Historical-critical Method Research Articles

A Celebration of Living Theology: A Festschrift in Honour of Andrew Louth by Justin A. Mihoc and Leonard Aldea

Reviewed by: A Celebration of Living Theology: A Festschrift in Honour of Andrew Louth by Justin A. Mihoc and Leonard Aldea Robin Darling Young Justin A. Mihoc and Leonard Aldea A Celebration of Living Theology: A Festschrift in Honour of Andrew Louth London: Bloomsbury, 2014 Pp. 260. £70.00. Throughout his career, Andrew Louth has expertly and eloquently insisted that contemporary Christian theology must constantly draw from its sources in ancient and medieval works. His thesis on Karl Barth signaled an early interest in the crisis of modern theological thinking. Two books in the early 1980s made his position clear and encouraged many like-minded readers. The Origins of the [End Page 452] Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to Denys (1981) both diagnosed and attempted to overcome the “divorce” between mystical theology (which, for Louth, held priority) and dogmatic theology. Discerning the Mystery: An Essay on the Nature of Theology (1983) employed Gadamer and other philosophers in its critique of the “historical-critical method” imposed by the Enlightenment, and proposed—based on a sympathetic reading of patristic authors and some modern philosophers—that theology is “the apprehension of the believing mind combined with a right state of the heart, to use Newman’s terms. It is tested and manifest in a life that lives close to the mystery of God in Christ, that preserves for all men a testimony to that mystery which is the object of our faith, and, so far as it is discerned, awakens in the heart a sense of wondering awe which is the light in which we see light” (147). Both works, and many subsequent monographs, articles and editions, established Louth as both a thoughtful and eloquent theological critic of modernity, a guide to the sympathetic reading of and guidance by the fathers of the church, and an heir to an earlier learned English divine, John Wesley. Thanks to his early works, Louth gained many admirers across the spectrum of Christian thinkers, particularly among those who valued the earlier proposals of Catholic ressourcement scholars such as Henri de Lubac and Jean Daniélou. His conversion to Russian Orthodoxy increased his appeal to Eastern Orthodox thinkers, as well. That rare scholar of early Christian texts who is also familiar with Byzantine theology and fully conversant with modern philosophical and theological works, his turn to Orthodoxy enabled this Festschrift. The book has five parts. Each one reflects Louth’s double concern—of examining in detail the development of particular thinkers or movements in eastern orthodox thought, and of engaging them to reflect critically upon contemporary views. For instance, in the first part, Thomas Graumann takes up the question of the Council of Ephesus’s nuanced reception of the Nicene Creed, while John Behr begins his essay entitled “Reading the Fathers Today” by following in the footsteps of Louth: regretting the limitations of the critical-historical, socially-contextualized reading of early Christian thinkers and proposing alternatively their appreciative reception based in the phenomenology of Jean-Luc Marion. Three essays treat the Byzantine period: Mary Cunningham traces the reception of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite in eighth-century Byzantine theologians; Krastu Banev the expansion of thought on the themes of the church and the Virgin Mary in Byzantine psalmody and hymns; and Jane Baun surveys and recommends the neglected, “more modest lights” of Byzantine theology between the deaths of John of Damascus in 749 and Gregory Palamas in 1359. In the book’s third part, “Dialogue Between East and West,” a huge, 53-page essay by John Milbank compares the Christian reception of Platonism in eastern and western Christianity and resolves their apparently opposed views of final beatitude, while Augustine Casiday proposes Boethius was not merely a philosopher, but a theologian. Parts four and five of the book move to the modern period. In “Modern Theology,” Antoine Arjakovsky outlines alternative historiographies of Orthodoxy, particularly in light of the Orthodox school of Paris; Paul Gavrilyuk describes the relationship between Vladimir Lossky and Georges [End Page 453] Florovsky, both exiled Russians formed in the Parisian community and eager to represent Orthodoxy in and to the West. The final section is “The Future of Patristics”; in “Patristics after Neo-Patristics” Cyril Horovun allows...

