Book Review: John Barton's "Reading the Old Testament"

John Barton is one of the best modern scholars of the Old Testament, and his book Reading the Old Testament is the single greatest book on Old Testament interpretation that I have read. Barton’s The Nature of Biblical Criticism is also a very good book, and I would recommend that these books be read together. The Nature of Biblical Criticism discusses many issues that are not discussed in Reading the Old Testament, and it serves to correct passages in Reading the Old Testament in which Barton seems to exaggerate the interest of biblical critics in both the intentions of the biblical authors and the earliest strata of biblical books that critical scholars take to be composite. (As Barton rightly points out in The Nature of Biblical Criticism, many biblical critics have practiced their craft without regard to authorial intentions, and many have focused on the final forms of composite biblical texts.) Nevertheless, Reading the Old Testament is a tremendous book, and I recommend it to anyone who is interested in the interpretation of the Old Testament.

In this review, I will summarize the main arguments of Reading the Old Testament, but the book deserves careful, repeated reading. I have read Reading the Old Testament only once, but I have read The Nature of Biblical Criticism three times, and I plan to read them both again in the next few months. This may seem excessive, but I don’t think that it is possible to understand the Old Testament well without such study.

I should mention two caveats before proceeding. First, Barton is a biblical critic who accepts the basic results of modern biblical criticism. Thus, he rejects the thesis that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, that Isaiah wrote all of Isaiah (or even all of Isaiah 1-39), and so on. Many conservative Christian readers will find this approach to the Bible completely unacceptable. In the debate between biblical critics and fundamentalists, I am definitely on the side of the biblical critics. If you are on the side of the fundamentalists, then you may want to stop reading now if you have made it this far.

Second, Barton’s book presupposes familiarity with traditional biblical critical methods. In particular, he assumes familiarity with source criticism, form criticism, and redaction criticism. Readers who are not already familiar with these methods will find Barton’s book very difficult to read. Barton does characterize these methods in some detail, and an intelligent reader who has never encountered biblical criticism will be able to make some sense of the book. But the richness of the discussion will be lost on readers who aren’t already familiar with these methods. If you are one such reader but you want to delve into Barton, I would strongly recommend reading up on these methods beforehand. Barton recommends some good books on these methods; I would read them. Barton doesn’t say much about tradition criticism (or traditio-historical criticism), but he does spend a great deal of time on canon criticism, structuralism, and New Criticism, and his book closes with a short discussion of reader response criticism, post-structuralism, deconstructionism, and a few other methods. Needless to say, readers who are familiar with these methods will be at a definite advantage. It is not necessary to be familiar with all these methods before tackling Barton – I knew very little about New Criticism before starting the book – but some familiarity with canon criticism, structuralism, and reader response criticism is recommended. Again, Barton recommends a number of books on these subjects, and they are well worth reading. This concludes my preliminary remarks.

So, then, what is the book about? Basically, it is about different methods of interpreting the Old Testament. Much of what Barton says about methods of interpreting the Old Testament could be applied to interpreting the New Testament, but the Old and New Testaments raise different critical problems (or at least different forms of the same general problems), and Barton is an Old Testament scholar who writes mostly about the Old Testament. Barton discusses a number of different methods of interpreting the Old Testament, including the following: source criticism, form criticism, redaction criticism, canon criticism, structuralism, New Criticism, post-structuralism, deconstructionism, reader response criticism, rhetorical criticism, and “biblical poetics” (as practiced e.g. by Robert Alter). Some of these methods have mainly been applied to the Bible, and not to secular literature. These methods include source criticism, form criticism, redaction criticism, and canon criticism. Source criticism, form criticism, and redaction criticism are fairly old, and they developed through the efforts of many scholars; canon criticism is fairly recent, and it was largely developed by one scholar, B.S. Childs. There are great differences between source criticism, form criticism, redaction criticism on the one hand and canon criticism on the other hand, and Barton addresses these differences at length. Most of the other methods that Barton discusses were originally developed by literary critics who were not Bible specialists. For example, structuralism and New Criticism were originally developed as methods – or, in the case of structuralism, as a theory of texts and reading – for reading literary texts, or perhaps even all texts. At any rate, they were not developed by biblical critics for the purpose of reading the Bible. These, then, are the methods of interpretation that Barton discusses.

Barton’s book is largely concerned with the following questions about these methods. First, can any of these methods claim to be the right or the best method for reading the Old Testament? Second, if any of these methods cannot claim to be the right or the best method for reading the Old Testament, is there any sense in which that method may still be good or useful? Third, what is the relationship between these various methods? In particular, what is the relationship between the methods that have been devised by biblical critics for reading the Bible and the methods that have been devised by “secular” (i.e., non-biblical) literary critics for reading literary texts? It has often been thought that there are few similarities between these two sets of methods. Is that true? These are clearly some of the most important questions that anyone can ask about the interpretation of the Old Testament. If someone could answer even one of these questions with confidence, the benefits for understanding the Old Testament would be considerable. I think that Barton answers them all with confidence, and that his answers are incredibly important. Let me try to state some of Barton’s main conclusions in the rest of this review.

