240 / 298
Horst Steinke
240
de la Bible, XV
ᵉ
-XVII
ᵉ
Siècle: L’invention moderne de la critique du texte biblique
, Pa-
ris, Gallimard, 2010, pp. 102-109.
482
While the topic of the history or legacy of Spinozan biblical hermeneu-
tics in biblical studies/criticism is outside our subject matter, it may be
apropos
to raise the possibility that the current state of the discipline might not be en-
tirely unrelated to the problematics of the methodology that Spinoza devel-
oped in consonance with his epistemic system, as seen by the (self-critical)
reflections of some of its practitioners today: according to Legaspi, academic
biblical studies have «produced […] an astonishing amount of useful infor-
mation», nevertheless, «biblical studies have entered a period of crisis having
to do, among other things, with methodological disarray, lack of consensus on
key questions, the triviality of a great deal of historical scholarship […]» (Id.,
The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies
, cit., pp. 169, 167); in the view
of S. D. Moore and Y. Sherwood, «the Bible entered into a second life as doc-
ument or text. It became possible to do almost anything with this Bible – as-
text – provided that anything took the preapproved form of historical-critical
analysis and hypothesis. For there is no end of things that one can do with the
letter, especially the letter of the Bible […]» (Id.,
The Invention of the Biblical
Scholar: A Critical Manifesto
, Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 2011, p. 62). See also
Walther: «Spinoza begibt sich so intensiv in den Kern der protestantischen
Hermeneutik-Discussion, daß seine Ansichten auch innerhalb des Protestant-
ismus rezipiert worden sind, daß eine von Spinoza wesentlich mit beeinflußte
Richtung des Protestantismus entstanden ist – was der Intention Spinozas bei
Abfassung des TTP entsprach (Spinoza injects himself so intensely into the
heart of the Protestant hermeneutics debate that his views, in turn, were
broached within Protestantism also, leading to the rise of a current within
Protestantism in which Spinoza was a major influence – as intended by Spi-
noza in writing
TTP
)» (Id.,
Biblische Hermeneutik und historische Erklärung
, cit., p.
237, footnote 12). For a survey of modern biblical studies methods, see
The
Cambridge Companion to Biblical Interpretation
, ed. by J. Barton, Cambridge, Cam-
bridge University Press, 1998; K. J. Dell and P. M. Joyce
(ed. by),
Biblical Inter-
pretation and Method: Essays in Honour of John Barton
, Oxford, Oxford University
Press, 2013. The very notion of (formal) “methodology” in biblical studies,
qualifying it as a discipline, has been challenged recently in St. L. McKenzie
and J. Kaltner
(ed. by),
New Meanings for Ancient Texts: Recent Approaches in Bibli-
cal Criticism and Their Applications
, Louisville, Kentucky, Westminster John
Knox Press, 2013, stating «that their topics [traditional biblical criticism] do
not represent methods that can be delineated through a series of steps but are
rather approaches or perspectives – ways of looking at the Bible. Perhaps now
there is […] more candor about the subjectivity of any interpretation, less call