“It is often the case that people who hold passionate beliefs about the nature of the Bible are surprisingly unfamiliar with its content.”

Professor John J. Collins


The following is an excerpt from the Preface to a modern academic text: Introduction to the Hebrew Bible by John J. Collins. Augsburg Fortress Press, 2004.

"The introduction is historical-critical in the sense that it emphasizes that the biblical text is the product of a particular time and place and is rooted in the culture of the ancient Near East. Since much of the Old Testament tells an ostensibly historical story, questions of historical accuracy must be addressed. In part, this is a matter of correlating the biblical account with evidence derived from archaeology and other historical sources. But it also leads to a discussion of the genre of the biblical text. The historical-like appearance of biblical narrative should not be confused with historiography in the modern sense. Our best guide to the genre of biblical narrative is the corpus of literature from the ancient Near East that has been recovered over the last two-hundred years.

This introduction, however, is not only historical in orientation. The primary importance of the Old Testament as scripture lies in its ethical implications. In some cases biblical material is ethically inspiring - the story of liberation from slavery in Egypt, the Ten Commandments, the preaching of the prophets on social justice. In other cases, however, it is repellent to modern sensibilities. The command to slaughter the Canaanites is the showcase example, but there are numerous issues relating to slaves, women, homosexuality, and the death penalty that are, at the very least, controversial in a modern context. In any of these cases, whether congenial to modern sensibilities or not, this introduction tries to use the biblical text as a springboard for rising issues of enduring importance. The text is not a source of answers on these issues, but rather a source of questions. Most students initially see the text though a filter of traditional interpretations. It is important to appreciate how these traditional interpretations arose, but also to ask how far they are grounded in the biblical text and whether other interpretations are possible." (pp. ix - x)

(A native of Ireland, Professor Collins was a professor of Hebrew Bible at the University of Chicago from 1991 until his arrival at Yale Divinity School in 2000. He previously taught at the University of Notre Dame. He has published widely on the subjects of apocalypticism, wisdom, Hellenistic Judaism, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. His books include the commentary on Daniel in the Hermeneia series; The Scepter and the Star: The Messiahs of Apocalypticism in the Dead Sea Scrolls; Jewish Wisdom in the Hellenistic Age; The Apocalyptic Imagination; Between Athens and Jerusalem: Jewish Identity in the Hellenistic Diaspora; and most recently, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible with CD-ROM; Does the Bible Justify Violence?; Jewish Cult and Hellenistic Culture; Encounters with Biblical Theology; and The Bible after Bable: Historical Criticism in a Postmodern Age. He is co-editor of the three-volume Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism and has participated in the editing of the Dead Sea Scrolls. He is editor of a monograph series for Brill titled Journal for the Study of Judaism Supplements and of the journal Dead Sea Discoveries, and has served as editor of the Journal of Biblical Literature and as president of both the Catholic Biblical Association and the Society of Biblical Literature.)

6 comments:

Mark Plus said...

I can see why Americans don't know much about the bible: Reading the bible looks way too much like school work to have mass appeal. And the Christians who bother to master the scriptures in their original languages, along with the supporting apologetic literature, bear more than a passing resemblance to the geeks held in disdain in the secular world.

Harry H. McCall said...

Most Christians are like the Sunday afternoon quarterback. They yell out all the defensive moves from their easy chair and often blame the problems on the stupidly of the players. But most easy chair quarterbacks and coaches have never played the game themselves much less on the professional level.

Regardless of what preachers claim, the Bible is a complex book covering writings over a 1,000 year period. Understanding such a complex text must be viewed from a modern fully equipped scholastic level or the Bible text will continue to be like walking though a cow pasture: Be careful where you step; some of the ideas commanded by God are barbaric and stink!

While listing to TV and radio evangelist, I've noticed several dozen selected texts preached to death while the majority of the Old Testament is too embarrassing to be preached on especially in a church-family setting.

Indeed, while man is theologically blamed as limited and sinful, this very fault laden human mind must keep the so-called perfect God functioning by selective preaching.

Luke said...

Harry,

Is the quote in the title of your post your own, or from John J. Collins?

ahswan said...

I would tend to agree with you about the typical American Christian. We live on fast food, and read the Bible with the same mentality.

There's also an amazing disdain for historical understandings. I really appreciate, for example, Jewish understandings of the Old Testament - they've studied far longer than Christians.

In that regard, many of the rather strange portions of the Old Testament, when put in context of the times, are perhaps not so strange. Put into a modern context, even the New Testament suffers. And, there's also the need to understand the literary styles and devices used. Most people who preach from Revelation don't have any understanding of apocalyptic literature, and we end up with things like "Left Behind."

Harry H. McCall said...

Luke, the quote is by Professor Collins and is found on page one of his Introduction.

Harry H. McCall said...

Ahswan, I totally agree. The last church I was a member (and where I was a Sunday school teacher) was a Southern Baptist church. There the Baptist Quarterly was the Bible and no one brought a Bible to the class.

The third time I was reprimanded for not using the Baptist Quarterly, they told me that they would cancel the class before I taught again. I was told the "Baptist Quarterly was written by very qualified men and did not need to be supplemented in any way”.

I call the Baptist Sunday school board in Nashville, Tenn. and talked to the chairman who had a PhD in New Testament on the text critical use of the New Testament. I was shock at what little he knew and he was the lead advisor on the literature board...as Jesus said: “The blind leading the blind”.