Averroism, Nominalism, and Mechanization: Hahn and Wiker’s Unmasking of Historical Criticism’s Political Agenda by Laying Bare its Philosophical Roots

Averroism, Nominalism, and Mechanization:Hahn and Wiker’s Unmasking of Historical Criticism’s Political Agenda by Laying Bare its Philosophical Roots Jeffrey L. Morrow “The dismemberment of the Bible has led to a new variety of allegorism: One no longer reads the text but the supposed experience of supposed communities. The result is often highly fanciful allegorical interpretation.” —Joseph Ratzinger, The Nature and and Mission of Theology1 Scott Hahn and Benjamin Wiker’s Politicizing the Bible: The Roots of Historical Criticism and the Secularization of Scripture 1300–1700 is the single most important work to date in the history of modern biblical scholarship. As their subtitle, “Secularization of Scripture,” indicates, these authors particularly have in mind the ways in which the interpretation and the study of Scripture have been secularized over the course of centuries. Far too rarely in brief surveys of biblical scholarship has the role of politics and philosophy been addressed, let alone addressed adequately. In this more than 600–page book, Hahn and Wiker demonstrate how various political concerns and [End Page 1293] undergirding philosophies shaped and guided the long process that led to the historical critical method of biblical interpretation. They situate this process within the broader historical, political, philosophical, and theological contexts in which historical criticism was formed. Moreover, they also situate the contributions of the major figures involved in this process within the context of their biographies, which proves so necessary for understanding this history. Hahn and Wiker consider an expansive and often neglected period within the history of modern biblical criticism.2 Although the authors do not divide the book into sections, I would divide it roughly into two parts (excluding the introductory first chapter and the concluding thirteenth chapter): the first part (chs. 2–7), lays the groundwork for the advent of historical criticism. The second part (chs. 8–12), shows key examples of the development of historical criticism as it evolved throughout the seventeenth century, laying the essential groundwork for the Enlightenment biblical criticism of the eighteenth century and what would follow that in the nineteenth century. First, Hahn and Wiker show how Marsilius of Padua’s and William of Ockham’s arguments justify the subordination of church to state, due to Marsilius’s Averroist philosophical underpinnings and Ockham’s nominalism. Following these two, such Averroist and nominalist philosophies would continue to undergird much of the future of historical critical exegesis. After this, Hahn and Wiker show how Wycliffe’s attack upon nominalism inadvertently supported the same sort of exegesis and subordination of church to state as had Marsilius and Ockham. Thus, for theological reasons (and philosophical reasons directly [End Page 1294] opposed to Ockham), Wycliffe brought to English and, through his followers, to German soil the subordination of the church to the state for which Marsilius and Ockham had argued. Thus, the ground was set for the German and English Reformations that would soon follow. Next, Hahn and Wiker turn to Machiavelli, showing how he created a hermeneutic of suspicion in which, much like Averroës, he saw religion as a veil for more crafty political machinations of hypocritical rulers. From Machiavelli, Hahn and Wiker turn to Luther and the Protestant Reformation, where they indicate that Luther and his co-Reformers were inspired in part by the widespread corruption among clerical leaders within the Catholic hierarchy. Luther was a nominalist and self-identified follower of Ockham. Luther built on the groundwork laid by Marsilius and Wycliffe and inadvertently aided in the transformation of the public, civic realm into a secular realm in which state controlled church. After Luther, Hahn and Wiker examine the English Reformation of King Henry VIII, showing how his reforming policy built on all the influential figures previously discussed: Marsilius (directly through Henry’s advisors); Ockham (implied, through the German Protestant influence);3 Wycliffe (through the influence of the English Lollardy that had so shaped English nationalist aspirations and prepared the groundwork in Germany for the Reformation); Machiavelli (directly, through Henry’s advisors); and Luther (through the Protestant reforming agenda in England). They next turn to Descartes, expositing his role in effecting a great cosmological shift in which nature...

