The critic of biblical theologians: a review of James Barr's The Concept of Biblical Theology: an Old Testament Perspective - Book Review

Biblical Theology Bulletin, Summer, 2001 by Robert Gnuse

Difference from the History of Religions Approach (Chapter 8)

First Testament scholars after the 1930's maintained that a biblical theologian must not use the History of Religions approach. Barr disagrees. He opines that the older biblical theologians naively equated biblical theology with divine revelation while perceiving that the History of Religions approach merely studied the historical phenomenon of religion. Older biblical theologians thus unconsciously assumed that the study of religion was inferior to the study of revelation. Barr points out that Eichrodt, von Rad, and others who condemned the History of Religions method still used it in subtle fashion. Barr is most sympathetic to the contemporary work of Rainer Albertz (A HISTORY OF ISRAELITE RELIGION IN THE OLD TESTAMENT PERIOD), whom Barr believes has revitalized the History of Religions method. (Barr has reservations about Albertz, however, because of his over-reliance on liberation theological themes and his overconfidence in reconstructing Israel's early history with biblical narratives that Albertz concedes emerged only in the exile.)

Difference in the Size of Complexes (Chapter 9)

Biblical or First Testament theologies may be distinguished from other scholarly attempts to analyze the Bible by virtue of their propensity to analyze and assess together all the diverse texts in the Bible in a coherent religious scheme. Other methods isolate individual texts for consideration or atomize the Bible into many little parts by stressing the differences between texts.

Difference from Philosophy and Natural Theology (Chapters 10, 27)

In the past most biblical theologians decried philosophy and natural theology as alien to the spirit of the Bible and maintained that the avoidance of these assumptions was necessary to biblical theology. They assumed that the biblical worldview was free of the assumptions of natural knowledge, and they put their reconstructed version of the biblical worldview in opposition to philosophy. Barr condemns this view. Those biblical theologians actually were resonating the assumptions of Karl Barth. They actually had a philosophy of their own--it was a "semi-existentialism" (p. 168)--and their own working knowledge of philosophy was minimal. They assumed that the Hebraic worldview undergirded the Second Testament exclusively, but they drastically underestimated the importance of Hellenistic influence and Intertestamental literature. Barr earlier critiqued the assumptions about the so-called Hebraic and Greek worldviews and their supposed opposition to one another in THE SEMANTICS OF BIBLICAL LANGUAGE (1961).

Barr further believes that natural theology or philosophy may be found in the biblical text, especially in the Wisdom literature and Paul. In the First Testament natural philosophy is assumed in stories about creation, the logic behind the laws, prophetic discourse, and wisdom; and natural theology is simply the common sense of that age. (Barr's definition of natural theology may be broader and more generic than the definition given by those who reject its presence in the Bible.)