On the Term Historical-Critical (Prof. Brettler)

Article

There were recent debates concerning the validity of the historical-critical method (See, e.  g., Adele Reinhartz, »The Hermeneutics of Chutzpah: A Disquisition on the Value/s of ›Critical Investigation of the Bible,‹« JBL 140/1 (2021) 8–30; Wongi Park, »Multiracial Biblical Studies,« JBL 140/3 (2021) 435–459; Paul Michael Kurtz, »A Historical, Critical Retrospective on Historical Criticism,« in New Cambridge Companion to Biblical Interpretation, ed. Ian Boxall and Bradley C. Gregory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022) 15–36). The term »historical-critical« is often misused by modern scholars in reference to figures who never employ the term, but are considered to be the founders of modern biblical studies, such as Baruch/Benedict Spinoza and Richard Simon. For more examples on the association between the term »historical-critical« and Spinoza, see:

James Barr, »Interpretation, History of: Modern Biblical Criticism,« in The Oxford Companion to the Bible, ed. Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) 305–324: 322; Joseph Blenkinsopp, The Pentateuch: An Introduction to the First Five Books of the Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 2; John H. Hayes, »The History of the Study of Israelite and Judaean History,« in Israelite and Judaean History, ed. John H. Hayes and J. Maxwell Miller (London: SCM Press, 1977) 7–42; Roy A. Harrisville and Walter Sundberg, The Bible in Modern Culture: Theology and Historical-Critical Method from Spinoza to Käsemann).

Kenneth Minkema considers both Simon and Spinoza to be pioneers of the historical-critical method (Kenneth Minkema, »Mather, Cotton,« EBR 18:67–69). Jeffery Morrow refers to Simon as »a first-rate historical biblical critic from historical criticism’s earliest inception in the seventeenth century« (»Faith, Reason and History in Early Modern Catholic Biblical Interpretation: Fr. Richard Simon and St. Thomas More,« New Blackfriars 96/1066 [2015] 658–673: 658).

1. Even earlier medieval or classical Jewish scholars might have been the origin (See, e.  g., Richard J. H. Gottheil, »Some Early Jewish Bible Criticism: Annual Presidential Address to the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis,« JBL 23/1 (June 1904) 1–12). Some Christian scholars similarly find the origin of the method in the pre-Enlightenment era, in the Reformation or earlier: see, e.  g., John Barton, »Historical-Critical Approaches,« in The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Interpretation, ed. John Barton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) 9–20: 16, and John Barton, The Nature of Biblical Criticism, 117–136. The tendency to date the beginning of critical scholarship to such early periods in Judaism is soundly criticized by Menahem Haran, Biblical Research in Hebrew: A Discussion of Its Character and Trends (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1970), 9: »Any attempt at pushing back the date of Hebrew biblical criticism and finding early signs of it in Talmudic literature or in the works of medieval scholars, puts the cart before the horse and obscures the border line between historical periods.
2. More typically, the Protestant German Enlightenment figures Johann David Michaelis (1717–1791) and Johann Gottfried Eichhorn (1752–1827) (Thomas Kelly Cheyne, Founders of Old Testament Criticism: Biographical, Descriptive, and Critical Studies (London: Methuen & Co., 1893), 2) are invoked as the founders of historical-critical Bible study (Edgar Krentz, The Historical-Critical Method, 20). This too is misplaced; although Eichhorn’s Einleitung »set a new benchmark for historicist biblical philology,« it was built on the foundation of others (James Turner, Philology: The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanities (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 117). More significantly, his most important work, Einleitung in das Alte Testament (1780–1783), never uses the term, even though some highly-regarded reference books, such as Encyclopædia Britannica, make this claim. Those who attribute the origin of the term to him may be confusing the terms »historical-critical« and »higher criticism«: Eichhorn coined the latter (Turner, Philology, 117; 211) but not the former.

