Abstract

After surveying the generally healthy state of the various specialist fields that make up Old Testament study, Professor Barton considers the current widespread feeling in the discipline that it lacks coherence and unity. A common diagnosis for this uneasy sense that Old Testament study is nolonger a common task sees it as related to a loss of the theological centre which once (allegedly) formed the common focus for the work of Old Testament scholars, however diverse their specialist areas. The resulting prescription for the future is that students of the Old Testament should rediscovera shared theological hermeneutic, reading the text from a position of religious commitment.Professor Barton's argument is that, on the contrary, Old Testament study in the last hundred years has been unified by a commitment to biblical criticism. He analyses the meaning of this term, and shows that it entails a commitment to open enquiry, incompatible with the demand for a religiouscommitment. He maintains the idea that Old Testament specialists used to be united by such a religious commitment is a fiction, and the suggestion that they should become so again is a false trail. It is not at all a new idea, but one which has recurred in each period of biblical study. It showsthat Old Testament scholars are in practice normally religious believers anyway, afraid that their study may lead them away from religion. What the discipline needs to regain, rather, is the conviction that biblical criticism is part of a serious quest for truth and cannot be set aside in theinterest of dogmas which are taken as already given. Criticism means an open style of enquiry which seeks to discover the truth instead of thinking that it is already known. Professor Barton maintains that a return to biblical criticism really could unite Old Testament scholars, as it did in thelate nineteenth century, producing conclusions that can stand the test of time rather than being at the mercy of hermeneutical or religious fashion.