Sources, formation and socio-historical context of the Joseph Narrative: Re-examined under the documentary hypothesis

The historical-critical method has given birth to many approaches to the study of the Bible. As a consequence, many scholars have come up with solutions to some of the exegetical problems in the Judeo-Christian scriptures. One of the most popular proposed solutions to the problems in the Pentateuch is the Documentary Hypothesis. With time, the findings of the hypothesis have been challenged in reference to some texts in the Pentateuch. This paper seeks to re-examine the sources, formation and the socio-historical context of the Joseph narrative under the Documentary Hypothesis. It evaluates the Joseph narrative under the hypothesis in the light of its critique by later scholars. The essay argues that the narrative is composed of already-existing materials from the Ancient Near East, Egypt and the traditions from Israel to reflect some aspects of the history of Israel in retrospect. Weighing the sources according to the hypothesis as against the views of its critics, who accept the narrative as a unity, one discovers that some traces of source criticism are apparent in the views of the critics of the Documentary Hypothesis. They were solving similar problems within the narrative but from different perspectives.

A Hermeneutical Meaning of the Historical-critical Method and a Meaning of Inspiration of Systematical Theology

A Hermeneutical Meaning of the Historical-critical Method and a Meaning of Inspiration of Systematical Theology

A verdade da crítica: o método histórico-crítico de August Ludwig (von) Schlözer e o padrão histórico dos juízos

Partindo do princípio segundo o qual o pensamento histórico do Iluminismo tardio se caracteriza pelo esforço metodológico que procura estabelecer bases firmes para a ancoragem dos juízos históricos, este artigo tem por objetivo (1) analisar como August Ludwig (von) Schlözer (1735- 1809) estabelece um conceito de verdade histórica que resulta do seu método histórico-crítico e (2) identificar de que modo esse conceito de verdade histórica se relaciona com o debate contemporâneo sobre as representações históricas. Ao considerar o interesse de Schlözer ao longo de quarenta anos pela história da Rússia, defende-se aqui a tese segundo a qual o método histórico-crítico ultrapassa os limites dos procedimentos metodológicos da exegese bíblica e da filologia humanística já ao longo das últimas décadas do século XVIII.

Roy A. Harrisville, Pandora’s Box Opened: An Examination and Defense of Historical-Critical Method and Its Master Practitioners

Roy A. Harrisville, <i>Pandora’s Box Opened: An Examination and Defense of Historical-Critical Method and Its Master Practitioners</i>

Начало исторической науки в Европе: тезаурус Августа Людвига Шлёцера

August Ludwig von Schlozer (1735–1809) is still most often remembered as the inveterate opponent of Russian anti-Normanists and specifically and personally, of Mikhail V. Lomonosov. We consider this view too limited and simplified. Schlozer has the right to be recognized as one of the most prominent German scholars and the leader of the Gottingen school of history at the end of the 18th and early 19th century. It was he and his followers who first developed and introduced the concepts of “world history”, “general history”, “history of mankind”, “auxiliary historical disciplines”. Schlozer and his colleagues were the first to begin elevating history to the rank of a separate field of study. The article employs an innovative approach borrowed from thesaurus analysis in the humanities, now actively used by research groups and schools at Moscow University for the Humanities (Valery A. Lukov, Vladimir A. Lukov and others). We prove that the thesaurus approach can act as a subject-oriented research tool in interpreting and understanding of the period of constitutionalization of history as a discipline. The incompleteness of knowledge systems was a feature typical for this period. We focus specifically on Schlozer’s concepts and thesaurus constants. The article also traces the curious phenomenon of “double reception” of Schlozer’s ideas during his stay in Russia in 1761–1767. On the one hand, Schlozer developed constructive methods of historical criticism of historical texts, which were widely used by the Russian historical school later on, in the 19th century. On the other, Schlozer was himself heavily influenced by Russian historiography, especially by systematical works on Russian history by Mikhail V. Lomonosov and Vasily N. Tatishchev. It is worth mentioning that Schlozer and Lomonosov had a similar take on some important events and concepts (the role of the Slavs in world history, the image of the historical process as a great river, the understanding of history as a multi-level and multi-factor system, etc.). The synthetic, systemic and synchronous approaches to research proposed by Schlozer found their new development in the heritage of Russian historical school.

