Now What? On Historical-Criticism, the OT, and the Nagging Question, “Did Any of It Happen?”

I'm scheduled to teach a seminary class on the Old Testament this spring. It's an intro course, so it's a lot of high-level nerd content about dates and setting and authorship and genre and historical context. (Be still, my heart.) To prepare, I've been pre-teaching the material to interested church folks and facebook friends on Tuesday nights. It's actually been really helpful. So … shoutout to the Tuesday night crew! (Many thanks.)

Six weeks in, here's what I've learned: historical-critical scholarship is pretty jarring for evangelicals. [That's jargon-y, and for the uninitiated, it may be incomprehensible. Here's what I mean. The ideas that the majority of Bible scholars have about, well, the Bible, are really different from what a lot of folks in conservative American churches have heard their whole lives.]

Here's part of the problem is, not too many people talk about it in these circles — even though it's pretty standard stuff in (most) seminaries.

And if it is talked about in evangelical churches, it's demonized. In fact, it's usually set in the context of "apologetics." Children of the 80s, do you remember that big book by Josh McDowell that the adults in your house loved … the one about evidence demanding a verdict? Yeah, it's that kind of a thing. In it, McDowell argues, "Here's the stuff that most scholars think ... and I'm here to tell you why they're wrong." (He isn’t a Bible scholar, btw.)

Evangelicals have a certain view of the Bible, and if anything treads upon it, it becomes a problem to be solved. 

I will say, they have come up with some really brilliant "solutions."

And we know them.

Which is why, when you fill a zoom class of 25 church folks, and you start presenting the findings of historical-critical research (again, the stuff that *most* scholars accept), it quickly becomes an experiment in me saying week after week, "yeah, that well-known story ... probably didn't happen like that."

And that can be a big problem.

For example, here's how *most* scholars deal with the stories of the Old Testament that we have covered so far. (Brace yourself.)

The Creation Account in Genesis 1: It's highly stylized, poetic even. When read in its ancient Near Eastern context, it says a lot more about who created (God, not gods) than how and when. Scientific questions are the wrong sorts of questions (mainly because Genesis 1 can't be squared with mainstream scientific discovery).

Adam and Eve: Well, the author is giving us lots of clues here — from talking animals to magical fruit to primordial human beings strolling in a garden with God "in the cool of the day." The story might be/probably is/ok, definitely ismeant to be read figuratively or parabolically. (I mean, in any other context, that's precisely how we would read such a story.) This conclusion doesn't mean God didn't create. That's just not really the point of the Genesis story. Something else is happening here. (And again, science is an issue.)

The Flood and the Tower of Babel: Both are mythic in nature. They are telling stories of origins. In fact, most scholars read Genesis 1–11 as something decidedly different than pure historical retellings. When we read the Flood story to find out why geological layers are how they are or the Tower of Babel to prove where diverse languages came from, we are heading in the wrong direction.

The Ancestors — Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: There's no evidence for their existence outside of the Bible. (I haven't read Josh McDowell in a long time, but if he deals with this, I imagine he would counter, "Yes, but there isn't evidence AGAINST them existing. AND here's a lot of circumstantial evidence about their cultural context." We love plausibility arguments.) But even if we just stick with the Bible, some of the details included in the stories proves they were written well after the "historical characters" would have been in existence. The most common example is the domestication of camels. This is silly, I know, but stick with me. Camels appear regularly in these stories as beasts of burden, but most folks would say there's no evidence of their domestication until much much later. So it seems to suggest (quite strongly) that the stories are much much later than the Patriarchs. 

The Exodus Event: This one's real touchy. It's a really really important story for Israel's identity. They bring it up all. the. time. So most scholars are convinced, something  happened. But ... here's the hard part ... what actually happened probably looked quite a bit different than what is depicted in the Bible. Just like everything else we've considered up to this point, there is nothing in the extrabiblical record — no archaeological remains, no Egyptian texts (or any other texts outside the Bible) — that would suggest 2.5 million Hebrew slaves escaped Egyptian captivity, crossed the Red Sea, killed a large portion of the Egyptian army, and then wandered in the desert for 40 years. That's a problem. And also, the theological overtones of the story are screaming at us! This presentation, especially in the plagues, is about the God of Israel vs. the gods of Egypt. 

The Conquest of Canaan: Joshua and the battle of Jericho? Ai? All those wars in the book? Same thing. The archaeological record is a huge mess. On most accounts, Jericho and Ai are believed to have been unwalled and uninhabited in the time of Joshua, which, you know, puts a pretty big damper on  the kids' song about Joshua marching around the city until "the walls came-uh tumbling down." In fact, of all the places Joshua is said to destroy, the archaeological evidence of only 2 (of 20) matches up with the biblical story.

