Prophecy and Religion Revisited: John Skinner and Evangelical Biblical Criticism

Walter J Houston

doi:10.3390/rel12110935

Abstract

The paper is an essay in the history of interpretation. Its subject is John Skinner’s book on the life of Jeremiah, Prophecy and Religion (1922). The main aim is to place the work in its historical, theological and cultural context, to explain Skinner’s conviction that Jeremiah’s life marks the emergence of personal religion in Israel and points towards Christianity. Attempts at such contextualization by J. Henderson and M.C. Callaway are studied and shown to be inadequate. Skinner’s religious context and theological education are then reviewed and are shown to be sufficient to account for his belief in the pivotal role of Jeremiah in the evolution of ‘religion’. The paper finally addresses the present-day significance of Skinner’s work and concludes that while Prophecy and Religion is of limited value for the interpretation of Jeremiah, Skinner’s life and work as a whole as an evangelical believer engaged in radical biblical criticism is a valuable model neglected over the last 100 years.

Highlights

The year 2022 marks the centenary of the publication of John Skinner’s Prophecy and Religion (Skinner 1922), a study of Jeremiah that was successful and influential in its day and for many years afterwards
Religion is of limited value for the interpretation of Jeremiah, Skinner’s life and work as a whole as an evangelical believer engaged in radical biblical criticism is a valuable model neglected over the last
He narrows the argument to a comparison with the theologians and biblical critics he has just referred to, and argues that the parts of Israel’s religion that Jeremiah rejects, according to Skinner, are ‘practically identical to the parts of orthodox Christianity that liberal theologians and biblical critics came to doubt’ (Henderson 2015, p. 6). He refers to Jeremiah’s ‘loss of faith in the Deuteronomic reform and his loss of faith in the sacrificial system.’. As to the former, Skinner argues that Jeremiah saw the problem as trust in a written word of God, rejecting ‘the illusion of infallibility and finality attaching to the written word, as if it were superior to the living voice of prophecy or the dictates of the religious sense’ (Skinner 1922, p. 121; Henderson 2015, pp. 6–7)

Summary

Introduction

The year 2022 marks the centenary of the publication of John Skinner’s Prophecy and Religion (Skinner 1922), a study of Jeremiah that was successful and influential in its day and for many years afterwards. About the same time as Ackroyd was hailing the work as a classic, Robert Carroll was attempting to update it, but quickly decided that this had been rendered impossible by more recent trends in the study of Jeremiah. Later in this paper I shall consider briefly how Skinner’s interest in personal religion may be pursued in the book of Jeremiah today as a literary text rather than as a historical document. The main object of this paper, is to explore the historical and theological context of Skinner’s understanding of the book and his resulting portrait of Jeremiah, in dialogue with a couple of recent studies

Skinner’s Case

Skinner in Context

Prophecy and Religion Today