Al di là delle Alpi? Storici tirolesi e carinziani tra grandi e piccole patrie

This essay examines the relationship between medieval studies, “local patriotism” and nationalism in Tyrol and in Carinthia from the second half of the nineteenth century to the First World War. In this context, the work of historians who studied at the Austrian Institute of Historical Research (e.g. A. von Jaksch) is examined, in particular their research into and application of an historical-critical method that, at the local level, united philology with a strong patriotic sentiment. The essay examines in particular the case of the edition of Carinthian and Tyrolean medieval sources such as Monumenta Historica Ducatus Carinthiae and the Tiroler Urkundenbuch . These linked the present to the medieval past through a “document genealogy” which unified the past and contributed to the construction of regional political identities.

역사비평학의 관점에서 본 한국 구약학 연구사 1 (19-1989)

역사비평학의 관점에서 본 한국 구약학 연구사 1 (19-1989)

Aquinas on Paul’s Use of the Old Testament: The Implications of Participation

Aquinas on Paul’s Use of the Old TestamentThe Implications of Participation Charles Raith II (bio) Is the attempt to understand Paul’s use of the Old Testament a metaphysically neutral inquiry? Or are interpretations affected by one’s metaphysical commitments? Within contemporary New Testament scholarship, Paul’s use of the Old Testament has become a topic of study in its own right with numerous methodological options now being offered.1 When the scholarship is analyzed, we find that those who adhere strongly to a historical-critical approach to Scripture continue to assume an objective stance to the raw data of the text that yields various scientific results.2 For some, right method and adequate literary skills alone are thought to yield an accurate analysis of how Paul uses the Old Testament.3 In the main, whether the approach is of a conservative or progressive bent, metaphysical considerations are at best secondary issues to be explored only after the particular method has yielded its results. The problem with this situation is that approaches to Paul’s use of the Old Testament are in fact deeply affected by prior philosophical and theological judgments—judgments that are intrinsic to the approach itself.4 The topic of Paul’s use of the Old Testament is uniquely interesting because any scholar who explores this will also indirectly reveal his [End Page 66] or her convictions and assumptions, sometimes stated but more often left unstated, pertaining to the doctrine of inspiration, the metaphysical involvement of God in history, the locus of authorial intent, the Christological linking (or lack thereof) of the canonical writings, and the metaphysics (and not merely literary qualities) underlying the doctrine of the different senses of Scripture.5 Not surprisingly, the burgeoning scholarship on Paul’s use of the Old Testament has largely avoided premodern accounts; if premodern accounts do appear, they do so often only to highlight the superiority of modern exegetical methods.6 But premodern engagements with Paul’s use of the Old Testament help reveal the metaphysical and theological commitments implicit (and often undetected) in modern approaches—commitments that are simply assumed by most scholars and readers. And recovering some of the participatory dimensions of premodern approaches can aid contemporary exegesis in exploring the full depth of Paul’s engagement with the Old Testament. In what follows, I focus on the basic “fundamental commitments” (to use Steve Moyise’s term7) about Scripture that inform Aquinas’s approach to Paul’s use of the Old Testament, most of which revolves around his theology of participation.8 A participatory approach to biblical exegesis understands the order of creation not only as the linear unfolding of individual moments—the approach taken by modern historical-critical methods—but also as an ongoing participation in God’s active providence, both metaphysically (i.e., in the order of creation) and Christologically-pneumatologically (i.e., in the order of grace). The biblical texts and their authors, then, “are already historically caught up in a participatory relationship, however obscure, with the trans-temporal realities of faith.”9 A participatory approach to Paul’s use of the Old Testament calls into question the naturalist assumptions of most critical scholarship, in which “not only the empirical findings of science have been conflated with metaphysical naturalism, but also . . . historical-critical textual criticism has uncritically assumed naturalism as a dogma rather than as a merely abstractive methodological assumption of scientific inquiry.”10 [End Page 67] Insensitivity to the metaphysical differences between much of modern exegesis and Aquinas’s exegesis has led, as we shall see, to the erroneous claim that Aquinas is a forerunner to modern (and sometimes postmodern) methods of exegesis due to his emphasis on the literal sense and the role that virtue formation plays in his theory of cognition. But Aquinas’s emphasis on the literal sense and the role of virtue for proper interpretation presupposes a participatory ontology in which the world is guided through its participation in God’s providential activity in a way often bracketed by modern (and postmodern) approaches to Scripture. The following is an exploration into Aquinas’s participatory approach to Paul’s use of the Old Testament in conversation...

