Epistemology and Biblical Theology

From the Pentateuch to Mark's Gospel

Dru Johnson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351661799
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

Epistemology and Biblical Theology pursues a coherent theory of knowledge as described across the Pentateuch and Mark's Gospel. As a work from the emerging field of philosophical criticism, this volume explores in each biblical text both narrative and paraenesis to assess what theory of knowledge might be presumed or advocated and the coherence of that structure across texts.

In the Pentateuch and Mark, primacy is placed on heeding an authenticated and authoritative prophet, and then enacting the guidance given in order to see what is being shown—in order to know. Erroneous knowing follows the same boundaries: failure to attend to the proper authoritative voice or failure to enact guidance creates mistaken understanding. With a working construct of proper knowing in hand, points of contact with and difficulties for contemporary philosophical epistemologies are suggested. In the end, Michael Polanyi's scientific epistemology emerges as the most commensurable view with knowing as it appears in these foundational biblical texts. Therefore, this book will be of interest to scholars working across the fields of Biblical studies and philosophy.

1
Biblical theology and philosophy

In this work, I intend to show that the descriptive and prescriptive accounts of Scripture contain coherent epistemological structures. There are ways to know that are better than others, namely because they lead the knower to see more truly. To show this, I trace those ideas in literary order, from the origins stories of Genesis through the origins of Israel to the origins of the first-century messianic prophet from Nazareth. Throughout, I demonstrate what many biblical scholars have already noticed: a structure to knowing appears endemic to these texts. Generally, the term “epistemology” applies to descriptions about and analyses of structures of knowledge.

Who knows something?

Is that something true?

How does she justify such knowledge?

The analytic tradition of epistemology currently owns the market share of scholarly discussions on knowledge.¹ Accordingly, those three questions about justified true beliefs stem from a particular view of anthropology, humanity, and knowledge – a view that some ancient Semites might not have shared, even up through the period of Hellenistic Judaism.

I hope to show in this work that the epistemological matters implied or described in these texts shift focus away from justifying discrete beliefs – captured by the three questions above – and toward embodying a process in order to know.

Who knows what and how? The answer to this more amenable question will require serious consideration of the authorized docents in Scripture. These authenticated guides lead their subjects to see that which they are showing to them, something present the whole time but unseen to the novice apart from developing the skill to see – like a medical student who finally recognizes a benign tumor through the repeated practices guided by radiology professors. The process of seeing under such guidance, also called “knowing” in these texts, requires full bodily participation to bridge the gap between knowing and not knowing.

I am using the term “knowing” rather than “knowledge” because the aim of the epistemology in these texts is not acquired knowledge. Rather, the goal homes in on creating a kind of person and people who have the skill to see what is being shown to them. Hence, the epistemology found across these texts betrays the Semitic view of skilled knowing rather than discrete logical justification of a belief that biblical authors then designate knowledge.

A handful of works on epistemology in Scripture have peppered the landscape of biblical scholarship² and theology³ over the last few decades, each providing valuable insights into the role of knowledge in biblical literature. This volume differs most notably from those by working in the method of what Jaco Gericke has termed “philosophical criticism.” By this phrase, Gericke means to include philosophical analysis of biblical texts as one more type of critical inquiry that uses the text to understand how ancient Semites might have conceived of philosophical concepts.⁴ Even if biblical philosophy turns out to be “folk philosophy,” as Gericke claims, the authors still have some kind of philosophical notions about humanity and the cosmos, and those notions are evinced in these texts.⁵ In short, philosophical criticism is a form of biblical criticism:

… as a descriptive type of philosophical analysis aimed at the clarification of meaning in the biblical texts … in discovering what, if anything, a given passage assumes or implies on these matters and in translating the findings of the analyses into philosophical terms.⁶

As a form of biblical criticism, an umbrella term with intentional largess, Gericke houses philosophical criticism mostly within the methodologies of literary and rhetorical criticism.

In addition, we shall be first and foremost concerned with the world in the text alone. The world behind it (historical background) and the world in front of it (our world and those of earlier reception history) are of relevance only to the extent that the meaning of folk philosophies in the text can be elucidated.⁷

I will follow Gericke’s lead to a great degree, but focusing on narratives requires that I bring different tools and tacks to the task than he espouses.

What Gericke offers us in methodology carries self-imposed limits, but I will push back on the idea that assumed or implied notions in the text only represent folk philosophy. By examining foundational narratives, something more than implications and assumptions is afoot in the world of the texts. Narratival conflicts, climaxes, and resolutions have a logical structure to them, and that logic means that necessary conclusions may proceed from the logical nature of the story itself. Continuing actions can also offer interpretive clues as to the logic of a story that may have multiple conflict/resolution patterns within. All things being equal, narratives can do something more than imply.⁸ They might possibly argue too.

Biblical criticisms identify themselves by method and the layers investigated in the texts. Gericke primarily pursues Yahwistic religion in the Hebrew Bible in order to demonstrate his method, with a specific interest to show a language-concept relation.⁹ Eleonore Stump also believes that analytic philosophy of religion should consider the biblical texts as a source of philosophical thought played out in the biblical narratives.¹⁰ She has often returned to stories in the Bible that force reflection on a philosophical problem. For instance, Stump uses the Cain and Abel story of Genesis 4 to discuss theodicy in light of the fact that YHWH does nothing for Abel and yet intervenes and then shows mercy for murderous Cain.¹¹ For Stump, the story itself prompts philosophical questions to be answered.