First, Barton argues that no method of interpreting the Old Testament can justifiably claim to be uniquely right or best. This is true when considering the Old Testament as a whole, and it is true when considering particular books of the Old Testament. In all such cases, there are many methods that can be used to interpret the Old Testament fruitfully. In fact, Barton suggests that every method he discusses in the book – or nearly every method – can be fruitfully applied to at least some parts of the Old Testament. As I understand Barton, he suggests that some methods may be better suited than others to some passages of the Old Testament, but there is no passage for which only one method will yield acceptable or useful results. And, some methods may not yield acceptable or useful results for all or even many passages. It emerges that while some interpretations of a passage may be bad, there may be many good interpretations of the passage, and that all good interpretations deserve consideration, even when they conflict with one another. And yes, it is possible for good interpretations to conflict. In such cases, we may want to say that at least one of the interpretations fails to faithfully analyze the meaning of the text; but, faithful, accurate analysis of meaning need not be the sole criterion of good interpretation. For example, Barton argues that canonical criticism often produces readings of biblical texts that conflict with the meanings of those texts; but, he nonetheless seems to believe that such readings can still yield fruitful insights into the texts, and that they can suggest good applications of them. I would certainly agree with that assessment myself.

Of course, many critics – both biblical and “secular” – have argued that their preferred method of interpretation is the best, and that others should be shunned. Furthermore, many critics base their methods of interpretation on general theories about (biblical, literary, or generic) texts and reading that support such claims to superiority. Barton argues that these general theories are mistaken, and that the claims to superiority are mistaken as well. However, he argues that these negative results do not undermine the methods of interpretation themselves, and that all (or nearly all) these methods having something to recommend them. For example, many post-structuralists claim that all methods of reading texts other than post-structuralism are unsound, and they claim that the superiority of their method is supported by a general theory of the nature of texts. Barton argues that both claims are wrong, but he also argues that we shouldn’t conclude from this that no post-structuralist interpretation of the Old Testament is good or useful; and, in fact, he suggests that such interpretations may be fruitful.

I find Barton’s arguments compelling. Indeed, they strike me as commonsense. But few critics seem to have appreciated commonsense here. I don’t read a lot of general literary criticism, but I read a lot of biblical criticism, and I can vouch for Barton’s claim that many biblical critics tend to view one method of interpreting the Bible as providing the key to the whole text. This mentality leads to confusion and skepticism when biblical critics learn that a certain method doesn’t actually answer all questions about the Old Testament. The right response is not to reject the method outright as a useful and justified method for reading the Old Testament. Rather, the right response is to realize that no single method can claim to be exclusively or exhaustively correct.

There is an important debate here that needs to be addressed. As Barton admits, source criticism, form criticism, and redaction criticism all depend on the assumptions that (1) texts have stable meanings that do not change with time and that (2) the meanings of Old Testament texts are determined to some extent at least by facts about the social and historical context of the author, and perhaps even the intentions of the author. These assumptions have been attacked by literary critics for decades; and, unless the biblical critic can respond to these attacks, then the methods that depend on those assumptions will be greatly undermined. Barton defends both assumptions at length, and I find his arguments on behalf of those assumptions compelling. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Barton has refuted the claim that texts (or at least many texts, including Biblical texts) have (core) meanings that change with time, and that he has refuted the claim that the meanings of such texts are not fixed in any way by the historical and social context of the author. These results are very important not just for biblical criticism but for all literary criticism. Barton shows that much of the debate about these issues has been muddled, and that most attacks on the assumptions of traditional biblical criticism have actually targeted straw positions that traditional biblical criticism does not presuppose. One upshot of the discussion is that intuitions about texts are essential to interpretation. I will return to this point below.

I should say that Barton is remarkably gracious when discussing the views of scholars who have been hostile towards biblical criticism. If Barton were not so gracious, I doubt that he would have been able to find anything useful in some of the methods he discusses. There is an important lesson to be learned here about the nature of scholarly disagreement. At any rate, I knew little about deconstructionism before reading the book, but I had a very low opinion of it. Barton has a low opinion of deconstructionism too, at least when conceived as a general theory of texts and reading, but he sketched a deconstructionist reading of Ecclesiastes that I found both useful and interesting (note, I did not say accurate – again, accuracy need not be the sole criterion of good interpretation, though it may be the most important).

To continue, Barton argues that while many scholars have generally seen a wide gulf between biblical and non-biblical criticism, there are actually many important similarities between the two camps. I won’t go into details, but I found Barton’s arguments on this issue to be both convincing and helpful.