The Emergence of Israel as a Nation: So if 2.5 million Hebrew slaves didn't leave Egyptian captivity and their ancestors didn't invade the promised land, this means, the story of how Israel got onto the scene is unknown. So scholars have tried to put the pieces together, and the options they have come up with don't look much like the Bible. Again, the archaeological record is a real problem. It doesn't seem to indicate a bunch of foreigners invading and taking the land in the 13th century BC. So, instead, they talk about a peaceful invasion or a rebellion of a lower class of folks from within the land or they posit "the Israelites were Canaanites."

So now we're through the first 6 books of the Old Testament, and it's decidedly not what you've heard before. Each week, I've found myself tentatively saying, "Yeah, so *most* scholars don't really think this story happened ... at least not in the way the Bible records it."

I'll go ahead and spoil it for you ... it doesn't get a whole lot better as we look at the next few books either. 

Take King David. 

Prior to 1993, there was no evidence outside of the biblical text for the Davidic monarchy. Then scholars found an inscription (below) that says something about the "house of David" (it’s the bit in white), which was a huge find! So for the last few decades, scholars have been pretty sure David existed. (Yippee!) But the stories about him? (Yeesh.) They definitely aren't pure history, which we shouldn't expect from ancient (or modern) writers anyway. It's more like political propaganda. (If you're interested, check out my videos on David.)**

The Tel Dan Inscription

If all this is new information, I'm so sorry. Chances are, your pastor knows about it, but very few (me) are up for killing people's dreams in a sermon. (Jokes.) (Sort of.) ***

So anyway, my mom has been taking the class — I like to think it's because she's really interested in Bible nerd stuff, but I also know it's because she likes to support me. The other night, we were eating dinner and she said, "What's the point of all this stuff, if it didn't really happen? Why is it in there?"

What a great question. (Nice job, Mom.) 

It's a great question because it is a "now what do I do" question.

When people are confronted with new (and admittedly SCARY) ideas, it's really easy to default to defensiveness. 

We like to say, "I know you just presented a bunch of facts and stuff, and I know what you said makes sense, and I know people have spent a lot of time thinking and studying these things, and I can see that the archaeological record provides us with some problems, but I reject everything you said because it doesn't go with my predetermined ideas about the Bible."

In Christian circles, especially in America, we are taught to think about the Bible in a certain way. 

We attach certain words to it (words that aren't in the Bible, mind you) to describe it. 

We have certain preconceptions about how the Bible behaves, how it tells stories, how those stories must present historical facts, and how if one of those stories that we think is historical is shown to not be historical then the whole thing falls apart. 

When we live here, there would be a lot (a lot, a lot, a lot) tied up for us in just one week of exploring the stories of the Old Testament where the instructor says, "I know you know this story, and I know you have read it a certain way from the time you were in Sunday school, but consider this ..."

Rethinking things is terrifying.

So when confronted with this new information, it's easier (and safer) to double down on what we *thought we knew.*

Or ... we can ask the much braver question, "Ok, let's say the critical scholars are right ... now what? How does this new information make me think about the Bible — what it is, and what it does, and what we are supposed to learn from it? What if [X story] has a historical kernel ... what if something happened ... but that happening isn't presented in the Bible as a shot-for-shot video tape recording? What if it's artful? What if it's a theological presentation? A theological re-shaping? What if it's ancient-ness is something to consider? Maybe my framework has been wrong?"

When I was growing up, I heard a lot of people around me talking about how important the Bible was. They would read it and memorize it and quote it; they would use it to formulate rules of what we should and should not do. But then, I have seen a lot of those same people not want to engage in hard conversations about what the Bible is communicating and how it is communicating and what we should expect from it.

I know (because I've had to experience it) what it feels like when someone says, there is more to "what you thought you knew." 

But I also know that on the other side of that rethink, of that deconstruction, of that unlearning ... is something else.

And it's so good.

This advice will not be for everyone, I know that. 

It's too costly. 

It's too scary. 

It's too ... I'm not even quite sure what, but I get it. 

But here it is, if you are able to receive it: put Josh McDowell back on the shelf, stop protecting (your view of) the Bible, and allow yourself to ask the "now what" questions. 

Who knows what you will find ...

Josh James (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is a commissioned Church Starter in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and one of the pastors of The Restoration Project. He has written a book about the ethics of the Psalms.

Footnotes:

**I don't want to leave you with such a depressing view of the historicity of the Bible. Once we get into the divided kingdom (after David and Solomon), a lot of other people start talking about Israel, which gives us some historical pegs. 

***There *are* other ways to think about things than what I've presented above. And your pastor may have learned these. Some seminaries are bastions of safety. They decide what information goes out to the people. (I don't agree with the way the conversations are slanted or the conclusions that are reached, but these alternative ways of processing information exist, and they're actually pretty creative. Conservative scholars are not dumb. They know the issues that exist and have come up with ingenious ways to argue around them. But many times the process is fueled more by a goal of protecting the Bible than accepting the evidence as we have it. For example, a well-known seminary president (of the largest denomination in the country) recently wrote, "I do not allow any line of evidence from outside the Bible to nullify to the slightest degree the truthfulness of any text in all that the text asserts and claims." If that's not protection, I have NO IDEA WHAT IS.)