Week One: Historical Time-Line; Documentary Hypothesis;
Guidelines for Interpretation.
TIME LINE
1800 BC - Abraham
1250 BC - Moses
1000 BC - David
961-921 BC - Solomon
921 BC - Divided Kingdoms
921-721 BC - Israel (Northern Kingdom, conquered by Assyria in721 BC)
921-587 BC - Judah (Southern Kingdom, conquered by Babylon in 587 BC)
587 - 537 BC - Judean elites in Babylonian Captivity
537 BC - Persia conquers Babylon, takes over the empire
300 BC - Alexander the Great and the Greek Empire
63 BC - Pompey takes over Palestine for the Roman Empire
6 BC - Jesus is born
4 BC - Herod the Great dies
66-70 AD - First Revolt against Rome.
70 AD - Tiitus destroys the Temple
132-135 AD - Second Revolt against Rome; Hadrian destroys what is left of the Temple.
Documentary Hypothesis (Julius Wellhausen, 1883) - to
explain
the composition of the Torah or Pentateuch
See the Catholic Study Bible, pertinent sections concerning the
Pentateuch.
For a brief PowerPoint overview, click on
"Historical-Critical Method" on the web-page of Dr.
Anne Marie Kitz, Kenrick-Glennon Seminary, St. Louis, MO.
J - Yahwist (Judah, southern tradition) c. 950 BC
E - Elohist (Ephraim, northern tradition) c. 850 BC
J+E - after 721 BC
1. Second
Vatican Council Document on Revelation (Dei Verbum)
Read and work out the text-book: Pilch, Introducing the
Cultural Context of the OT, pp. 4-12.
(Make certain to insert all the corrections)
Read and work out the text-book: Pilch, Introducing the
Cultural Context of the OT, pp. 13-14.
"We do not look upon the Bible as an authority for science or history. We see truth in the Bible as not to be reduced solely to literal truth, but also to include salvation truths expressed in varied literary forms."
"We observed in biblical fundamentalism an effort to try to find in the Bible all the direct answers for living -- though the Bible itself nowhere claims such authority."
"It is important for every Catholic to realize that the Church
produced
the New Testament, not vice versa. The Bible did not come down from
heaven,
whole and intact, given by the Holy Spirit. Just as the experience and
faith of Israel developed its sacred books, so was the early Christian
Church the matrix of the New Testament. ... The first generation of
Christians
had no New Testament at all--but they were the church then, just as we
are the church today."
Not in the text-book, hence read these selections carefully,
and the entire document if possible.
A. Historical-Critical Method
The historical-critical method is the indispensable method for the
scientific
study of the meaning of ancient texts. Holy Scripture, inasmuch as it
is
the "word of God in human language," has been composed by human authors
in all its various parts and in all the sources that lie behind them.
Because
of this, its proper understanding not only admits the use of this
method
but actually requires it.
D. Approaches That Use the Human Sciences
2. The Approach Through Cultural Anthropology
The approach to biblical texts which makes use of the study of cultural anthropology stands in close relationship with the sociological approach. The distinction between the two approaches exists, at one and the same time, on the level of perception, on that of method and on that of the aspect of reality under consideration. While the sociological approach--as we have just mentioned--studies economic and institutional aspects above all, the anthropological approach is interested in a wide assortment of other aspects, reflected in language, art, religion, but also in dress, ornament, celebration, dance, myth, legend and all that concerns ethnography.
In general, cultural anthropology seeks to define the characteristics of different kinds of human beings in their social context--as, for example the "Mediterranean person"--with all that this involves by way of studying the rural or urban context and with attention paid to the values recognized by the society in question (honor and dishonor, secrecy*, keeping faith, tradition, kinds of education and schooling), to the manner in which social control is exercised, to the ideas which people have of family house, kin, to the situation of women, to institutionalized dualities (patron - client, owner - tenant, benefactor - beneficiary, free person - slave), taking into account also the prevailing conception of the sacred and the profane, taboos, rites of passage from one state to another, magic, the source of wealth, of power, of information, etc. On the basis of these diverse elements, typologies and "models" are constructed, which are claimed to be common to a number of cultures.
Clearly this kind of study can be useful for the interpretation of
biblical
texts. It has been effectively applied to the study of the ideas of
kinship
in the Old Testament, of the position of women in Israelite society, of
the influence of agrarian rituals, etc. In the texts which report the
teaching
of Jesus, for example the parables, many details can be explained
thanks
to this approach. This is also the case with regard to fundamental
ideas,
such as that of the reign of God or of the way of conceiving time with
respect to the history of salvation, as well as of the processes by
which
the first Christians came to gather in communities. This approach
allows
one to distinguish more clearly those elements of the biblical message
that are permanent, as having their foundation in human nature, and
those
which are more contingent, being due to the particular features of
certain
cultures. Nevertheless, no more than is the case with respect to other
particularized approaches, this approach is not qualified simply by
itself
to determine what is specifically the content of revelation. It is
important
to keep this in mind when appreciating the valuable results it has
brought.
*secrecy: my article, "Secrecy in the Mediterranean World: An
Anthropological Perspective" published in the Biblical
Theology
Bulletin 24 (1994):151-157 is given implicit recognition here
by
the likely author of this section, Rev. Domingo Muñoz, member of
the Pontifical Biblical Commission. For an explanation of how this
section
was written, see John J. Pilch, "Illuminating
the world of Jesus with Cultural Anthropology"
This was the paper I presented at the International meeting of the
Context Group, Medina del Campo, Spain, in 1991.
“The fundamentalist approach
is dangerous, for it is attractive to people who look to the Bible for
ready answers to the problems of life. It can deceive these people,
offering them interpretations that are pious but illusory, instead of
telling them that the Bible does not necessarily contain an immediate
answer to each and every problem. Without saying as much in so many
words, fundamentalism
actually invites people to a kind of intellectual suicide. It
injects into life a false certitude, for it unwittingly confuses the
divine substance of the biblical message with what are in fact its
human limitations.”