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

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

For Murphy, historical criticism supports theology, and it does so considerably because the object of the criticism is the text an sich, the text as it stands in the canon. Conversely, for many scholars of early Christianity, the canonical product does not attest to, but rather hides, theological truth. For the Gospels, "minimalist" and "maximalist" readings transpose into a new key. Minimalist historical criticism strips away layers of what it deems pious supernaturalism, theological orthodoxy, and vested appropriations to locate a pristine "historical Jesus." The Gospels become less important, if they remain important at all, than the recreated Jesus; the canon yields to "lost" texts such as the hypothetical Q or to "external" texts such as the Gospels of Thomas and Peter. The maximalist finds no distinction between the Jesus of history and the Christ of Faith. There is little "stripping away" of sources to get to the core, because the core and the sources are fully implicated. The occasional maximalist appeal to lost or external texts bolsters readings already developed from the canonical material, and this ancillary status given to the noncanonical works matches well with the use of Ancient Near Eastern materials in work on the other Testament.

The PBC on the whole follows the maximalist reading, which should comport well with Murphy's interests and discipline. However, whereas for Murphy historical-critical insight helps recover the richness of the text in its own historical context, for the PBC, it is employed too often as an apologetic to support what is already believed from a theological rather than (although perhaps in addition to) historical investigation. Otherwise put, on occasion the PBC fails to heed it own warning: "Thomas Aquinas saw clearly what underpinned allegorical exegesis: the commentator can discover in a text only what he already knows."

With a surety that theology provides but to which history offers only non liquet (Murphy 1998: 113), the PBC offers the type of positivistic historiography Murphy denounces. It confidently identifies the Sitz im Leben of each gospel, describes the composition of Second-Temple Judaism and the Jewish practices of expelling and then killing Christians, and even delineates Jesus' intent. Each case offers what for the Church would be the most generous, most benevolent reading: Judaism appears generally xenophobic while the church is universal; Judaism's prophets engage in more castigation of the covenant community than does the (more forgiving) New Testament; there is no "anti-Judaism" in the canon, etc. Missing is the explicit recognition that the history it proffers is subjective; missing is the awareness that its historical-critical observations can serve as apologia for theological agendas; missing is the sensitivity needed to hear how the numerous comments both in the New Testament and from the PBC on Judaism would sound to Jewish ears. This last matter has the gravest value, since the Document's initial concern is anti-Semitism. Its second and third sentences read: