HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies ISSN: (Online) 2072-8050, (Print) 0259-9422 Page 1 of 9
Original Research
The role of theology in the interpretation of the Bible: Towards a synergy between theological and historical approaches to biblical studies Author: Pieter G.R. de Villiers1 Affiliation: 1 Department of Old and New Testament, Faculty of Theology, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa Corresponding author: Pieter G.R. de Villiers, pgdevilliers@gmail.com
This article evaluates the origins, nature and role of historical criticism in biblical studies as a discipline and its relationship with spiritual or theological readings of biblical texts. It firstly analyses the roots, origins and nature of historical criticism that dominated biblical studies as a discipline in modernity. It then investigates a critical response to historical criticism in the recent renaissance of theological and spiritual readings of the Bible. In this investigation, it discusses how recent hermeneutical developments confirm that the two approaches, though clearly different, can function in a meaningful synergy to come to a more authentic and adequate interpretation of the Bible. The article concludes with an evaluation of this synergy, which is not about simply joining the two, but reflects a fixed pattern in which each one has a particular role to play. Keywords: Historical criticism; Hermeneutics; Spirituality; Biblical Spirituality.
Dates: Received: 27 July 2018 Accepted: 15 Jan. 2019 Published: 28 May 2019
Introduction
How to cite this article: De Villiers, Pieter G.R., 2019, ‘The role of theology in the interpretation of the Bible: Towards a synergy between theological and historical approaches to biblical studies’, HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 75(1), a5205. https://doi. org/10.4102/hts.v75i1.5205
Modern biblical scholarship has been characterised by its extensive engagement with textual, philological, historical, literary, cultural and social dimensions of the Bible.1 Among these, ‘historical criticism’ figured prominently, often used to indicate various methods in the interpretation of biblical texts.2 The proponents of historical criticism required that these texts should be interpreted historically, especially in terms of their original communication setting. They argued that the understanding of these texts is decisively determined by the identity of their authors, their addressees or audiences and the function of their contents. Historical criticism, as the designation implies, tended to neglect the theological and spiritual meaning of its objects of research, preferring to focus on the original time and context of the biblical texts.
Copyright: © 2019. The Authors. Licensee: AOSIS. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License.
Read Read online: online: Scan Scan this this QR QR code code with with your your smart smart phone phone or or mobile mobile device device to to read read online. online.
Gradually, historical criticism became the norm for academic scholarship in most of 20th century biblical research. Its ‘canonical’ status is best illustrated by the remarks of Hengel (1994:337) that the only appropriate way to understand a biblical text is to determine what an author wanted to express with his text to an audience in a particular time and place. Such a historical approach became so matter of fact in research that Brown (1997:35) remarked that it represents ‘the common sense observation that readers of any book of Scripture will want to know what the author of that book tried to convey’. Biblical interpretation increasingly became a matter of tracing and determining historical information that would generate literal, contextual readings, rather than an understanding that inspired or illuminated the spiritual journey of believers. Such a focus on the historical interpretation of the bible is remarkable, if not ironical, when one considers how earliest readers of the Bible regarded the interpretive process incomplete without illuminating the spiritual meaning of biblical texts. Even though these early traditions certainly carefully studied philological, literary and historical dimensions of texts, their relationship with the text by far exceeded a mostly literal approach as in historical criticism. They were predominantly involved in an existential, transformative relationship with the Bible and in appropriating its meaning. 1.Since the Renaissance and, especially the Enlightenment, the study of the bible included textual criticism that sought to recover the most reliable text from all the variants in manuscript traditions. It further encompassed source criticism as the study of sources used by biblical authors, form criticism as the investigation of forms and genres of texts and text parts, redaction criticism as the study of how authors interpreted their sources, canonical criticism as the study of the meaning of biblical texts in terms of their place in the canon, literary analysis as the study of the form of biblical texts, rhetorical criticism as the study of communication strategies of authors, social analysis as the investigation of the interaction between text and context and, more recently, contextual studies that analysed the power games in text interpretation. For a more detailed analysis, cf. Brown (1997:20-32). 2.There is no historical critical ‘method’. It is rather an approach that includes many different methodologies. Note: The collection entitled ‘Christina Landman Festschrift’, sub-edited by Wessel Bentley (University of South Africa) and Victor S. Molobi (University of South Africa).
http://www.hts.org.za
Open Access