The Origin of »Historical-Critical« in Old Testament Studies: Georg Lorenz Bauer

As far as we know, Georg Lorenz Bauer, in his third edition of Historisch-kritische Einleitung in das Alte Testament in 1806, was the first person to use historical-critical in a programmatic sense in a book title (On Bauer, see Albrecht Beutel, Bauer, Georg Lorenz, RPP 1:644; Joachim Schaper wrote about him in »Problems and Prospects of a ›History of the Religion of Israel‹: 5. Epilogue,« in Hebrew Bible / Old Testament, Volume 3.2: From Modernism to Post-Modernism: The Twentieth Century, ed. Magne Sæbø et al. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996) 622–641: 640: »Bauer was the first author in the history of theology to have used the term historisch-kritisch). Bauer held both philological and theological interests, studying oriental languages and theology at the University of Altdorf (1772–1775); before he accepted a professorship of oriental languages in the philosophy department at Altdorf in 1789, he served as a pastor and preacher in Nuremberg (Otto Merk, Bauer, Georg Lorenz (1755–1806), DBI 1:109). Bauer’s Historisch-kritische Einleitung went through three editions (1794, 1801, 1806). The term historisch-kritisch is not used in the first edition and appears for the first time in the second edition (1801), though not yet in its title. Bauer’s wording suggests that he is the first to employ the phrase for an introduction: »The science, which we present here, and which has for some time been given the name of an introduction, is a historical-critical introduction to the Scriptures of the Old Testament. Bauer divides his historical-critical method into two categories: lower and higher criticism. Higher criticism seeks to evaluate the authenticity of Old Testament writings (Bauer, Entwurf einer historisch-kritischen Einleitung, 63–68, esp. 64  f.; 67), while lower criticism concerns itself with the history of a text. Bauer’s scholarship was largely forgotten after his death, and had little influence on biblical scholarship beyond the early nineteenth century.

The Dissemination of the Term by Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette

Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette popularized, and even anchored this term in HB/OT study in his first edition of Lehrbuch der historisch-kritischen Einleitung in die kanonischen und apokryphischen Bücher des Alten Testaments, published in 1817 (Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette, Lehrbuch der historisch-kritischen Einleitung in die ka no nischen und apokryphischen Bücher des Alten Testaments). Unlike Schmidt, de Wette clearly defines historical-criticism, seeing it as »render[ing] the productions of biblical literature intelligible in their historical relations and peculiarities For an excellent summary of de Wette’s historical-critical method, see Jean Louis Ska, »Abraham between History and Poetry,« HBAI 3 (2014) 24–42: 27–30. Beginning in the early nineteenth century, the term »historical-critical« appeared in many biblical and related handbooks, likely under the influence of de Wette:

Leonhard Berthold, Historisch-kritische Einleitung in sämtliche kanonische und apokryphische Schriften des Alten und Neuen Testaments (Erlangen: Palm, 1812); Johann Georg Herbst, Historischkritische Einleitung in die heiligen Schriften des Alten Testament, ed. Benedict Welte (Karlsruhe/ Freiburg: Herder, 1840); Johann Karl Wilhelm Vatke, Historisch-kritische Einleitung in das Alte Testament. Nach Vorlesungen herausgegeben von Hermann G. S. Preiss. Mit einem Vorwort von D. A. Hilgenfeld (Bonn: Verlag von Emil Strauss, 1886); Gustav Weil, Historisch-kritische Einleitung in den Koran (Bielefeld: Velhagen & Klasing, 1844); Abraham Kuenen, Historisch-kritische Einleitung in die Bücher des Alten Testaments hinsichtlich ihrer Entstehung und Sammlung. Autorisierte deutsche Ausgabe von Th. Weber

