Biblical scholarship in Europe and North America is in an unhealthy state. For two and a half centuries academic critics have purported to explain how biblical texts came about and therefore what “message” they conveyed. Since those texts couldn’t possibly be what they claimed to be—histories of ancient Jewish monarchs, revelations of God’s character, eyewitness accounts of Jesus’ miracles—modern critics set about explaining what they were.
Beginning in Germany in the mid-19th century, the “historical-critical” discipline, as it came to be known, adopted the pretensions of a science: scholarly rigor, technical jargon, esteemed academic journals, and so on. But for all the prestige of its institutions, the claims of this modern “scientific” form of criticism are no more verifiable than simple religious beliefs; in some cases, less so. There is no certainty to be found in its innumerable theories about the provenance and meaning of biblical texts, only loose and fleeting concurrences of opinion.
