In chapter 1, Neil and Wright labored to inform the readership of the New Testament criticism and how got here in the first place in their book, The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861-1986. The post-war German pietists, theologians, and philosophers started entertaining the idea of questioning authority. Anything that cannot stand the empirical test on its own merits was deemed either mythical or explained in natural explanation. The doctrine of the verbal inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture was scrutinized and rigorously put to tests that undermined the authority of Scripture. The historical-critical method they devised to study the history of Rome became a standard method applied to the sacred texts from antiquity. The proponents that championed the methods, despite claiming to approach the biblical texts without presupposition, violated the texts by simply assuming that the supernatural could not have happened in the physical realm. In their quest for historical Jesus, they relegated Jesus to a mere historical person stripped of his divinity or the Jesus of faith as a fortuitously emanated from the faith community. I will be discussing in a brief note the major players in the Enlightenment and the birth of New Testament Criticism.
The 18th and 19th centuries bring a sweeping change to our view of Scripture. Are any of these points still valid?
The mid-18th century saw the German academia emerge from the slow and painful war to challenge the historical Christian orthodox. That saw Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1774-8)’s posthumous publication of Wolfentüttel Fragmente by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1727-81) set the motion for the quest of the historical Jesus. A century later, Albert Schweitzer continued the quest with his writings. Within the fifty years of Luther’s death, there was a perception shift in reading the Bible. German pietists dismissed the doctrine of verbal inspiration and inerrancy. The rejection of the rigidity of scholasticism for its approach was regarded as unimaginative and unintelligent. The method comes to know as the historical-critical approach to the sacred text was a response to the doctrine of verbal inspiration and inerrancy.
In the Age of Reason, the rejection of the supernatural was at the heart of this quest. Herbert Marsh (1757-1839) was the first person to introduce to the English-speaking world that a person still can be a Christian without accepting the doctrine of the verbal inerrancy of Holy Scripture. He was the Professor of Divinity at Cambridge in 1807, Bishop of Llandaff in 1816, and Bishop of Peterborough in 1819.
J.D. Michaelis (1717-91) — was one of the most remarkable figures in the eighteenth century to propose two different approaches to interpreting the Bible. He insisted on the historical reading of the Old Testament and interpret it in the context of the original settings, time, and audience. He, however, did not give the same privilege to the New Testament reading. He approached the Gospels with a presupposition that they had contradictions despite claiming he aimed to read and interpret them without dogmatic presuppositions. He viewed Mark, Luke, and Acts did not bear the same weight of verbal inspiration and could not be supernaturally error-free. The apostolic authorship was the litmus test for verbal inspiration and inerrancy. In other words, they have no equal footing with Matthew and John in terms of divine inspiration. Hebrew, James, and Jude were thought to be non-canonical works. He argued that we could still benefit from them as much as we have from any other historical works of literature. Here, Michaelis was raising the question of the historical reliability of the New Testament works.
Georg Bartold Niebuhr’s two-volume history of Rome (1810-12) defined the era for a new critical method for writing history. His work influenced nineteenth-century historians. Niebuhr’s modus operandi— ask two historical-critical questions without presuppositions and does not allow any traditions to stand in the way of questioning the authority. They were: What is the evidence and what is the value of this evidence? His works on the history of Rome brought the devastating results that restricted the history in which fifty generations accepted it as merely a myth. The concept of “myth” later produces even more damaging results.
Cannop Thirlwall (1779-1875) — Niebuhr’s critical method paved the way for the same method to be applied to the early history of Israel. Thirlwall moved from Biblical orthodoxy farther away when he translated Schleiermacher’s Critical essay on the Gospel of St. Luke (1821). He introduced Schleiermacher to the British public. He viewed the “Original Gospels” were later expanded works of the evangelists/disciples of Jesus from a brief “memorabilia” to fit the narratives of the life of the Lord. The view not only minimizes the doctrine of verbal inspiration but rejects it in the first place.
In our brief survey of the proponents of the historical-critical method, I can agree on one thing — the historical texts must be read and interpreted in light of the historical settings, time, and context. In the pretext of what happened in the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, the critical method simply cannot dismiss the supernatural based on reason alone. The historical events that cannot be repeated and tested do not necessarily disqualify the historical account as a myth. The data available to us can be used to confirm the validity and reliability of the historicity of the event.
I will discuss D.F. Strauss and F.C. Baur further.
2. The major contribution of D.F. Strauss? How can it be critiqued?
D.F. Strauss (1808-74) published his Life of Jesus in1835 which proved to be a landmark in the history of the Christian faith. He repudiated both supernaturalism and rationalism. Instead, he offered a natural explanation for supernatural events. He thereby thought to have preserved the historicity of the Gospels. Had his interpretation of the Gospel been well received, we would be left with a historical middle eastern man named Jesus at the expense of sacrificing his divinity in the Alter of the historical-critical method. The Gospels as we know them today would have died two centuries ago. While supernaturalists accepted everything contrary to the rationalists trying to explain everything, his resolution in this standstill was offering “the mythical” Jesus that which he never defined clearly. He believed that no historian can reconstruct Jesus simply by basing one’s work on the available texts. He concluded that Jesus the Jewish Messiah was alive in the faith owing much to his disciples. They tailored the narratives to fit Jesus in the Old Testament events and expectations.
Critiquing Strauss’s works: (1) Inappropriate method and/or (2) question the validity of the method approaching the issues with concealed presuppositions and prejudices and ignoring relevant evidence. His methods and conclusions were vulnerable.
- He ignored the literary and historical criticism of his sources, the Gospels.
- He ignored the fact of the exposition of the church amid immense persecution.
3. Neill says that F.C. Baur’s threat to orthodoxy “was very grave?”
F.C. Baur (1792-1860) came to know the philosophy of Hegel and it deeply swayed him. Consequently, his scholarship got mired in bogus unproven presuppositions from 1833 onwards. He began as a conservative orthodox and took a nosedive to theological liberalism. Neil regards him to be a “very grave” threat to orthodoxy for his categorization of the early Gospels and the Pauline letters. His dating of the gospels and the Pauline epistles were not grounded in the historical findings but based on his presumption. The dating of Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and Galatians as earlier writings to validate his hypothesis and the Gospels as the later works would undermine the historical reliability of the Bible and Jesus of history.