Christianity
Historical Criticism and Sacred History
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Wednesday, December 05, 2001
Verifying Truth
Christian theologians advance all conceivable theological grounds to show that the method for verifying events used by historical criticism with regard to biblical narratives—and in particular with regard to the resurrection narratives—is inappropriate. Such objections are variations of the assertion that the historical-critical method is based on arbitrary presuppositions. This accusation is unjustified.
Karl Barth, in his remarks concerning the historical-critical method, refers to its far-reaching application to history as “in fact only a ridiculous and middle-class habit of the modern western mind, which is supremely phantastic in its chronic lack of imaginative phantasy”. Elsewhere he says: “Proper theology begins at the point where the difficulties disclosed by Strauss and Feuerbach are seen and then laughed at”.
Christian Hartlich of Tübingen, in December 1976, commented that this derision betrays Barth’s inability to engage historical criticism in the only field where the truth of statements concerning events can be decided—in the sphere of human discovery of truth. A merely asserted but unverified statement of a historical event can be no more than a possibility. Notwithstanding Barth’s monumental reputation, faith offers no basis for distinguishing true historical statements from false ones.
In determining the truth of statements concerning events from the past, the critical historian does not begin with arbitrary assumptions whether ideological, or conditioned by a predetermined Cartesian, Kantian, Positivist, Atheist or any other concept of history—often used by Christians as refutation in place of argument. As someone concerned with truth, the historian simply applies, in a methodical way, the universal criteria of truth to statements about events from the past. Unfortunately for Christian fears, recognizing this shakes the centuries old systematic defence of the Christian faith.
Hartlich sets out some principles that Christians might well follow. What follows is a freely rendered synopsis of them with additional commentary.
Presupposition
The historian cannot presuppose the truth of statements of events in old documents. Critical procedures must be followed to verify them. The historian must determine whether what such documents affirm did in fact take place and in the way the documents say. The author of a document might have supposed an event occurred and recorded his supposition in good faith, or he might have written what he did to have a particular effect on the readers without regard to its historical truth. Does the historical truth of the event stand independently of the subjective presentation by the narrator? If so, the historian confirms the event as historical and the account of the event as true.
The historian is necessarily critical, and criticism is necessary so long as the possibility for error exists. Equally, it is bad method to presuppose that even the most honest people are truthful in recording history. What they record might be honestly recorded, but there are many ways in which they might have been misled or even deceived. Regarding events found in the bible, the historian is not necessarily questioning the subjective conviction of the biblical authors, though he might well do because their honesty cannot be presupposed either, but simply requiring that what they wrote is verified.
Sacred History
The bible is called “sacred history”, the “history” of beings not known to normal experience, beings of divine, demonic, and supernatural origin yet apparently active in an otherwise natural world. “Sacred history” cannot be verified, and can only be classified as unhistorical. What is supernatural is not natural, and so does not and cannot meet natural criteria. But the evidence for the supernatural is tenuous, and what there is is hysterical.
When in Matthew 28:2ff, an angel descends to earth and moves a heavy stone causing, or by means of, an earthquake, two types of events present themselves. In principle, the earthquake could be verified by the accounts of others who noriced it. The descent of an angel is not verifiable, and is likely to have been a hysterical interpretation of the earthquake, if we must suppose the author is not deliberately exaggerating or deceiving. An angel is fundamentally removed from verification.
Statements about events in the past must be verified in the same way as we verify events today. When they cannot be, then they cannot be admitted as truth. “Sacred history” has to be taken by the historian with a pinch of salt. In the light of all modern experience, supernatural creatures are products of the imagination. It is hard to believe that an omnipotent God would choose such unlikely ways of revealing himself.
Historical Critical Method
Testing the truth of statements concerning events in documents from the past is only possible by means of the historical-critical method. Its stipulations are not arbitrarily chosen, but have been shown in practice to reveal historical truth where it can be revealed. Indeed, because historical knowledge is so determined, it can be argued that historians are able to grasp only a part of history as it really happened. This objection is valid up to a point. Real events can never be fully reconstituted by later historians if only because of the finer detail that is inevitably lost, but—given that observers are not reporting trickery and often they are—knowledge of the reality of events and the actual reality of events must have been correlated originally, and though loss of information loosens the correlation over time, it takes a long time to diisappear all together, unless there has been deliberate destruction of data. A possible event only becomes a real event for human beings when they confirm it by proven means of knowing reality.
The accusation of limitation in this matter must be addressed, not to historians and their methods, but to God. If God has made the world such that we can only have imperfect knowledge of the avenues He choses to use, then His salvific efforts on our behalfs look misplaced. One might feel that conditions for knowledge are unfortunate, but they still do not mean we should seek to deceive ourselves. If God has not made it clear in the reality he has provided, then however we might strive or theologize, we cannot make certain what, according to the way God has constituted knowledge for us, is merely a possibility.
