Mind the Gap: Modern and Postmodern in Biblical Studies

This article is a critical engagement with the theoretical entailments of post-modernism and the implications for a more sophisticated historical-critical method. Topics include the distinction between strong and weak versions of postmodernism, the conceptual and ethical problems of the strong version in biblical scholarship, and the relationship between the modern history of biblical studies and the Enlightenment project (in dialogue with recent postmodern scholarship). A rapprochement between a viable postmodernism and an enlightened modernism is desirable, despite entrenched ideologies and institutional constraints.Like any self-respecting logic, historical criticism has its contradictions.-Marc Bloch, The Historian's CraftIn recent years there have appeared two well-articulated invitations to biblical scholars to engage the issue of postmodernism in biblical studies. One is a JBL article by George Aichele, Peter Miscall, and Richard Walsh, "An Elephant in the Room: Historical-Critical and Postmodern Interpretations of the Bible,"1 and the other a short monograph by Stephen D. Moore and Yvonne Sherwood, The Invention of the Biblical Scholar: A Critical Manifesto.2 The former is an invitation to dialogue,3 and the latter is an ambitious proposal for a "second wave" of theoryinflected biblical scholarship that will be more philosophically aware than the first. Both of these are thoughtful and in some ways courageous works and are worth serious deliberation by historical-critical biblical scholars.I have already implicated myself in this discussion by criticizing the disparagement of reason by "some postmodernists,"4 leading to some animadversions. For this reason, I feel obliged to enter into it more fully. As Aichele et al. aptly comment, these are "embattled camps" in the field of biblical studies, which tend to communicate mostly by mutual derision. In light of this dismal past, the opening of an open and irenic dialogue is entirely for the good.I begin by exploring the diversity of postmodern theory and will argue for a distinction between strong and weak versions of postmodernism. By the strong version, I mean the position associated with the French masters of postmodernism (Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and others), which develops the Nietzschean critique of rationality and humanism into a vigorous critique of all epistemological claims. The weak version accepts aspects of this critique but also maintains the practical reality of reason and human agency. The strong version is, I will argue, theoretically and practically untenable, whereas the weak version is justifiable and warranted. Moreover, the weak version is indistinguishable from an enlightened modernism. Second, I will argue that strong postmodernism in biblical studies poses an ethical problem regarding the relative values of truthfulness and social consequences. Third, I will address the history of biblical studies and its relationship to the Enlightenment project, in dialogue with Moore and Sherwood.Through these steps I propose to "mind the gap" between modernism and postmodernism-I will be mindful of it, but I will also critique it.5 I will argue (a) that this gap is an unstable and, in some respects, illusory binary opposition, and (b) that this perceived gap should be acknowledged, but also disrupted and reconfigured.I. POSTMODERNISM: STRONG AND WEAK VERSIONSThere are many conceptual problems in postmodern theory and practice, both within and without biblical studies. First, there is a problem of definition; many who claim to practice postmodernism do not clarify how they understand this term. The absence of definitions is not entirely surprising, given that postmodernism as such eschews fixed essences and meanings. Postmodernism identifies itself as something other than, or as a metacriticism of, modernist discourse, which it often characterizes as mired in the illusions of metaphysics and other "logocentric" disorders. …