The Revelation and Compilation of Torah: A Critical Review of a Few Prominent Muslim Scholars

Muslim scholars have generally assumed that the Torah was all revealed at once to Prophet Musa [Moses], peace be on him, which is why the Muslim discourse on the Torah generally lacks discussion on its codification. However, some of the Muslim scholars took the position that, like the Qur’an, the Torah was revealed gradually. The present paper examines the views of four eminent scholars – ‘Ubaydullah Sindhi, Abu ’l-A‘la Mawdudi, Amin Ahsan Islahi and Javed Ahmad Ghamidi – and tries to build a comprehensive theory about the revelation and codification of the Torah as well as about critical analysis of the content of the Pentateuch. It concludes that the principles which Muslim tradition has developed for ascertaining authenticity of traditions and for interpretation of the Qur’anic verses and Prophetic traditions as well as for reconciliation of apparently conflicting texts can be very beneficial in developing a coherent Muslim theory for Biblical criticism.

Unrealized Ambitions: The New Testament

Towards the end of his life, Broughton sought funding for a monograph on the New Testament that, he felt sure, would counter-balance all his past failings. It would convert both Jews and Catholics; it would prove his beliefs about scriptural incorruption; and, most of all, it would demonstrate the need for a new English Bible. This project never materialized, and its drafts are scattered across Europe and North America. Using these sources, this chapter reconstructs Broughton’s ambitious New Testament studies and brings the book’s arguments to culmination. Firstly, it examines the relationship between Broughton’s scholarly practices and theological beliefs. Broughton’s New Testament scholarship demonstrates his involvement in one of the most exciting areas of biblical criticism in his lifetime: the study of the New Testament’s Jewish contexts. It argues that Broughton’s desire to prove his beliefs about the Bible pushed him further than his more liberal colleagues into this area, and enabled his most innovative insights into the historical and linguistic contexts of the New Testament. Secondly, this chapter shows how Broughton attempted to make this highly complex, elite scholarship accessible to the unlearned believer in his New Testament translations. Finally, by examining the political, confessional, and personal obstacles that thwarted Broughton’s plans to publish this work, this chapter concludes the complicated picture of his scholarly life offered by the book so far.

Community and Controversy: Jews, Anglicans, and Biblical Criticism in Mid-Victorian England

Mid-nineteenth-century Victorian England was roiled by public controversies regarding the legitimacy of biblical criticism, largely fueled by Anglicans and the Church of England establishment. Jews were well aware of these public controversies and even spoke out in a forthright manner. At this very juncture there was also a rather remarkable Jewish scholar, Marcus Kalisch, who began to advance critical notions in his commentary to the Pentateuch, ultimately coming to conclusions not altogether different from the leading critical scholars in Germany. This article explores the way in which Anglo-Jews first avoided, and then finally confronted, Kalisch's work, and what that said about communal sensitivities and self-consciousness.

The Rise of Postcolonial Criticism in Biblical Studies and Its Current Status

This chapter explores the origins and development of the rapidly growing field of postcolonial biblical criticism and examines its current status. It begins with a brief account of postcolonial discourse in the secular academy which traces its roots to the anticolonial political and cultural struggles in twentieth-century Asia, Africa, and Latin America and serves as the foundation for postcolonial biblical criticism. It highlights major phases in the emergence of the field, its intellectual precursors, methods, and theories and assesses the contributions of key practitioners. The article analyzes the multifaceted and interdisciplinary nature of the field, its impact on biblical studies and current interpretive trajectories, and calls attention to the directions that research in the field should continue to take.

Redaction patterns in biblical wisdom literature in light of the instructions of Shuruppak

This paper examines redactional theories regarding the development of the Book of Proverbs from a comparative perspective. Building on the methodology known as Empirical Models for Biblical Criticism, the paper explores patterns of development and redaction in the Mesopotamian proverb collection The Instructions of Shuruppak, including growth of collections, editorial use of opening and concluding formulas, and religiously-oriented redaction. These, in turn, serve as an illustration for very similar processes hypothesized by Biblicists regarding the development of biblical wisdom collections.

Biblical Criticism

The Bible as a text can be read with or without reference to its compilation as a theologically constructed collection of sacred Jewish and Christian books. When read without such framing concerns, it may be approached with the full range of literary and theoretical interpretive tools and read for whatever purpose readers value or wish to explore. Less straightforwardly, in the former case where framing concerns come into play, the Bible is both like and unlike any other book in the way that its very nature as a “canon” of scripture is related to particular theological and religious convictions. Such convictions are then in turn interested in configuring the kinds of readings pursued in certain ways. Biblical criticism has undergone many transformations over the centuries, sometimes allowing such theological convictions or practices to shape the nature of its criticism, and at other times—especially in the modern period—tending to relegate their significance in favor of concerns with interpretive method, and in particular questions about authorial intention, original context, and interest in matters of history (either in the world behind the text, or in the stages of development of the text itself). From the middle of the 20th century onwards the interpretive interests of biblical critics have focused more on certain literary characteristics of biblical narratives and poetry, and also a greater theological willingness to engage the imaginative vision of biblical texts. This has resulted in a move toward a theological form of criticism that might better be characterized as imaginative and invites explicit negotiation of readers’ identities and commitments. A sense of the longer, premodern history of biblical interpretation suggests that some of these late 20th- and early 21st-century emphases do themselves have roots in the interpretive practices of earlier times, but that the Reformation (and subsequent developments in modern thinking) effectively closed down certain interpretive options in the name of better ordering readers’ interpretive commitments. Though not without real gains, this narrowing of interpretive interests has resulted in much of the practice of academic biblical criticism being beholden to modernist impulses. Shifts toward postmodern emphases have been less common on the whole, but the overall picture of biblical criticism has indeed changed in the 21st century. This may be more owing to the impact of a renewed appetite for theologically imaginative readings among Christian readers, and also of the refreshed recognition of Jewish traditions of interpretation that pose challenging framing questions to other understandings.