This story from the New English Review blog is worthy of an Indiana Jones film plot:
On the night of April 24, 1944, British air force bombers hammered a former Jesuit college here [Munich] housing the Bavarian Academy of Science. The 16th-century building crumpled in the inferno. Among the treasures lost, later lamented Anton Spitaler, an Arabic scholar at the academy, was a unique photo archive of ancient manuscripts of the Quran.
The 450 rolls of film had been assembled before the war for a bold venture: a study of the evolution of the Quran, the text Muslims view as the verbatim transcript of God’s word. The wartime destruction made the project “outright impossible,” Mr. Spitaler wrote in the 1970s.
Mr. Spitaler was lying. The cache of photos survived, and he was sitting on it all along. The truth is only now dribbling out to scholars — and a Quran research project buried for more than 60 years has risen from the grave.
Of course, any attempt to explore the evolution of the current text of the Qur’an risks igniting controversy in the Islamic world, which is why such scholars as the pseudonymous Christoph Luxenberg are not anxious to attach their given names to their own work.
Beginning with Spinoza in the 17th century, scholars have been using modern critical methods to analyze the text of the Bible, which virtually all Jews and Christians agree was written by multiple authors over a period of at least a thousand years. Despite the resulting expansion of knowledge of the biblical text, this has not been an entirely unproblematic venture, as the mainstream of biblical scholarship, especially what goes by the label higher criticism, has accepted the presuppositions of modernity, including the dichotomy between faith and fact, the impossibility of predictive prophecy and the belief that no single author could have referred to God as both Elohim and YHWH.
In principle there may be good stylistic reasons to conclude that Isaiah was not the author of Isaiah chapters 40-66, but there is nevertheless a prechristian tradition that God revealed to the 8th-century BC prophet events in the far distant future [Sirach 48:23-25], something to which the New Testament writers themselves testify, e.g., Matthew 3:3 and Acts 8:26-40. Moreover, there is no tangible manuscript evidence for two or more books of Isaiah either. Contemporary scholars need to take these factors seriously.
All the same, despite such reservations, Christians have little difficulty accepting that different authors produced the biblical texts at different times and that these texts were gradually sifted and collected into a body of canonical scripture. No one disputes the value of lower criticism, with its empirical focus on actual manuscripts.
Unlike Christians and Jews, Muslims believe that the Qur’an is a direct and immediate revelation by God to Muhammad. If Qur’an scholars bring the assumptions of western-style higher criticism to Islam’s sacred text, believing Muslims are certain to question its validity, especially if it excludes ipso facto the possibility of miraculous divine interventions in the natural order.
However, as I understand it, the current efforts at studying the Qur’an, are not (yet) of a higher critical character. At issue is establishing the evolutionary history of the Qur’an based on ancient manuscripts or at least photographic evidence of these manuscripts. Muslims will find it difficult to deny the validity of such a modest endeavour. The findings of Qur’an scholarship need not challenge outright the faith of devout Muslims, but the latter may be forced to rethink the belief that the Qur’an, in its present form, came directly from Muhammad. One can only guess at the repercussions of this for the Islamic world as a whole.
September 26th, 2010 | 9:29 pm | #1
Great article David. I would add to clarify that I can’t think of any scholars who would hold that there was an Elohist anymore. No matter where they stand on the theological spectrum, they almost all have come to the agreement that E cannot be separated from J.
September 26th, 2010 | 10:54 pm | #2
Perhaps so, but the introduction to Genesis in the 2006 edition of the Harper-Collins Study Bible still presupposes the existence of J, E, P and D strands in the narrative. The footnotes to the text include a few references to E, but most, admittedly, appear to assume the alternation of J and P traditions throughout the major portion of the text. If virtually all scholars have indeed concluded that there is no elohist, why does so recent a study bible make reference to its apparent presence?
September 27th, 2010 | 6:36 am | #3
Probably (and I’m not kidding), out of respect to Wellhausen and the tradition.
