Canonical criticism

Canonical criticism, sometimes called canon criticism or the canonical approach, is a way of interpreting the Bible that focuses on the text of the biblical canon itself as a finished product.

Brevard Childs (1923–2007) popularised this approach, though he personally rejected the term.^[1]^[2] Whereas other types of biblical criticism focus on the origins, structure and history of texts, canonical criticism looks at the meaning which the overall text, in its final form, has for the community which uses it.

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Canonical criticism grew out of a dissatisfaction with the scholarly focus on original historical meanings to the exclusion of a consideration of the function or meaning of biblical texts for believing communities in various times and places--a dissatisfaction with the focus on original context and original meaning to the exclusion of any interest in how the text would have served a given community at a later time, a community for which it was canonical. At what point did these stories and sources suddenly become canonical and have authority for communities? And when they did, how were they read and understood and interpreted? So the historical-critical method was always primarily interested in what was really said and done by the original, biblical contributors. Canonical criticism assumes that biblical texts were generated, transmitted, reworked, and preserved in communities for whom they were authoritative, and that biblical criticism should include study of how these texts functioned in the believing communities that received and cherished them. So emphasis is on the final received form of the text. [There's] much less interest in how it got to be what it is; more interest in what it is now rather than the stages in its development. There's a greater interest and emphasis in canonical criticism on the function of that final form of the text in the first communities to receive it and on the processes of adaptation by which that community and later communities would re-signify earlier tradition to function authoritatively in a new situation. So a canonical critic might ask, for example: what meaning, authority, or value did a biblical writer seek in a tradition or story when he employed it in the final form of his text? What meaning, authority, or value would a community, would his community have found in it, and what meanings and values would later communities find in it when that text became canonical for them? How did they re-signify it to be meaningful for them? Why did religious communities accept what they did as canonical rather than setting certain things aside? Why was something chosen as canonical and meaningful for them when it came from an earlier time? So I propose that we adopt this approach for many of the books in this third section of the Bible. We look at the Bible through the eyes of the post-exilic community, for whom they were canonical--at least in part. We won't do this for everything but I'm going to be coming back to this approach many times in the last few lectures, because in this way it becomes possible for us to understand these books as a response to the national history. Not in their genesis or origin (they weren't written necessarily as responses to the national history--some of them may even pre-date the exile) but in the fact that they were adopted or cherished as meaningful by the post-exilic community. So whatever the circumstances of their origin and final redaction might have been, many of the books of the ketuvim, of the Writings, eventually would serve the post-exilic community as a prism through which to view Israel's history. Interestingly, many of the books in this section of the Bible explore questions of suffering and evil, and challenge some of the ideas that we've seen as more fundamental in the Torah and in the Prophets. They explore the very questions that are raised by the events of Israel's history, and so they were appropriated by the community in its quest for meaning in the midst of suffering.

Description

Canonical criticism involves "paying attention to the present form of the text in determining its meaning for the believing community."^[3] According to James Barr, it involves concentrating authority "in the canonical text, and not in the people or events out of which that text came."^[4] Brevard Childs says that the canon "not only serves to establish the outer boundaries of authoritative Scripture," but "forms a prism through which light from the different aspects of the Christian life is refracted."^[5] He also notes that "the tradents of the tradition have sought to hide their own footprints in order to focus attention on the canonical text itself and not on the process."^[2] However, Childs refuses to speak of canonical criticism as if it were on a level with form criticism or redaction criticism. According to Childs, it represents an entirely new departure, replacing the entire historical-critical method.^[1]

John H. Sailhamer views the "canonical approach" as including the "canon criticism" of Childs, as well as composition criticism, redaction criticism, and text linguistics.^[6]

Origins

Biblical studies

Biblical criticism
Archeology Artifacts Dating Historicity Internal consistency People Places Names Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia Rahlfs' Septuagint Novum Testamentum Graece Documentary hypothesis Synoptic problem NT textual categories
Historical Textual Source Form Redaction Canonical

Canonical criticism is a relatively new approach to biblical studies. As recently as 1983, James Barr could state that canon had no hermeneutical significance for biblical interpretation.^[7] Childs set out his canonical approach in his Biblical Theology in Crisis (1970) and applied it in Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (1979).

