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The Nature of Biblical Criticism

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This collection of thoughts contains Barton's defense of biblical criticism. He aims to demonstrate the skills and duties of the biblical critic, and then to defend the critic's activities. Barton says a defense is necessary because of growing sentiment that the Bible must be 'reclaimed' by the church, and revert to Biblical infallibility.

The work is an interesting follow-up to his 'Reading the Old Testament'. I don't see the need to read both, but both contain his lively, humorous writing, filled with apt metaphor and thoughtful argument. Whereas 'Reading' analyzes biblical criticism thoroughly, and gives sample criticism to Biblical passages, 'Nature' summarizes biblical criticism quickly and then focuses on defending it from religious critics. The former is an inquiry, the latter of an academic manifesto(-ish).

Barton's irenic work is addressed to non-conservative students and scholars of the Bible who have become disenchanted with this traditional critical method. Barton's goal is to simply make good readers of us all. Bib crit is about lit crit and the traditional term "historical-critical method" is inaccurate. Responsibly practiced biblical criticism a la Barton can be conducted by those of any theological confession because it brackets the question of truth, while refusing to kowtow to secular rationalism. The final section on the place of religious commitment is wonderful as far as it goes. Barton does not reflect on canon at all, nor does he address how the Bible might function in religious communities who adopt his recommendations. Nevertheless a valuable work.

This book is so good...so profound...so penetrating. It is as if Barton knew everything I have been chewing on for five or six years, anticipated the questions, answers, problems, and solutions, gathered it all together, and lucidly arranged it all in a veritable tour de force. There is really nothing I can say about what Barton has done well in this book that will do anything but subtract from his genius. So instead, this review will focus on the two negative criticisms I have that prevent me from awarding the book a five-star rating. If my criticisms are harsh, it is only because I am so enamored of the job Barton has done and feel like the star player has momentarily let the team down.

A particular choice of terminology or definition.

Barton unnecessarily obfuscates his discussion by using Positivitic terms like "objective," "value-neutral," "detached," or "without distortion" in non-Positivistic ways (and also attributes his highly questionable definitions to the Positivists themselves).

For instance, when Barton says "objective," he means something like "refusing to simply read one's own ideas into the text" or "having a sense of detachment from the text." In other words, to be "objective" for Barton is to say "what I think and what the text says are probably a little different." Talk about a ludicrous definition. As if scholars using the term "objective" meant to differentiate their work from those who had no concept of a distance between themselves and the text. Who exactly were those people? Even the Surrealists of the Post-Modern movement had an awareness of something real beyond the subjective self--the "Sur" real. Even the most conservative interpreters understand that the text has a meaning that exists outside themselves (which Barton admits outright on p. 172). Few are the extremists who have ever thought or said "there is no way of encountering the text other than one already totally colored by one's own presuppositions," who seem to be Barton's talking partners (p. 49). If that is what is "not objective," then Barton's definition would be perfectly reasonable. But in my estimation, it is a mammoth caricature of those who are "not objective" and those who saw themselves as being "objective" in opposition to them.

When Barton says "value-neutral" or "detached," he doesn't mean "without bias or prejudice," which would be its plain sense, Positivist definition. Rather, he means something like "allowing one's perspective to be questioned." If someone is unwilling to question their perspective, they are not value-neutral or detached, but who are those who have been totally unwilling to question their perspective? The problem wasn't that nobody thought "maybe I should allow what I think the text means to be questioned." The problem was that certain folk were okay with allowing what they thought the text should mean to come before attempting an understanding of the text (this is Barton's own argument here). Biblical critics were reacting to the later situation, not the former. So what's the point of the weird definitions? "Value-neutral" and "detached" are words that simply should no longer be used.

And when Barton says "without distortion," he doesn't mean that we are not influencing the meaning of the text at all as one would expect, but something along the lines of "even though understanding is a self-involving exercise, one should seek to not completely distort the message that the text can convey." Again, who are the ones that this definition is opposing? Biblical critics weren't responding to those who had no sense of the distortion they could cause to a text, but to those who were willing to let their religious belief dictate what the text could mean instead of trying to let the text dictate what they believed. Biblical critics sought to do otherwise because they had respect for the biblical scrolls as literary texts (instead of treating them as an "inspired jumble"). Barton's re-defining of terms causes unnecessary confusion. Positivistic phrases like this are better left abandoned.

Failure to incorporate the reader.

Barton recognizes that meaning is determined in part by the reader. This is one of the four "coordinates" of literary understanding that he draws on as illustrated by M.H. Abrams (p. 75). He indirectly depends on this dynamic, for instance, when he refers to intuition as the primary way of undertaking the biblical-critical exercise, by saying that "scientific" or "method" is not the appropriate way to describe it, or by saying that what is involved is understanding instead of processing. Unfortunately, however, he constantly neglects to include this coordinate anywhere in his arguments.