September 27th, 2010 | 6:48 am | #4
The tradition of the Harper/HarperCollins Study Bible.
September 28th, 2010 | 9:57 am | #5
[...] Lower and higher criticism and Islam. [...]
September 28th, 2010 | 10:05 am | #6
For decades I’ve heard mostly conservative biblical scholars say that much of the academy has abandoned the Documentary Hypothesis, but I find no evidence of this in the things I’ve read, especially in study bibles.
September 28th, 2010 | 11:06 am | #7
David, I’d like to venture an explanation of what you are seeing based on my own experience. I have noticed that my fellow clergy’s deepest theological/Biblical learning/knowledge tends to be dated to his (or her) time in seminary… I have also noticed that very few of my colleagues spend much time keeping current with the latest in theology or Biblical criticism beyond the occasional popular treatment in a magazine or general. This has a kind of “freezing” effect; to wit — a pastor’s Biblical/theological knowledge is largely locked into the time at which (s)he acquired it.
So if one went to seminary or graduate school in the 80′s (or 70′s) and the documentary hypothesis was believed to be the state of the art in higher Biblical criticism at the time, you accepted it. Since then you have not kept up, but you assume that’s probably still the case.
I wonder of some of the same thing might be happening with the folks who are consulted for study bibles? I note for example that the Harper Collins Study Bible Contributor for Genesis is a professor of Judaic Studies with a Ph. D. from UC Santa Cruz. It may be unfair of me to say so but those credentials don’t make it likely that he is keeping on the cutting edge of Old Testament criticism.
All of which is to posit that the contributors to these study Bibles may be stuck in a time warp where “everybody knows the documentary hypotheseis is true”….
September 28th, 2010 | 1:38 pm | #8
With all due respect, David, this seems rather implausible to me. Anyone who is a professor of Judaic studies at a recognized university will be expected by his or her department to keep up with ongoing developments in the field. If one decides to follow another line of research different from one’s dissertation area, then one might have dated information on the latter. But I know personally one of the associate editors of the Harper Collins Study Bible, and I can’t imagine her letting something like this slip by her and her colleagues.
I do not mean to be excessively critical of those employing critical methods in advancing knowledge of the biblical text. In principle I have no objection to those looking for various literary strands in the Pentateuch, although I do believe a big does of humility is in order for anyone undertaking this. Moreover, one must be able and willing to critique the critical methods themselves (e.g., why not more than one name for God? why not a nuanced view of monarchy in the Samuels/Kings?) rather than regarding them as inscribed in stone as a sort of extracanonical canon.
My principal objection to much of what passes for higher criticism is that it tends to assume that the biblical authors were somehow less bright than we are and unable to see beyond simplistic black and white categories. This inevitably colours our reading of these authors.
September 28th, 2010 | 2:11 pm | #9
David,
I might as well show my colors (colours?). I went to a conservative seminary here in the States (Gordon Conwell in MA) and I had professors who in my view did a pretty good job of demolishing the documentary hypothesis more more than 25 years ago. So I carry no brief for the it (or higher criticism in general). In that sense we are agreed in our suspicions about the higher critical method(s).
I disagree, however, that any academic in the field of Biblical Studies is going to be expected to remain on the cutting edge by his or her institution. I think that is hugely variable based on the institution etc. Living as I do near the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill I have had a bellyful of the highly praised nonsense of Bart Ehrman for years. Do we really think that his university is going to keep any sort of academic reins or checks and balances on him whatsoever?
I am afraid you hold the academy in general in higher esteem than I do. It is as much a creature of fashion and fad, and as subject to the winds of the spirit of the age (and the vagaries of sin) as any other human endeavor.
September 28th, 2010 | 2:55 pm | #10
David, you wrote:
I disagree with your first sentence and agree entirely with your second. I’ve been in academia too long to be unaware of its dark side. In this it is no less vulnerable to human sin that any other area of life.
September 29th, 2010 | 9:06 am | #11
[...] Lower and higher criticism and Islam. [...]
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