So then, how does all this help us to read the Bible? Well, if you are convinced by Barton’s arguments – and I think you should be – then the answer is clear. We should learn a variety of methods for interpreting the Bible, and we should learn to apply them well. In particular, we should train ourselves to recognize that a particular method may not be helpful for all passages, and that some passages may be profitably read by employing several different methods. Furthermore, we should continue to read works on biblical interpretation and general literary criticism with a view to improving both our intuitions about texts and our understanding of theory. 

We need to engage with the biblical critical methods of source criticism, form criticism, redaction criticism, and rhetorical criticism, if not also tradition criticism. And, in doing so, we constantly need to move between (putative) earlier strata of the text and the finished form of the text. We also need to consider the social and historical context of the author, the original readership, later editors, and later readers. We need to attend carefully to issues of genre, constantly checking our intuitions about genre against scholarly theories about them. At the very least, we need to be mindful of our assumptions about genre and how they shape our understanding of the text. And we need to be honest with ourselves about the state of our evidence for these assumptions. If we are insensitive or uncritical in our attitude towards genre, we will never read the Old Testament well.

As Barton notes, the practice of source criticism requires judgments about genre, but it is very hard (if not impossible) to discern the genre of some Old Testament texts, at least with great precision. As a result, source critics are often forced to rely on their modern understanding of genre. Needless to say, this can lead to problems. For example, according to our modern understanding of the genre of narrative, writers of narrative should studiously avoid narrative inconsistencies, wild digressions, awkward repetitions, etc. However, the narrative sections of the Pentateuch are full of these things,  and source critics who apply their modern understanding of narrative to the Pentateuch often end up positing diverse sources when they encounter narrative inconsistencies, wild digressions, awkward repetition, etc. The problem is that unless we can be sure that ancient Israelites understood narrative writing in the way that we do, we cannot be sure that positing diverse sources in this way is warranted. For example, it might be that ancient Israelites weren’t bothered by inconsistencies in narrative and that they enjoyed abrupt transitions and repetitions, so that what we call “wild digressions” and “awkward repetitions” they would have regarded as familiar literary devices that enhance – not diminish – the artistic value of a text. If this is how ancient Israelites understood narrative, then much source criticism as currently practiced would be clearly bankrupt.

At this point, one might despair about the prospects of source criticism. After all, how can we know how the ancient Israelites understood narrative? It’s not as if archeologists have uncovered popular works on literary criticism and historiography from ancient Israel. Caution is needed here, but we needn’t despair. Yes, Alter and others have shown that many longstanding assumptions about ancient Israelite narrative were probably mistaken. But that doesn’t mean that scholars can’t know anything about how ancient Israelites understood narrative. Personally, I think that deep inconsistencies in basic theology are a good guide to positing diverse sources, and there are many such inconsistencies in the Pentateuch, the prophets, etc. And, I think that a good argument can be made that some narrative inconsistencies demand that we posit diverse sources. Of course, we will always need to rely on intuitions about texts, and our results will never have the firmness of a mathematical proof. But thoroughgoing skepticism or despair is unwarranted. At any rate, I think it is clear that questions of genre are central to interpretation; and, while we may never be able to know the genre of Leviticus 1-16 or Deuteronomy with precision, we aren’t exactly clueless about the meaning of these texts either. So, we must be willing to scrutinize our intuitions about genre with great care and objectivity, but there is good reason to think that much of our current understanding of the Old Testament will survive such scrutiny.

We need to adopt a position on the Bible that is intermediate between thoroughgoing despair on the one hand and supreme confidence on the other. We will never unlock all the secrets of the Old Testament. In fact, we will probably never unlock even many of the most fundamental secrets of the Old Testament. Yes, that’s unfortunate. But again, we shouldn’t despair. We clearly know a lot about the Old Testament. And, while we cannot read the Old Testament well unless we engage with the hard questions that biblical critics ask about the text, our understanding of the Old Testament shouldn’t be dominated by such questions, at least if we are believing Jews or Christians. If we fall into the latter camp, then we need to find some way of allowing scholarship to improve our devotional reading of the text without competing with it or undermining it. We should distinguish between meaning and application. Traditional Christian and Jewish interpretations of the Bible are often mistaken about the meaning of biblical texts, but they may still contain faithful and fruitful applications. Even canon criticism has its place. Barton argues this point himself, and I think that he is right. Of course, purely literary methods of interpreting the Bible (e.g., structuralism) also have a place, and we should not neglect them.

Above all, we should love and cherish the Bible. It is a wondrous, beautiful text, unlike any other that human beings have ever produced. (I think that this is because God played a crucial, direct role in producing the text, though, of course, not everyone will agree with that assessment.) What do you do if you are frustrated about not being able to understand Isaiah? Keep reading the text, and keep cherishing it. You’ll make progress. And the effort is definitely well spent.