Hermeneutyka tekstów euchologijnych w służbie przepowiadania liturgicznego

The article’s contents faces the issue associated with liturgical proclamation (preaching a homily) based on eschatological texts that are constructed on the richness of their syntactic-semantic meaning and theological and pragmatic contents. Just as achieving the desired results requires using the adequately chosen method of proceedings, so too the good, that is, theologically deep preparation of the homily can be achieved by the appropriate method of interpreting texts, treated as an inspirational source for liturgical proclamation. The intent of the study was to draw attention to the need to explain in homilies the wealth of the contents of eschatological texts (not just biblical texts included in the Mass readings in a given liturgical celebration). This is done for the benefit of using the methods of interpreting literary texts, which also includes the texts of the prayers of a particular Mass. The proposal contained in the article mentions the historical-critical method, which makes it possible to read the text according to the diachronic key that accurately acquaints us with the linguistic method (by theoretical description and re-ference to the example). This allows us to examine the text according to synchronous keys, subjecting it to syntactic, semantic and pragmatic analyses. An attempt to be more sensitive to the need to work on the contents of homilies based on the hermeneutic method discussed in the article is all the more timely since liturgical theology methods have already existed for some time. It is also worth using them based on homiletics and in the preparation of the homily to be preached during the liturgy, since the theological aspect should play an important role in homiletic preaching.

Il Sommo Sacerdote i sacerdoti il popolo sacerdotale (Lettera agli Ebrei)

Heb 8:1-2 has all the characteristics of being the thesis (the highpoint) of the Letter (Treatise) to the Hebrews. A series of literary elements and respective contents are employed in its writing; another similar series follow its evolution. Jesus the Christ is the "Great High priest", unique, new and eternal, unlike other high priestly figures; and so are his priests and the priestly pilgrim people in faith (12:18-21, 22-24), in continuation with the generation of the Desert ("Wüstenwanderung": 12:1a). That pilgrimage was initiated by he himself, who had undergone it himself and who brought it to its fulfillment (12:2a). This is the "primary theme" of this Treatise. These data are the precious result of the historical-critical method that requires as priority a concentration on the text and its "Umwelt". An equally critical attention is always in the spotlight, which requires a "post-redactional dialogic-narrative structurality", an evolution of the historical-critical method, a kind of attention to the "psycho-anthropological dynamic" of the text in its nature as a "living organism" with a well-motivated conclusion 'from łexicality to inter-contextuality'. This paper takes note of this movement between exegetes and tries to highlight the harmonic convergence between the two moments: Redactional Literary Structure (from my Commentary 2005) and the post-redactional dialogic structure (necessary attention to the studies from 2005 to the present).

