Barton's book dwells on these subjects, but it does much more too. It places the Bible in its historical context, both in terms of the origins of different sections and the way it has been built through the centuries into the form(s) that it is known today. Barton writes in his introduction that the "Bible is... already the record of a dialogue among authors and transmitters of tradition, and contains commentary in many of its books on many others.
Barton says that his book is an attempt to "describe the present consensus [on the Bible] where there is one, to discuss reasonable options in areas of dispute, and to indicate those where we might try harder." But he cautions that the book
also makes an argument: that the Bible does not 'map' directly onto religious faith and practice, whether Jewish or Christian. I will propose that though the Bible - seen as a collection of religious texts - is irreplaceable for many reasons, Christianity is not in essence a scriptural religion, focused on a book seen as a single, holy work. Judaism, similarly, though it greatly reveres the Hebrew Bible, is also not so Bible-centred as is widely thought... [The Bible] is a mêlée of materials, few of which directly address the question of what is to be believed. The history of the Bible is thus the story of the interplay between the religion and the book neither mapping exactly onto the other.
For a religious person like Barton (an Anglican Priest as well as an eminent biblical scholar) its a remarkably honest statement that challenges those who assert the Bible is a single work that contains everything required by the Christian religion.
Barton shows how the book originates in a particular time and place, he shows how it relates to the actual history of the areas covered by the early chapters of the Old Testament (not very accurately to be honest). He says, "where [the Bible] tells a historical story, it is not always accurate - partly because it contains legends, and partly because its account of history is governed by a commitments to various interests." Later he continues:
The [historical books] are important as a way of establishing the identity of the people of [ancient] Israel, rather than as archival material: they are national literature. The historical books often contribute to our understanding of the history of the nation through the insight they give into how events and social movements were understood in the time when they were written, rather than by providing reliable information about the history of the time they purport to describe.
Writing about the New Testament he shows how different sections have been added, changed and developed from each other and how the NT refers and relates to the OT. He discusses how the Bible has changed over time with different sections being emphasised, removed or added and why it is such a mix of poetry, history and biography. He also discusses how translation has changed and developed what we understand as the Bible today and where different interests have shaped what has been emphasised and discarded. For the believer it might be a difficult read - Barton is not afraid if highlighting inconsistencies. For the non-believer interested in history and culture it is fascinating.
In the hands of a less talented writer this could all be very dull, but Barton's style is engaging and his willingness to be honest about the contents of the Bible are refreshing. This is no polemic and nor is it an attempt at religious conversion. On the contrary, at times it feels like Barton is emphasising inconsistency to put the reader of religious interpretation. For instance he describes "textual variation", the existence of multiple differing versions of the same text in the oldest source materials. This, he says, shows is that the Bible cannot be a definitive source for religious argument, "What the existence of textual variation rules out, it seems to me, is appeal to the exact wording of biblical sayings as if they were legal rulings, since for that a precise text would be essential".
The use of the Bible has always been shaped by the interests of the time. The New Testament can only, according to Barton, "be seen through successive, and different lenses". The construction of the "rule of faith" meant selecting specific aspects of the story of Jesus (such as the bodily ascension of Jesus) and emphasising these, over other aspects of Jesus's story. Why did the ascension of Jesus, which is only mentioned twice in the New Testament, become considered more important than other aspects of Jesus' story that are referred to much more frequently in the gospels? Barton argues that it is because these were "issues for the second-century Church, which therefore read the New Testament in their light". So the NT "becomes an answer to questions that are not exactly those its authors originally raised".
For Barton the importance of the Reformation is that it was about individuals being "free to make anything they chose of the text". The Reformation, he argues, did not arise solely with Luther, but had its precursors in various earlier movements. But once it took place the Reformation
introduced a new idea into the interpretation of the Bible: the possibility of criticizing the Church's teaching in the light of what the Bible appeared to be saying - and, in Luther's case, even of criticizing parts of the Bible itself in the light of what he took to be its overall drift. This was a revolutionary idea, which would feed into the premium on independent though that would come to characterize the European Enlightenment. For the first time it opened up a gap between the Bible and the faith which hermeneutical ingenuity could not bridge.
This is no doubt true and the final section of Barton's book extends this discussion into modern times, looking at how the Bible has faired in post-Enlightenment times.
It does, however, hint at what I felt was missing from the book. This takes the form of two related issues. Firstly Barton does not address what seems to me to be a key fundamental point - why do people believe? Perhaps more specifically, why did they chose to change their beliefs? What was happening two thousand years ago that meant people broke with the Jewish faith (and Roman religions) and developed Christianity. This also applies in later periods. Why did the Reformation happen when it did? What was it about society in Germany in the early 1500s that provided fertile ground for radical critiques of the Bible? This matters not just for the ideas in Luther's head, but to explain why these ideas were then taken up by tens of thousands of people.
Perhaps it is unfair to critique Barton for not placing his biblical history on materialist grounds. But it seems to me that you cannot fully explain the Bible without to the way that ideas change when material circumstances change. Developing political, social and economic contexts needed new ways of understanding the world - sometimes this meant the rise of new religious ideas and other times the reformation of religion. Marx argued that religion was the "heart" in the "heartless world" and the "opium of the people". The "heart" was, for Marx, the ability of religion to explain the world and sometimes inspire people to change it. Approaching religion with this framework helps explain why much of what Barton details in his book, took place.
Nevertheless, John Barton's book is a remarkably interesting, accessible and fascinating book about the Bible which - however much us Marxists might be frustrated - remains incredibly important to millions of people. Surprisingly perhaps, I highly recommend it.
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Poetry in the NT? Where does he find that? It's all straightforward prose save for the more...imaginative book of Revelation.
ReplyDeleteMy error, of course, I meant the psalms in the OT.
ReplyDelete