The Higher Critics of the Bible

While I may disagree with Strenski on many points, I must agree with his inclusion of the Higher Critics of the Bible. After learning about them, I can not believe that they have been left out of the study of theory in religion. while they technically predate the study of religion as its own discipline, they influenced all the greats of modern Western religious thought. In the late nineteenth century, the people who began to look at the Bible in a new way were the deists, their critics, and liberal Protestants. Referred to as the Higher Critics, they “all shared the conviction that the Bible could and should be scrutinized like any other piece of literature – in a rational,, empirical, that is to say, naturalistic way, all the while recalling the ‘deist’ sense of human reason as a divine endowment” (Strenski 34). These deists and critics included such names as Jean Bodin, Herbert of Cherbury, John Locke, and David Hume.

My personal favorite of the Higher Critics, William Robertson Smith, believed that the work of the Higher Critics would add to the legitimacy of the Bible. A true Protestant, he thought that anything that added to our understanding of the Bible could only increase the faith. While he knew this might cause some problems for some people, he believed that “In this department of intellectual life science and faith have joined hands. There is no discordance between the religious and scholarly method of study. They lead to the same goal; and the more closely our study fulfils the demands of historical scholarship, the more fully will it correspond with our religious needs” (Smith 1881, p. 27, Strenski 35).

Before the Higher Critics, there was not much focus on the historical side of the Bible. The Higher Critics began to concern themselves with the historical context of the Bible, looking for non-Biblical sources that supported the stories everyone knew so well. This work is the basis for what we now call the search for the “historical Jesus” which still goes on today. This search added four new disciplines to the study of religion: history, philology, text criticism, and hermeneutics. While all valid and (somewhat) interesting, I am only going to discuss hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is “interpreting what the biblical texts meant in their original and present form, and how they should be construed in the future” (Strenski 44). This is where critical biblical interpretation begins to touch theology. Those who study the Bible secularly use hermeneutics to make connections between the text and how religion is practiced. Theologians use hermeneutics to better understand the messages in the Bible.

For over one hundred years the Bible has faced this scrutiny. I am sure that there were murmurs like the Higher Critics before. As a Christian, sometimes the conclusions drawn by people dedicated to the “historical Jesus” can be offensive. The writings of the Jesus Seminar are still debated with opinions ranging from “everything they say is wrong” to “everything they say is right.” It is hard to wade through the technical speak to understand what any of it means to your Christian life. How do we read the Scriptures? Once again, I turn to the lovely indexed Catechism:

While God is the author of the Scriptures, He chose certain men to write His word. They “consigned to writing whatever he wanted written, and no more” (CCC 106). “In Sacred Scripture, God speaks to man in a human way. To interpret Scripture correctly, the reader must be attentive to what the human authors truly wanted to affirm and to what God wanted to reveal to us by their words” (CCC 109). The Second Vatican Council offers these three guidelines: 1. “Be especially attentive “to the content and unity of the whole Scripture.”” 2. “Read the Scripture within “the living Tradition of the whole Church.”” 3. “Be attentive to the analogy of faith” (CCC 112, 113, 114). I realize that these guidelines bring up more questions, but if you look up the articles yourself you will find explanations. (I got tired of typing.)

Since we have our own guidelines for study and plenty of theologians for help, is there any merit in studying the Higher Critics? That I leave up to you, reader. If studying what Jesus ate and how that affected His digestion and how that affected what He taught on the Mount is your cup of tea, go right ahead with blessings! That is the door opened for you by the Higher Critics. If you really could give a squirrel’s tail about what Paul made his tents out of, but you really like that love is patient and kind that is fine, too. We each have our gifts that we can contribute to the understanding of Jesus.

Sorry it's been so long since I posted! I'll try not to wait so long before the next.