The Historical-Critical Method and the Holy Fathers

Abstract This study aims to capture the dynamics of the recent biblical studies in the Orthodox and Western, especially Protestant, theological areas. Both the Orthodox biblical theology and the Western biblical theology are streamlined by research, which can be inspired by each other´s experience. Thus, the Orthodox biblical studies are recently shaped in receiving and developing an exegetical method, and in this sense may appeal to the Western experience, especially the historical-critical method. On the other hand, the Western biblical scholars are concerned with bringing into the present the meaning of biblical texts or their update, in a direction close to the Orthodox biblical experience. The solution to these concerns can be rediscovered in the mutual completion with ecumenical connotations.

Die historisch-kritische Methode der Bibelauslegung

Abstract The historical-critical method of biblical exegesis has its roots in Humanism and in the Enlightenment. Humanism situated the Bible in the series of ancient texts, whilst the Enlightenment sought the rational elements in the message of the Bible. The method, developed over a long period of time, proceeds from the assumption that the Bible has a message, first and foremost, for the respective era. This is why it tries to distil the demands and consolations of the Bible on the basis of (historical) knowledge about the respective era, and to sound the depths of its message for the present on this basis. There are many steps the interpreter must go through to create a space in his heart for the message of the Bible in accord with the specifics of his own era. The critical aspect of the method rests primarily on placing the message within the time of its utterance, but also on relating it to the conditions and mentalities prevailing at the time of interpretation. The historical-critical method is an auxiliary science that does not exclude other types of Bible exegesis. The insights gained from applying it are communicated through sermons and as part of the teachings of the Church.

The Supremacy of Religious and Theological Education and Its Importance to Church Administrators

The background to this paper is that in academics, religious studies is not given its due respect and many church administrators today see no reasonable ground for studying Theology; the belief is that Theology is not needed for ministerial competence either as Pastors, Prophets, Teachers, Evangelists etc. They operate with an erroneous motto: “You shall receive Power not a Theological College Certificate” which is a misinterpretation of Acts 1:8. This paper explored the importance of Theological Education to Church Administration in the context of the Scripture (Hos. 4:5). The methodology adopted a Reader Response Criticism approach and Historical-Critical method with emphasis on the exegesis of both Hosea 4:6. The results showed that many people are being misled under the umbrella of prophecy and direction of the Holy Spirit simply because of the lack of Theological Education. The paper concluded that since Jesus taught his disciples for about three and a half years before telling them to wait for the Power of the Holy Spirit, all Christian administrators should take Theological training seriously to avoid becoming blind guides to their members. DOI: 10.5901/jesr.2014.v4n7p161

Ricoeur and Ratzinger on Biblical History and Hermeneutics

ABSTRACT Paul Ricoeur and Joseph Ratzinger both challenge the pretended omnicompetence of the historical critical method in the field of biblical interpretation. Moreover, their respective counterproposals for coordinating historical analysis and hermeneutical synthesis exhibit structural similarities: each draws attention to a twofold "distance" intervening between the text and the "world behind the text," on the one hand, and between the text and the "world before the text," on the other. The two authors, however, are not fully agreed on the nature of this distance. Ricoeur, patterning this distance after the philosophical models of Husserl and Heidegger, tends to push the historical and cognitive dimensions of the biblical to text to the margins. Ratzinger, though appreciative of Ricoeur's work, argues from theological premises in favor of preserving a more robust—though not exclusive—role for both. These nuanced differences eventually terminate in appreciably different descriptions of the well-disposed interpreter, with Ricoeur emphasizing a kind of sympathy-in-distance with the interpretive community and Ratzinger recommending an immediate sympathy with the doctrinal faith of the church. Diverse ecclesiological presuppositions obviously come into play. I favor Ratzinger's approach for its ability to affirm a dynamism and elasticity of biblical meaning without altogether sacrificing the historical and cognitive controls on biblical interpretation.