The phrase "canonical criticism" was first used by James A. Sanders in 1972.^[8] Childs repudiates the term because

It implies that the concern with canon is viewed as another historical-critical technique which can take its place alongside of source criticism, form criticism, rhetorical criticism, and the like. I do not envision the approach to canon in this light. Rather, the issue at stake in canon turns on establishing a stance from which the Bible is to be read as Sacred Scripture.^[2]

Canonical criticism arose as a reaction to other forms of biblical criticism. John Barton argues that Child's primary thesis is that historical-critical methods are "unsatisfactory theologically."^[9]

According to Barton, Childs' approach is "genuinely new," in that it is an "attempt to heal the breach between biblical criticism and theology," and in that it belongs more to the realm of literary criticism than that of 'historical' study of texts.^[10]

Sanders argues that canonical criticism is biblical criticism's "self-critical stance":

It is not only a logical evolution of earlier stages in the growth of criticism but it also reflects back on all the disciplines of biblical criticism and informs them all to some extent."^[11]

He also suggests that it places the Bible "back where it belongs, in the believing communities of today":

Canonical criticism might be seen in metaphor as the beadle (bedelos) who now carries the critically studied Bible in procession back to the church lectern from the scholar's study.^[12]

Barton has noted parallels between canonical criticism and the New Criticism of T. S. Eliot and others. Both schools of thought affirm that "a literary text is an artefact," that "intentionalism is a fallacy," and that "the meaning of a text is a function of its place in the literary canon."^[13]

Criticism

The canonical approach has been criticised by scholars from both liberal and evangelical perspectives.

As excessively conservative

On the one hand, according to Dale Brueggemann, James Barr accuses Childs of "aiding and abetting" fundamentalists.^[14] Although Childs' approach is "post-critical" rather than pre-critical,^[15] Barr argues that the vision of a post-critical era "is the conservative dream."^[4] Barton, however, notes that

Whatever else Childs is doing, he is not taking us 'back to the canon', for no one has ever been aware of the canon in this way before. It is only after we have seen how varied and inconsistent the Old Testament really is that we can begin to ask whether it can nonetheless be read as forming a unity.^[16]

As inadequately conservative

Conservative scholars, on the other hand, object to the way canonical criticism bypasses "vexed questions relating to the historical validation of revelation."^[3] Oswalt suggests that canonical critics blithely "separate fact and meaning" when they suggest that we are called to submit to the inspired truth of the text, despite the community's inability to admit where they really got it.^[3]

Failure to achieve its own goals

Barton also suggests that there is tension between "the text itself" and "the text as part of the canon".^[17] That is, the canonical approach stresses both the text in its final form as we have it, as well as the idea that "the words which compose the text draw their meaning from the context and setting in which they are meant to be read."^[18] Barton argues that "the canonical approach actually undermines the concern for the finished text as an end in itself, and brings us, once again, nearer to traditional historical criticism."^[17]

Applications

Childs applies his canonical approach to prophetic literature, and argues that in Amos, "an original prophetic message was expanded by being placed in a larger theological context,"^[2] while in Nahum and Habakkuk, the oracles are assigned a new role through the introduction of hymnic material, and they "now function as a dramatic illustration of the eschatological triumph of God."^[2]

Jon Isaak applies the canonical approach to 1 Corinthians 14 and the issue of women being silent in the church. Isaak argues that

In the canonical approach, theological concerns take precedent over historical interests. No attempt is made to reconstruct a historical portrait of Paul in order to prove some point or to disprove another. There is no psychologizing based on what Paul could or could not have said.^[19]

Gerald H. Wilson adopted a canonical approach in his studies of Psalter, and concluded that the book had a purposeful unity and "had been redacted to represent a developing sequence of ideals."^[20] Yee Von Koh suggests that Wilson was "the first to apply canonical criticism to the study of the Psalter in the clearest and most comprehensive way."^[20]

