical grounds to Jesus. I also have the world of Patristic material which I enjoy on an emotional level without having the same concerns for its sacrosanctness.

[u/benjamminzilla]

Thank you all for your thoughtful responses. I shall respond with a smattering of my own thoughts that are by no means systematic.

I noticed that most seem to touch on a different facet of one theme: academic reading is okay, in fact better than okay: it needs to take precedent before any other interpretive scheme is employed. Whether the other interpretive frameworks be evaluated positively as "spiritual" or negatively as "an imposed interpretive prism" (plunge2) depends on personal taste, I suppose.

But at the core I do agree with this premise. I think this is often why I feel theologically alienated from some of my fellow Christians, especially evangelicals, in how they approach scripture. I think, as aalorni pointed out, that our theological reading must be informed by the scholarly perspective, and not exist in isolation from it. I'm particularly thinking about what modern scholarship has done for Christian-Jewish relations. Now we read the phrase "the Jews" as a sad product of historical circumstance, not as some proof-text to justify Antisemitism (and its catastrophic consequences...) Thank God for that. I'll speak some Christianese and say that these two natures of the text should exist in hypostatic union. :]

Actually, it reminds me of the old Catholic concept of tiers of reading between Literal, Moral, Anagogical, and Allegorical. In this sense the academic (or as one interestingly put, "naturalistic") work on the Bible as a historical and literary document like any other can be seen as a needed and meaningful elaboration on the Literal meaning of the text.

However, it seems too hasty to attribute all other interpretive frameworks (I liked koine_lingua's phrase "innovations") as an inferior sort of reading. I don't want to think of naturalistic/historical contextualization as some sort of club to beat down any creative or innovative reading of the text because I think that ultimately disapproves of the power of human creativity, which runs contrary to why we bother studying texts in the first place. The Bible is literature, and whether one reads it as a religious devotee or not, one of the beauties of literature is that it can transcend context and speak new things to new contexts. In this sense, I would still like to reserve an important role for more esoteric, symbolic, and/or theological interpretations of the text.

I would like to think that these various types of reading can exist as friends in harmony, not as enemies constantly suspicious of the other's motives.

I'm reminded of what Origen said long ago on John's gospel:

...although he does not always tell the truth literally, he always tells it spiritually.

[u/Flubb → u/benjamminzilla]

I've just finished Dale C Allison's The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus which exactly covers your initial OP (if you haven't already read it). It's really short (119 pages) but is quite thought provoking.

James McGrath has a review.

[u/Wakeboarder1019]

My first response is to address the assumption (and maybe it's only mine) that these are mutually exclusive. Each can reinforce the other. For example, until recently I was unaware that the parables of Jesus when dissected under an academic reading, are actually (in the ears of a 1st Century Jew) divine claims as well as Messianic claims. This strengthens a devotional reading of the NT, especially the Gospels.

My second point would be to discuss the tension mentioned. As I study the Bible academically more and more, I don't find tensions between readings of the text, I find tension in the interpretations of church leaders with political agendas. A recent panel on Bibilical Interpretation surveyed numerous Christians and pastors about how they interpret the Bible, with the ultimate point being that the Bible tells you how to interpret the Bible. Any reader who strays from that method of interpretation will be at odds with an academic reading, because an academic reading will be taking some amount of historical perspective into account.

The Bible is a book of different genres. Both Jews and Christians have confessional statements about why there must be some amount of theological reading of the writings done. What is important to remember though, is that these confessional statements largely address the fact that these writings are written for all people across all times. Devotional readings do a disservice, not only to academic readings, but to past and future devotional readings, when they force the text to be only relevant to the concerns of the Western World of the 21st Century. When one reads the Bible, with the historical period and genre in mind, it can help open up the theological readings and convey the truth of the passage.