There is a new storm brewing in OT evangelical scholarship: Denial of Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch and the resulting validating of classical liberal historical criticism methodology. The blog posts are up, the books are being published at a steady rate by well-established figures both in the publishing world and in evangelical academia. In the months and years ahead, more OT scholars with roots in the evangelical tradition will align themselves with this newly found historical-critical consensus in the same way it overwhelmed European universities in the 19th century and American mainline seminaries in the 20th century.
However, before we join this call to freedom from the shackles of "pre-critical" and "fundamentalist" notions of Mosaic composition, it is important to take a look in our rear-view mirror. In both Europe and the US, a skeptical stance toward the Scripture, among other factors, has resulted in devastating losses in terms of church growth. One anecdotal story will suffice. In my home country of Switzerland in the French-speaking part, I was told that a couple of years ago, the faculty of theology in Neuchâtel had no new theological students matriculating. The other two universities that are training pastors in the State Reformed Church, Lausanne and Genève, now share classes because of lack of students (this is Calvin's seminary we're talking about here). In the US, the narrative is similar: mainline seminaries are struggling too, though not as severely as in Europe.
The approach contains many well known liberal arguments concerning the formation of the Pentateuch: the authorship of the Pentateuch was a long-term literary process. Moses, while an authority behind the core texts, was only one part of the process that led to the text in its final form. Tradents (= editors/authors) are credited with substantial responsibilities for the production of the Pentateuch. So, nothing new under the sun here. This sort of long-term processual scheme to factor in the multivariate dimensions of the Five Books of Moses has been a critical mainstay for 200 years. But now, the arguments have taken a sort of evangelical idiosyncratic identity, an "in-house" feel: Since the Holy Spirit superintended the process, we need not fear this methodology. God must have inspired the tradents just the same way he inspired Moses.
It appears the OT and NT writers receiving these Pentateuchal texts didn't seem to share modern critics' confidence in this "gap theory." When OT and NT writers said "Moses said this," the most reasonable assumption is that they meant he also wrote it (Nehemiah 8, etc.). To argue otherwise seems a hard case to make, especially when the production of texts in the Ancient Near East is also factored in. Orality (oral tradition) and literacy (texts) work hand in hand on many occasions (see Exodus 15 and Judges 5; the 9th century Mesha Stele [a Moabite text]). The fact that it's very hard to recognize precisely when the oral traditions are put to writing (especially in Genesis) cautions us from being overly confident in assuming this was inevitably a long term process. On the contrary, in the ANE, what the king says becomes binding authority (e.g., the code of Hammurabi) and it would be difficult to imagine scribes taking great liberties altering the accounts, especially much later on, when the king/authority is dead. In fact, it's better to assume just the opposite happens. Even today, people want their words recorded for posterity while they are alive. This was certainly the case for Nehemiah in chs 1-6, 13: "Remember me, O God." How much more so when these documents become codified and binding upon the community while the authority (Moses) is still present in their midst (Ex 24; Deuteronomy).
So, for evangelicals committing to this approach, the question becomes, how historical is the text? For those who have dropped the "inerrancy" language from their vocabulary, the hermeneutic of suspicion is in full effect and the answer is quite easy to handle: the authors of the story of Adam, the Exodus, and Conquest narratives have all badly flunked the course "Israelite History 101" as taught in modern universities. With this historical-critical grid, real Israelite history was quite different from what is recorded in the biblical text. For those who are hanging on to traditional definitions of inerrancy, the answer to this question is more complicated. What is more plausible? To believe the accuracy of an eye witness account based on an oral tradition? Or to believe that some unknown scribe, perhaps as late as a half-millennium later would put to writing a tradition passed down to him orally, down to the last details? I'm not doubting God could inspire these tradents, but does the text require us to believe in this long compositional process? Of that, I am not convinced at all. This is why many evangelical OT scholars still don't find compelling positive evidence to counter the case for both Mosaic authority and authorship of the Pentateuch.
No comments:
Post a Comment