Roland Murphy, The Pontifical Biblical Commission, Jews, and the Bible - Book Review

Biblical Theology Bulletin, Fall, 2003 by Amy-Jill Levine

One reason for this lack is likely the PBC's (and the Church's) inattention to the Ketuvim (the Song of Songs--a text Murphy finds consummate in showing how the historical-critical method can enhance theological appropriation [1998:117]--is silenced in the Document). Another is that the authors are not informed by Jewish scholarship: the PBC affirms that "Christians can ... learn much from Jewish exegesis practised for more than two thousand years"; the problem is that it fails to show how. Murphy cites as exemplary in meeting his dual goals of historical and theological sensitivity the work of Abraham Heschel, Jon Levenson, Moshe Greenberg, and Michael Fox (2002: 147). A third explanation is the PBC's lack of sustained engagement with ancient Jewish sources, especially those preserved by the Synagogue. While the PBC does state magnificently, "Christians can and ought to admit that the Jewish reading of the Bible is a possible one, in continuity with the Jewish Sacred Scriptures from the Second Temple period, a reading analogous to the Christian reading which developed in parallel fashion," it fails to note what those Jewish readings are. The Dead Sea scrolls and Philo receive as much if not more attention than Rabbinic texts. Given both the PBC's explicit interest in facilitating better relations between Church and Synagogue and the extensive comparisons that can be drawn--generously rather than polemically--between New Testament and Rabbinic texts, between Jesus and individual rabbis, these omissions are regrettable.

For Murphy, historical criticism provides a major means to discover the theological implications of the Old Testament, for it looks to the heart of the writer and the text. It seeks "to discover at least approximately the sense directly expressed by the human author and conveyed by the written word" (1998:113). The discipline is no false objectivism designed to foreclose interpretation from the "living traditions of the church" (to use the expression Murphy [1998: 112] borrows from the PBC's 1994 Document, THE INTERPRETATION OF THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH). To the contrary, for Murphy historical criticism operates according to probabilities in order to reveal the "literal historical sense" of texts, and thereby it discovers again and again (his examples include Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and 30:15) "an unmistakable challenge to the modern reader" (1998:113). These challenges, moreover, encompass what is insoluble. His definition is consequently broader than that offered by Christopher Seitz, whom Murphy quotes: "Historical criticism establishes the genre, form, possible setting, and historical and intellectual background of the individual text" (1998:112); missing from the narrower definition is the "intended meaning," or more colloquially, the theological punch.

While Murphy was aware of exaggerated and idiosyncratic applications of historical criticism, he remained sanguine as to the "reasonable insights" it can produce (1998: 113). Certainly the notion of "reasonable" readings, along with claims of "common sense" or "self-evident" conclusions, faces charges of ideological distortion: what is common sense or self evident is often rather the legacy of cultural conditioning designed to maintain power structures or orthodox dogma (e.g., Aristotle's views on slavery; gender bifurcation). But in Murphy's case, historical-critical rigor went well beyond solipsistic pronouncement or sociological vapidity. He was aware of how texts can (be used both to) inspire and abuse; he attended to studies outside the Catholic tradition as well as to work by feminists and liberationists; he saw how the historical and the spiritual could be complementary without being sacrificed or warped.