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The Invention of the Biblical Scholar: A Critical Manifesto

Reviewed by Christopher Palmer.

Moore and Sherwood offer an insightful account of the captivity of biblical scholarship to historical criticism and point to possible ways of renewing the discipline.

The authors, professors in the area of biblical studies, are experts on poststructural theory (‘Theory’). They trace the role of Theory in literary criticism and biblical scholarship, showing that what is a major movement in the study of literature has remained on the sidelines of biblical studies. Biblical scholars have, since the eighteenth century, pursued an historical-critical method obsessed with ‘problems’, but have failed to extend their rigour beyond historical areas. Theory has been employed in a limited and often second-hand way to provide apparently new avenues of exploring the bible, but the potential of these is limited by the inability to escape the historical straitjacket. In recent years, however, a ‘second wave’ of Theory’s influence on biblical scholarship has seen literary theorists turning to the bible (as distinct from biblical scholars turning to literary theory); the result has been tantalising suggestions of what might be in the world of biblical scholarship.

The book is tightly written and, while being comprehensible to an intelligent reader, is primarily directed towards the academy. Although the authors criticise biblical scholarship for becoming alienated from other disciplines and life beyond the academy, they would need to go further for their work to translate into the experience of most Christians reading the Bible. The book’s acerbic (often funny) account of the rarefied world of professional biblical scholarship rang true, but pointers to new possibilities in biblical interpretation are not fleshed out sufficiently to give a clear sense of what alternative means of interpretation might look and feel like.