The Earlier Use of »Historical-Critical« Outside of Biblical Studies

De Wette’s choice of the term »historical-critical« depends on that term’s use in earlier Latin and German sources in many disciplines, including theology. Its earliest use known to us is in Johann Stalen’s Papissa monstrosa, et mera fabula, seu dissertatio historico-critica, qua ex vulgi errore ortum de Papissa sigmentu Penitus profligatur, opposita nugis et columniis, published in Cologne in 1639 (Johann Stalen, Papissa monstrosa, et mera fabula, seu dissertatio historico-critica, qua ex vulgi errore ortum de Papissa sigmentu Penitus profligatur, opposita nugis et columniis). The term »historico-critica« became increasingly popular toward the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth century, especially in Latin dissertations. The term was used in disciplines ranging from the study of ancient Greek language to the study of early Christianity to the study of Josephus and the New Testament. Scholars of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament readily adopted these approaches and the associated term (Johann Gottlob Carpzov, Apparatus historico criticus antiquitatum sacri codicis et gentis Hebraeae. Uberrimis annotationibus in Thomae Goodwini Mosen et Aaronem subministravit), including scholars who were interested in theological questions (Loren T. Stuckenbruck, »Johann Philipp Gabler and the Delineation of Biblical Theology,« Scottish Journal of Theology 52/2 (1999) 139–157, esp. 142 n. 9, Stephen B. Chapman, »Historical Criticism, Moral Judgment, and the Future of the Past,« in A Sage in New Haven: Essays on the Prophets, the Writings, and the Ancient World in Honor of Robert R. Wilson, Ägypten und Altes Testament No. 117, ed. Alison Gruseke and Carolyn Sharp (Münster: Zaphon, 2023) 297–308).

1. It was natural for terms such as »historical-critical« to move between these different areas, which were not yet understood as distinct disciplines; until the nineteenth century, a wide variety of disciplines including theology and classics were studied together by the same scholars (Turner, Philology; Anthony Grafton, »Prolegomena to Friedrich August Wolf,« Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 44 (1981) 101–129).
2. ]As noted by Paul Michael Kurtz, »As a genre, the ›historical-critical introduction‹ came into fashion, with books dedicated to ancient Latin authors, the Greek orator Demosthenes, New Testament, Old Testament, Quran, Poenitentiale Romanum, and Augsburg Confession as well as Nathan the Wise and Minna von Barnheim by Lessing and the philosophy of the unconscious and philosophy of mythology (Kurtz, »A Historical, Critical Retrospective on Historical Criticism«: 27 f). Once scholarly books and dissertations were written in the vernacular, the term »historical-critical« became popular in various European languages. It is not yet found in German book titles from the seventeenth century, but becomes broadly used in the eighteenth century, where it became part of the general language of philology of that period. The term »historical-critical« largely supplanted »grammatico-historical,« earlier favored by philologist (John H. Sailhamer, »Johann August Ernesti: The Role of History in Biblical Interpretation,« JETS 44/2 (June 2001) 193–206).
3. The »Critical« of »Historical-Critical«
4. The element »critical« in the term »historical-critical« has not worn well, and is widely misunderstood outside of the scholarly world, where »Bible critics« are vilified by some as criticizing the contents of the Bible.42 This reflects a basic misunderstanding of the term and its use. The description of criticism given at the beginning of the relevant entry on »Criticism« in RPP clarifies this term’s continued, important role in biblical scholarship: from Greek κρίνειν/krínein, »distinguish, decide, judge,« [criticism] is methodical evaluation based on well-founded criteria. In everyday usage, the word is identified with negative assessment; in philosophical usage, however, it denotes the weighing of both positive and negative values and the discussion of validity claims.43 In Philology, James Turner similarly notes: »›criticism,‹ [is] the old synonym for philology derived from ›criticus,‹« and was a neutral or positive term.44 »Critique« already became especially popular in the late sixteenth century,45 and more widely used in the seventeenth century;46 it has important roots in the work of Isaac Casaubon (1559–1614), the classical scholar and philologist who also wrote on biblical topics.47 It is strongly rooted in the legal tradition, and was typically connected to the sense of judgement, both positive and negative.48 (Indeed, the terms »positive criticism« and »negative criticism« are both used in the nineteenth century to characterize two different types of biblical scholar.)49 Since historical inquiry could help judge the nature of a source, the term historical-critical is a commonsensical phrase. The origin of the term in reference to the Bible thus needs to be considered in reference to the term »critique« found in seventeenth century French literature (and beyond) as well the use of the term historisch-kritisch as a neutral term in a wide variety of German disciplines starting in the eighteenth century.