In the following pages, I will practice a philosophical criticism distinct from yet sympathetic to the kinds advocated by Jaco Gericke and Eleonore Stump. This philosophical criticism will attend to narratives first and seek to understand the paranesis of these texts in their literary context. To varying degrees, Eleonore Stump, Craig Bartholomew, and Yoram Hazony – among others – have constructively practiced this type of analysis.¹²

How to proceed

At its core, this work intends to show that the Pentateuch and Mark’s Gospel evince a consistent view of epistemology – who can know what and how. Beyond a consistent view, Genesis 2–3 broaches a seminal depiction of knowledge that develops into a prescriptive account in Exodus, reified in Deuteronomy, and ultimately employed in the rhetoric of the Markan Jesus.

In order to trace that line of epistemology, this volume employs two methods: discerning philosophical argument from within biblical texts and pursuing consonant epistemological constructions across texts. The former has been largely relegated to the usual subjects of investigation. Job and Qohelet are examined for their proto-existentialism.¹³ Equally frequent, the epistemology of wisdom literature recurs with new insights or conversation partners.¹⁴

The latter technique – pursuing notions across texts – is often called biblical theology and has seen its favor devolve in a guild that increasingly valued the explanatory power of variegated textual sources.¹⁵ The problematic assumptions of ventures in biblical theology receive no small amount of scrutiny when broached among many scholars today. Deep skepticism still pervades any attempt to look across texts – and often within texts – in order to demonstrate consonant thought between them. Below, I will describe why some form of biblical theology is best suited to do the descriptive work of philosophical criticism, especially when dealing with narrative.

Are ancient Semites philosophical?

Questions about the philosophical commitments of biblical authors beg many others. How one defines philosophy and conceives of its task determines in advance whether any ancient culture – apart from the Greeks – can be considered philosophical. Most basically, do ancient Israelites think about the nature of a topic as such? Do they think about thinking, knowing, relations, movement, accidental properties, time, logic, and more apart from individual instances in their daily lives?

Thorleif Boman and Johannes Pedersen famously argued that Hellenistic thought revolutionized abstraction in human reason. According to them, the Greeks were able to separate an object from the actions it performed (i.e., its accidental qualities) just as we do today. Greeks could think of a “ball qua ball” or “ball-ness” as distinct from “that red ball being thrown through the window over there.” Hebrews, so Boman claimed, could neither separate the ball-ness from the ball, nor the idea of movement from the historical reality of the ball being thrown. Object and actions were forever fused for the Semitic mind, and therefore, abstraction cannot occur.

If ancient Hebrews cannot conceptualize by abstraction as we do today, how can they do philosophy, which requires such abstraction and conceptualization by the nature of the task? The proponents of the Hebrew-Greek minds dichotomy source their ideas from the Hebrew Bible itself, as does a significant portion of this present volume. Below, I will take a closer look at their suppositions and the later rejection of the Hebrew-Greek dichotomy in biblical scholarship. However, as James Barr pointed out, we do not have access to the minds of ancient Hebrews, only their texts. Hence, as much as is possible, my project discerns coherent patterns of epistemology in those texts without determining the mentality or ability to philosophize of the biblical authors in advance.

The Hebrew-Greek minds problem ¹⁶

The scholarly division between action (the body) and abstract thinking (the mind) widened in the Hebrew-Greek mind debate of last century. Though that debate ended in academia with a fairly definitive loss for those who proffered the Hebrew-Greek dichotomy, it certainly engendered a legacy of thought patterns that extend into today.¹⁷

The mid-twentieth-century debate focused on this question: Did ancient Israelites think like we do today? Those who answered no on this question were verbose.¹⁸ Though these theories of ancient Semitic mentality would whither under later critique,¹⁹ they subtly persist in corners of contemporary scholarship today. In short, the Hebrew-Greek mind theory failed because the dichotomy was not self-reflected on the analysts themselves, and therefore, it is incomplete and most likely a project of projection.

Nevertheless, the basic question needs to be considered: Did ancient Israelites, as described in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament, think and therefore know like we do? Moreover, do we share any mentality with ancient peoples so that our constructs and language can map onto theirs in a productive way? Admittedly, we must share some basic mentality sine qua non in order to do any broad-ranging analysis of ancient texts. Along with the critiques of Barr and Carasik against the Hebrew-Greek mind dichotomy, I want to affirm that biblical language refers to similar epistemological constructs we can recognize today mutatis mutandis. Though the biblical epistemology needs translation into current modes of discourse, we can understand it nonetheless.

If we share mentality that can be communicated by language, then how does one go about translating the language of these biblical texts into the common epistemological referents that we share today?²⁰ That is exactly what I hope to accomplish. In order to find any coherent view of knowledge in the biblical texts, I proceed with the following presumptions:

1. I share at least some epistemological constructs with ancient Israelites.
2. Those constructs can be accessed through disparate linguistic depiction.
3. I can justify my findings by demonstrating the patterned use of this language that corresponds to the structure of narratives.

For this type of philosophical criticism to be viable, my lex...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Biblical theology and philosophy
• 2 Genesis
• 3 Exodus and Numbers
• 4 Deuteronomy
• 5 Mark
• 6 Conclusions
• Bibliography
• Index