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The Study of Man: New Trends in Biblical Criticism
- Abstract
It can reasonably be said that there have been only two periods of true, scientific Bible research. The first began in the 10th century, flowered spectacularly in the 11th, 12th, and early 13th, and then lingered on until the 16th century. This may aptly be called the Jewish period of Bible research. The second period, which began in the 18th century, and saw its golden age dawn early in the 19th century, is the one in which we are still living. It was for long an almost purely Christian enterprise, and, for that matter, a preponderantly Protestant one. With the notable exceptions of Abraham Geiger and Samuel David Luzzatto, it counted not a single ranking Jewish investigator until the tail end of the 19th century, when Arnold Ehrlich entered the field. He has not, however, remained the last, and one of the new trends of the 20th century is precisely—the return of the Jew.
Until a generation or two ago, there were few Jews who did not have some knowledge of Hebrew and were not familiar with considerable sections of the Hebrew Scriptures. It was therefore only natural that Bible research should have originated among the Jews. This Jewish research of the medieval period had as its premise the divine origin of Scripture as well as of the oral tradition which was, in some measure, a commentary on Scripture. Such a premise might seem to some moderns an unpropitious starting point for research. But to the medieval Jew, who looked to the Bible for guidance in his everyday life, it acted as a spur. The task of research was to unfold the accurate and complete intention of the divine text.
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