"Interpret the Bible like any other book?" Requiem for an axiom [Moberly, 2012]

[Source: Moberly, R. W. L., '"Interpret the Bible like Any Other Book"? Requiem for an Axiom', Journal of Theological Interpretation, 4.1, 2010, 91-110]

Summary

• The axiom ‘interpret the Bible like any other book’ upholds some good exegetical values, but it should be abandoned because the axiom (1) is dated and does not help us face contemporary challenges, (2) has a crude view of reading and books, and (3) is rooted in dubious ideology that unreasonably excludes religious commitments.

Observations about the axiom

The axiom’s history.

• Spinoza articulated this sort of principle as early as 1670, but Jowett’s statement of the axiom is the most famous (in Essays and Reviews, 1860). Jowett was concerned that his Christian contemporaries were obscuring the Bible’s true character through fanciful and undisciplined interpretation. He sought to prevent such skewed interpretations by bracketing out theological commitments with the axiom, ‘interpret the Scripture like any other book’ (1860: 458). Interpreting the Bible by ‘the same rules of evidence and the same canons of criticism’ alone (1860: 455) would allow its character to be seen afresh.
• Few scholars mention the axiom today, but this is probably because it’s so entered the scholarly bloodstream. Nevertheless, with the paradigms of biblical study in something of a flux at present, some are deliberately reaffirming the old axiom (e.g. Barton 2007, The Nature of Biblical Criticism).

The axiom is more complicated to implement consistently than Jowett and others have probably appreciated.

• E.g. scholars who support the axiom have nevertheless referred to Israel/the Church’s deity as ‘God’, unlike other deities whom they refer to as ‘god[s]’.

The axiom is ideological.

• Enlightenment ideological dichotomies—state and church, scholarship/science and religion, public and private—exclude any personal commitments, including religious ones, from the academy. The axiom lines up perfectly with the ideology of the Enlightenment: it is not merely a helpful piece of received wisdom, even if it's sometimes presented so.
• Christians need to simultaneously study the Bible both academically and religiously. This is because Christians believe that the Bible contains definitive truth, and that this truth must be rearticulated/’applied’ in every generation. Religiously engaged interpretation seeks to do just that. To best articulate the Bible’s truth, it needs to employ both the resources of Christian theology, tradition and history and also modes of academic reading. Hence Christians must to seek to study the Bible academically, and to employ their religious commitments in the academy. The axiom debars this, stopping Christians bringing religious commitments into their academic study.
• In practice, the axiom’s ideology is cited polemically to to distance biblical study in the academy specifically from theological commitments, but not other commitment (e.g. marxist, feminist). This is because religious commitments are thought to particularly distort interpretation.

Too few have thought seriously (if at all) about the axiom, its implications or an alternative to it.

The value of the axiom.

It is valuable because it ensures the use of general hermeneutics, and precludes special hermeneutics or special pleading of any kind. For example:

• The Biblical languages should be understood by the standard rules of philology and grammar. The NT was not written in ‘Holy Ghost Greek’.
• The Biblical writers expressed themselves in the literary genres of their time, and these genres can be illuminated by comparisons with nonbiblical literature. ‘Holy Scripture’ is not itself a literary genre.

Reasons the axiom should be abandoned.

The axiom is old, and not relevant for contemporary challenges.

• Theological thinking has radically changed since then. Brevard Childs, for instance, thinks theological commitments should not even affect exegesis, but be affected by it, which would have sounded strange to 19th c. conservative ears.
• Social and ecclesial contexts have radically changed too, from Enlightenment Christendom to a post-Christian secular and pluralist context. The axiom really has nothing helpful to say about the relationship between biblical study and religious perspectives in this new context.

The axiom’s ideology claims that it is necessary that Christians leave aside religious commitments in academic biblical study. It is not.

• For someone to suppress their commitments, as the Enlightenment requires, is to suppress their identity and lose their personal integrity.
• The Bible has a privileged place in academic study—it receives vastly more attention than, say, other ancient Near Eastern texts. This is because of the belief that the Bible’s truth needs rearticulating in a way that those other texts don’t, and that to do that one needs the aid of academic tools. However, because the axiom obviates rearticulating the Bible’s truth, one is left with no reason to study the Bible in the academy any more than other ANE texts.
• It is wrongheaded to use the axiom to eliminate religious commitments exclusively for fear that they particularly skew interpretation. It has not been shown that religiously-minded interpretation is inherently skewing; neither has it been shown that other perspectives have any less potential to skew interpretation.

The axiom has a crude view of reading, of books, and of the Bible’s differences from other books.

• The axiom implies that acts of reading books are all the same, but they’re not.

• Books vary endlessly in every way.
• One may read for numerous different purposes: pleasure, moral improvement, sociological research.
• One can read in different ways: once skim-reading, or many times with careful diligence; for a transfer of information, or to savour and drink deeply of the text.
• It is unhelpful for the axiom to suggest we read the Bible like other books, because Bible is unlike other books.
• Even when Jews and Christians are in historical-critical mode they have vast differences of opinion on the interpretation of the OT, differences of opinion which are much bigger than with most other books.
• A number of books within the OT (e.g. Isaiah, the Pentateuch) comprise materials which have diverse authorship, provenance, and outlook. These larger wholes are unlike other books or anthologies because they are other than the sum of their parts.
• Christians use the Bible differently to other books. They read the Bible for their identity, ethics, worldview, and final hope. It is the essential ingredient in worship and liturgy, and everything is measured against it. There are few other books in which readers find their identity in such a full-orbed manner.

Abandoning the axiom.

• The axiom is valuable on a purely philological level, but is otherwise so flawed that we should not use it to make any substantial claim. Thus while we should uphold the positive aspects of the axiom, we should do that on grounds other than those of the axiom.
• Moberly does not intend to divorce religious and secular approaches, to prejudge the interrelationship between their approaches to the Bible, or to dictate how the Bible ought to be studied outside confessional contexts. Rather, he hopes that if we abandon the axiom, we will be free to find better ways to think about the study of the Bible within the humanities.