For instance, Barton says biblical criticism "is precisely an attempt to avoid trying to master the text, but instead to allow it its own space, to make its own points in its own way, and to receive it without the distortion that is produced if we try to control it and twist it to our own ends" (p. 58, note 63). But he forgets to mention that we do control and twist the text by every act of understanding we undertake. If three people go into a room, come out, and someone asks them what they saw, they will each say they saw something different, or they will describe the same thing(s) differently. That isn't because there is nothing in the room to see and not because they are wrong about what they saw, but because all three interpretations are formed and constrained by those who make them. Barton knows this. But he doesn't seem willing to make that dimension clear.

He says on the same page "biblical criticism contains in essence three central features: (a) attention to semantics, . . . (b) awareness of genre, and (c) bracketing out questions of truth," but leaves out (d) imposition of our own perception. Barton knows that our perception is part of the equation, which is why he calls so strongly for a struggle with and against it. So why is (d) missing? Why is he leaving out the fourth coordinate in literary competence?

Again, Barton says "what constitutes it as critical is that it asks about the sense the text makes if it is read without a constraining framework of expectations" (p. 108). But Barton knows that there is no such thing as interpretation without a framework of expectation. His own argument throughout the book is that biblical criticism developed because of a specific framework of expectation: biblical texts are literature and thus should be understood as literature. So why isn't his argument more nuanced? Why isn't he saying what either a Positivist or Romanticist would not?

Barton says "our aim as critics is not to translate the text . . . into our own terms, but to get inside it and understand it from within" (p. 113). And yet, it is only by the terms of the one who goes into the text that the text can be understood. All understanding is colored by our particular perceptions. This doesn't mean we can't say something true about the text, and it doesn't mean there is unlimited meaning, but it does acknowledge that the reader influences understanding. Barton could have said as much, but didn't.

Barton comes close to bringing this aspect into the conversation is when he notes "in postmodernist thinking, . . .it is believed that the very perception of meaning is entirely determined by where one is standing" (p. 162, note 43). But then he doesn't engage that line of thinking. Surely he doesn't believe one can step from where one isn't already standing. Surely he must realize the obvious link between his two-fold argument (A. most biblical scholars are people of faith and B. if anything, scholarship has been slanted in favor of faith perspectives) with the quote above. What people think influences how they think! One cannot think in a manner foreign to our own selves.

Only two sentences in the entire book gave me what I was hoping for. And so I end with that stunning revelation: "How can we be sure that our own concerns and preoccupations are not contaminating our reading of past texts? We cannot, but we can try" (p. 181).

There are several helpful contributions in Barton's book. First, it helpfully reminds Biblical scholarship that investigation of a historical nature is not the foundation of Biblical Criticism; rather, Biblical criticism (Barton claims) begins with a focus on the "text" (i.e. literary). The incongruities and difficulties in the text are what lead to inquiry of a historical nature (accidental). Barton emphasizes this because he desires to show that Biblical Criticism is not antithetical to literary approaches. The primary focus of Biblical criticism is textual not historical (accidental). Second, amidst Barton's attempt to show how Biblical Criticism is compatable with many literay approaches, he does not gloss over the fact that Biblical Criticism is at odds with theological approaches, including the canonical approach. He argues that the Biblical critic brackets out all theological presuppositions as one attempts to discern the "plain sense" of the text. This bracketing out enables the critic to realistically evaluate the Bible as if it were any "ancient text." This makes Biblical criticism incompatible with the canonical approach.
There are a few points missing from Barton's book. First, he does not discuss how inter-textuality fits into Biblical Criticism. If inter-textuality were permitted, would this invite a larger theological framework of the ancient Israelite audience to come to bear on the task of interpretation? Second, while Barton recognizes that various levels of meaning can be found in the text and appropriately studied by the critic, I would be interested to see how a Biblical Critic might go about finding meaning at the largest literary level (the canonical). I suppose that Barton would argue that due to a lack of congruity and coherence in the Biblical text at a larger literary level that it is best to focus on smaller literary units. It would have been helpful to have a fuller discussion regarding what it looks like to find meaning at various levels of a text and how one decides what levels are worthy of attention.
While I personally believe that it is permissible (even preferable) to interpret the text with appropriate theological presuppositions (such are unavoidable), I found Barton's book to be a helpful discussion regarding what is the essence of Biblical Criticism- a quest for the "plain sense" of the text by means of bracketing out all theological presuppositions and a willingness to question the text. While conservatives may not adopt this approach, it is a helpful explanation of Biblical Criticism by one of the foremost critics in the last 50 years.