The canonical approach has also been applied to passages such as Psalm 137^[21] and Ezekiel 20.^[22]

References

^ ^a ^b Childs, Brevard Springs (1979). Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (reprint ed.). Fortress Press. p. 82-83. ISBN 9780800605322. Retrieved 2019-02-05.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Childs, Brevard S. (1 January 1978). "The Canonical Shape of the Prophetic Literature". Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology. 32 (1): 46–55. doi:10.1177/002096437803200104. S2CID 170292286.
^ ^a ^b ^c Oswalt, John N. (1987). "Canonical Criticism: A Review From A Conservative Viewpoint" (PDF). Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society. 30 (3): 317–325.
^ ^a ^b Barr, James (1 May 1980). "Childs' Introduction To the Old Testament as Scripture". Journal for the Study of the Old Testament. 5 (16): 12–23. doi:10.1177/030908928000501602. S2CID 170336118.
^ Brevard S. Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments (Augsburg Fortress, 1993), p. 672.
^ Sailhamer, John H. (1995). "Criticism or Canon". Introduction to Old Testament Theology: A Canonical Approach. Zondervan. pp. 86–114. ISBN 978-0-310-23202-5.
^ James Barr, Holy Scripture: Canon, Authority, Criticism (Westminster John Knox, 1983), 67.
^ James A. Sanders, Torah and Canon (Fortress Press, 1972)^{[page needed]}
^ Barton 1984, p. 79.
^ Barton 1984, p. 90.
^ Sanders 1984, p. 19.
^ Sanders 1984, p. 20.
^ Barton 1984, p. 144.
^ Brueggemann, Dale A. (1989). "Brevard Childs' Canon Criticism: An Example of Post-critical Naiveté" (PDF). JETS. 32: 311–326. Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 June 2022.
^ Barton 1984, p. 84.
^ Barton 1984, p. 99.
^ ^a ^b Barton 1984, p. 171.
^ Barton 1984, p. 172.
^ Isaak, Jon M. (1995). "Direction: Hearing God's Word in the Silence: A Canonical Approach to 1 Corinthians 14:34-35". Direction. 24 (2): 55–64.
^ ^a ^b Koh, Yee Von (2010). "G. H. Wilson's theories on the organization of the Masoretic Psalter". Genesis, Isaiah, and Psalms: A Festschrift to Honour Professor John Emerton for His Eightieth Birthday. Brill. p. 177. ISBN 978-9004182318. Retrieved 1 March 2015.
^ Lyons, William John (2005). "A man of honour, a man of strength, a man of will?: a canonical approach to Psalm 137". Didaskalia. 16 (2): 41–68.
^ Hahn, Scott Walker; Bergsma, John Sietze (2004). "What Laws Were 'Not Good'? A Canonical Approach to the Theological Problem of Ezekiel 20:25–26". Journal of Biblical Literature. 123 (2): 201–218. doi:10.2307/3267942. JSTOR 3267942. S2CID 159079397. ProQuest 214612496.

Sources

Barton, John (1984). Reading the Old Testament: Method in Biblical Study. Westminster John Knox Press. ISBN 978-0-664-24555-9.
Sanders, James A. (1984). Canon and Community: A Guide to Canonical Criticism. Fortress Press. ISBN 978-0-8006-0468-4.

External links

Listen to this article (7 minutes)

This audio file was created from a revision of this article dated 26 July 2019, and does not reflect subsequent edits.

Gottwald, Norman K. (1 October 1985). "Social Matrix and Canonical Shape". Theology Today. 42 (3): 307–321. doi:10.1177/004057368504200305. S2CID 143674939.
Gerald T. Sheppard, "Canonical Criticism" in the Anchor Bible Dictionary.
Callaway, Mary C. (1999). "Canonical Criticism" (PDF). In Haynes, Stephen R.; McKenzie, Steven L. (eds.). To Each Its Own Meaning: An Introduction to Biblical Criticisms and Their Application. Westminster John Knox Press. pp. 142–155. ISBN 978-0-664-25784-2.

This page was last edited on 19 August 2023, at 01:07

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