The Nature of Biblical Criticism (review)

This volume augments and in many ways ties together the author’s numerous publications on the subject of biblical criticism and the quest to identify the “plain sense” of the text (see Chapter 4). In particular, he draws on previous discussion in Reading the Old Testament: Method in Biblical Study, 2^nd ed. (London: Longman & Todd, 1996) and “Classifying Biblical Criticism,” JSOT 29 (1984): 19–35. In a survey of the various ways in which the biblical text has been and is being read, he maps out the field and points to those that stand in opposition to biblical criticism as he defines the term: “an inquiry into the biblical text that takes its starting point from the attempt to understand, a desire to read the text in its coherence and to grasp its drift” (p. 30). Running throughout his study is the oft reiterated theme that biblical criticism is a “literary operation” and that the “essence of criticism is an attempt to understand the text by means of semantic inquiry, genre recognition, and the bracketing out of the question of truth” (p. 179).

The case he wishes to make is that the heart of biblical criticism is a “two-stage operation” that consists of first perceiving the meaning of the text and then “an evaluation of that meaning in relation to what one already believes to be the case” (p. 159). These two steps must be kept separate since it is far too easy to make assumptions about what the text means based on previously conceived judgments or anachronistic biases. This means of course that Barton is taking the position that “texts have meaning,” an issue that some modern critics dispute. In fact, the search for intentionality is to be considered a dead end, for “criticism cannot be equated with a concern for intention” (p. 74). Furthermore, he notes that criticizing the critics for failing to see what is in the text is not an anti-critical attitude, but that criticism has not been performed efficiently and effectively to this point (p. 162). Therefore, exegetical proposals and advocacy positions like Feminism or Liberation Theology should be tested against the text to establish what the message actually is.

Taking his argument a step further, Barton notes that once one establishes what the text says by exploring its semantics and context, then the next question to ask is “whether what it means is true” (p. 171). The Bible, like any other text, can be viewed rationally, putting one’s own beliefs on hold, and does not have to be protected or defended because it has some special quality or status that renders it unlike other texts. Although he acknowledges that some theological readings of the text and some religious communities claim to have “privileged access” to their meaning, he considers this position to be false since by its nature it denies that truth is open to all comers (p. 175).

Because he sees biblical criticism as a semantic or literary operation, Barton discounts its association with the sciences, tying it exclusively to the humanities. He does this to “liberate” it from the scientific method and the “processing” associated with the historical-critical method so that the emphasis is drawn back to “understanding” the text (p. 57; see also p. 123). I would agree to the extent that literature should not be gauged by a litmus test or forced into a strait jacket of historical assumptions or presuppositions. Furthermore, his point that meaning depends upon context (semantic and genre), and that “texts mean what they mean” rather than what we hope or choose to believe they mean is well founded (pp. 102–104). However, the social sciences should not be excluded in the study of the Bible since their intent is in fact to seek a clearer understanding of the meaning of the text, the language it employs, the social situations that it recounts, and traditions that form the basis of the social world that produced it during the...