Objectivity
The only criterion for determining whether an event in an old document actually took place is to find it in the framework of experience of history in its present state of knowledge. The discovery of other frameworks might force a review, but until they are discovered, conceivable possibilities do not abrogate the validity of this principle. In old documents, the historian is presented with individual opinions concerning what could be true. The historian’s task is to test whether objectivity can be granted to these opinions.
The Roman historian Suetonius reports that, after the death of Caesar Augustus, at his funeral, a highly placed official with the rank of praetor swore that he saw Caesar ascend into heaven as he was cremated. The historian, therefore, has a report from a reliable source in the ancient world of a statement by an eyewitness, an honorable senator, confirmed by an oath. Should the historian accept this as being true? Surely God, or the gods, can take up into heaven the Caesar who had just died? For a being endowed with almighty power, all things are possible. Does the sworn statement of an eyewitness suffice to insert into history as a fact the heavenly journey of Caesar Augustus—a possibility conceivable to those who believe in an Almighty. Then, the historian could write, “After his death Augustus was taken up into heaven, a fact confirmed by a respectable eyewitness, as the near contemporary historian Suetonius reported in his book on the life of Augustus”.
No historian who merits the title could conclude this. No instruments of knowledge at the historian’s disposal place him in a position to validate such assertions concerning journeys into heaven because they fall outside the continuum of ordinary experience. An event must cohere in principle with other events—stand in a verifiable connexion with them. An absolutely incoherent event is not verifiable as an event, even if it is notionally accepted as possible. The concept of contingency, dear to theologians, is no help in this matter. It is possible to conceive of an event which has no ascertainable connexion with other ascertainable events, but such a contingent event, by definition, cannot be shown to have taken place.
Since historians can grant no objectivity to the Praetor’s sworn sense-perception in the story of the ascent of Augustus, they have to examine the subjective conditions which led the Praetor to make his statement. Was it a vision—a psychological impression caused in his grief for Caesar, who already during his lifetime was revered as God and Lord? Stories of such heavenly journeys are widespread. What should the historian make of them? Dio Cassius relates the same incident and names the official.
He adds that Livia, Caesar’s wife, paid the Praetor 250,000 denar for his oath! It could be an explanation of an unlikely event, but can the additional information be trusted in itself? The historian has to ask whether Livia would do such a thing, and, if so, why. It might be a derogatory accusation by her political opponents. The historian will have to investigate Dio Cassius’s sources for his report, and whether his own historical work, or the sources he used, saw the house of Caesar in a bad light. Even if the Praetor is proved to have been honest, the historian cannot conclude that what the Praetor claimed to have seen is historical.
Considering the statements of events in the New Testament, historians have the same problem with the ascension of Jesus—whether or not it was an objective event. The reasoning and outcome are just the same. The only fact the historians have is the fact of the statement, not the factuality of that which is stated as fact. It matters not whether the tradition is early or late, for the statement is unverifiable in either case. A common false assumption overused by theologians and evangelists is that earlier recorded events are more likely to be true. Even if this were true, it is not the point. If it is unlikely as a late tradition and twice as likely as an early one, it is still unlikely. The evangelists mean not that an early tradition is more likely, they mean to imply it is certain. When an event is deemed unverifiable, an earlier portrayal of the event can claim no higher degree of objectivity than a later.
These observations are wholly valid with regard to the assertion that the event of the resurrection of Jesus is a historically demonstrable reality. P Stuhlmacher asserts as an historical affirmation from a theological perspective, “that only the event of the resurrection of Jesus and the confession to this deed of God fulfilled in Jesus makes the historical development of the primitive Christian mission understandable”. This is to reason backward from the historically demonstrable consequences of the resurrection faith and its history to the factual reality of the resurrection. Historians, who are conscientious about their methodology, would be unable to come to this conclusion unless they were willing to admit the same reasoning in other cases too, opening many impossible myths that accompany religions, cults and beliefs, as foundation legends, as historical reality.
No historian doubts that belief in the resurrection is historically demonstrable as a significant factor in the growth of the Christian faith. It is, though, an error to maintain that the resurrection of Jesus itself is therefore an historically demonstrable fact. The factuality of what is believed cannot be derived from the historical demonstrability of its consequences. Myths are commonly invented to account for otherwise inexplicable traditions and behaviours. The historical-critical method shows the resurrection of Jesus is not the basis of the Christian faith, but the content. Given that statements of the events of “sacred history” are not objective, the critical historian questions further, concerning the conditions under which statements of this kind could arise at all.
Higher Knowledge
Because “sacred history” was popular in ancient documents, some people conclude that the authors of it had access to higher knowledge. Yet, in other respects, these narrators were subject to the same human conditions as the rest of us. These ancient authors have to be supposed to have had special knowledge in certain sacred things but otherwise were subject to the same laws, and therefore errors as us all. This includes error with regard to empirical facts, making statements in the form of “sacred history” just as subjective as all other human knowledge. The writers of “sacred history” had no source of knowledge that allowed them to make truthful statements about events unknown to ordinary mortals.