Ricoeur and Ratzinger on Biblical History and Hermeneutics

ABSTRACT Paul Ricoeur and Joseph Ratzinger both challenge the pretended omnicompetence of the historical critical method in the field of biblical interpretation. Moreover, their respective counterproposals for coordinating historical analysis and hermeneutical synthesis exhibit structural similarities: each draws attention to a twofold "distance" intervening between the text and the "world behind the text," on the one hand, and between the text and the "world before the text," on the other. The two authors, however, are not fully agreed on the nature of this distance. Ricoeur, patterning this distance after the philosophical models of Husserl and Heidegger, tends to push the historical and cognitive dimensions of the biblical to text to the margins. Ratzinger, though appreciative of Ricoeur's work, argues from theological premises in favor of preserving a more robust—though not exclusive—role for both. These nuanced differences eventually terminate in appreciably different descriptions of the well-disposed interpreter, with Ricoeur emphasizing a kind of sympathy-in-distance with the interpretive community and Ratzinger recommending an immediate sympathy with the doctrinal faith of the church. Diverse ecclesiological presuppositions obviously come into play. I favor Ratzinger's approach for its ability to affirm a dynamism and elasticity of biblical meaning without altogether sacrificing the historical and cognitive controls on biblical interpretation.

Exemplo de estruturação do texto no método de análise histórico-crítica

O presente artigo tem o objetivo de apresentar um exemplo de estruturação do texto bíblico no modelo do método de análise histórico-crítico. Para tanto, será apresentada a estrutura de argumentação segundo esse método a partir da análise do contexto de refeição na dinâmica da traição, a qual é exemplificada através do Evangelho de Marcos 14,17-21. Iniciaremos com a apresentação das análises imediatas do texto bíblico em discussão. A seguir, investigaremos as relações no contexto mediato e concluiremos com a reflexão sobre as relações no conjunto do texto de Marcos. Portanto, com este estudo, objetiva-se ressaltar a importância e estrutura própria do método de análise histórico crítico.

Granice metody historyczno-krytycznej w ujęciu Josepha Ratzingera (Benedykta XVI)

Według Josepha Ratzingera powstanie metody historyczno-krytycznej jednocześnie wywołało walkę o jej zasięg i kształt. Metoda ta jest koniecznym narzędziem egzegetycznego warsztatu, jednak posiada ograniczenia. W artykule przedstawiono i kolejno omówiono właśnie granice metody historyczno-krytycznej, do których należy zaliczyć: poszukiwanie jedynie historycznego znaczenia tekstu; ukazywanie tylko jednego z dwóch wymiarów (ludzkiego) Pisma Świętego; brak ciągłości jako jedna z zasad metody; hipotetyczność wyników badań. W zakończeniu zwrócono uwagę na niebezpieczny rozdźwięk między badaniami naukowymi a studium teologicznego znaczenia tekstów. Przypomniano również apel Benedykta XVI o przywrócenie należnego miejsca w interpretacji Biblii zasadom teologicznym wskazanym w Konstytucji dogmatycznej Dei verbum oraz o ich powiązanie z zasadami naukowymi.

Orientalism and Muslim Historical Critical Methods

Apart from the orientalists` ignorance, bias and grudges, there is a very basic academic reason which takes them away from the position that Muslims hold in the study of Islam and Islamic Civilization, even if they try hard to be objective in their studies. That reason, in its core, is epistemic. Muslims were forced to believe only in the truth. For that, they devised methods to determine the truthfulness of knowledge. In this article, I particularly discussed the methods with which they studied the authenticity of a transmitted knowledge; historicity. Two methods of transmission are discussed; Tawātur and Khabr al-Wāhid. What these concepts are and how they are helpful in determining the truthfulness of knowledge are explained. How tawātur provides absolute knowledge, while khabr al-wāhid does not. These methods are named as Muslim Historical Critical Methods for better understanding. Orientalists rejected many authentic contents of Islam because they were ignorant of these methods. Therefore, their rejections are sometime too absurd for Muslims to believe in the objectivity of their research.