Is it credible that “sacred history” is all error, deception, illusion and invention? It might have to be so concluded. What conditions impelled the writers of “sacred history” to relate historical happenings as if they had really taken place, even though they never took place in fact? What concrete, subjective conditions allowed the statements of “sacred history” to become real? How can it be explained that the biblical writers seldom if ever seem disturbed in their accounts by the question that today concerns everyone who seeks to report events truthfully—whether these events in fact took place?
Factuality
“Fact” is a modern word. Its rapid introduction was not accidental, but related to the growth of the scientific and naturalistic methods of investigation. Science created a precise concept for a methodologically verified, confirmed, and demonstrated reality. Earlier, human historical experience had not yet discovered the formal principles of true objective knowledge. They had to be acquired step by step, as the consequence of prolonged, often fruitless searching.
The awareness of verification, as a necessary condition for truth, was first recognized when reason was faced with a multitude of supposedly true but conflicting opinions about reality, when enquiry into all things was popularized by the growth of science. It ackowledged the need for reflexion about the necessary conditions for the validity of such judgments. So long as the conditions for truth were not reflected on in this way, the objective truth of statements could not be distinguished from opinions, hopes and wishes. The concept of factuality was unknown to the writers of “sacred history”. Their way of narrating is naïve, taking place without thorough critical reflexion on what made true events true. In their narrations of events they allow to flow together heterogeneous elements which the historian today must separate.
Whatever was believed to be true was not yet governed by reason, and could without qualm be set down as objective truth. There are biblical stories that relate events that could not have been witnessed, according to the narratives themselves, yet even so are related by the writers as if they had seen it—such are the report of creation, monologues by Yehouah, the burial of Moses by Yehouah. Stories like this show that a distinction between belief about what is real and demonstrable reality was absent from the perspective of the narrator, or that the narrator thought it was absent from the perpectives of his audience. Many Christians do not differ today. They consider their subjective experiences as “truth”.
A concern for the objectivity of sacred narratives was no more crucial for the community which received them than for the writers of “sacred history”. The church accepted narratives into its canon that contradict one another historically showing that it was indifferent to contradictions like this in its canonized histories. These kinds of contradictions are found at the center of christological affirmations, in the genealogies of Jesus and even in the resurrection accounts. Their inclusion in the canon cannot have taken place with any concern for the actual events because then the church would have had to decide which reports were true. It significantly did not do this in the process of canonization, and nor did incongruous accounts become subjects of discussion for the purpose of verification.
These accounts obtained an equal authority through acceptance into the canon, even though they could not all be true at the same time. The attempts to create a harmony of the gospels, beginning with Tatian, show an attempt by some to establish a chronologically and historically unified course of events. However, the rejection of harmonizations by the church shows that the narratives are not to be evaluated according to the criteria of historical truth, but that they pursued an entirely different intention.
Evangelical Meaning
The writers of “sacred history” use history as a form to call forth faith. Whoever misunderstands their method, and thus conceives the statements of “sacred history” to be assertions of facts, commits a fundamental hermeneutical error. Narrators of “sacred history” treat history as a plastic substance that can be formed according to the intention of the narrator, one that is not bothered by the concept of facts. Their intention is not directed towards a discerning historical-critical acceptance by the hearer, but appeals to the hearer to grasp the evangelical meaning. Treating the history-like statements of “sacred history” as assertions of fact removes them from their proper context of religious propaganda, and puts them under the scrutiny of modern historical method, the product of recent scientific thinking that must necessarily refute them.
This false hermeneutical perspective causes a disastrous theological error. “sacred history” is simply a means of missionary expression, but is itself made the primary object of faith. Faith in God is different from holding a story to be true. The New Testament used the form of history to appeal to proselytes to believe. Christian preaching today does not understand “sacred history” as it was meant to be understood. It is not a faithful rendering of objective events, but an indirect appeal for faith using historical narrative as a method.
“Sacred history” is instead made the primary object of faith, and has to be be regarded as true. It is this truth which is used by modern preachers to establish faith in God. Faith in God is not primary for the Christian, any more than it is for an atheist or a Pagan. The Christian convert must first have faith in something other than God, in the truth of “sacred history” called the gospels. Faith decays because Christians have to suspend their critical faculties to believe the bible. The alternative is simply to believe in God without having to believe the sacred histories are true. Many modern Christians are trying to move in this direction, but with opposition from traditionalists.
Literary Idolatry
Hartlich concludes that when the pseudo-historical statements of “sacred history” become dogmatized and made obligatory by churches, paradoxically, the historical-critical method becomes the requirement for Christian faith. Christians cannot honestly ground their faith in the truth of a “sacred history” recognized by natural criteria as pseudo-historical at best, if not false. In the desire to be justified by holding “sacred history” to be true, Christians forego accepting God Himself in favour of an inadequate support for faith—a form of literary idolatry. Yet, given that something must be believed without any evidence at all, why must it be God. Nature is the more appropriate choice, and more original. That it manifestly exists and is wonderful ought to be enough.
