Материал: The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion by John Hinnells

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hypothesis, experiment and verification. Another cultural shift was at play here too. One of the reasons for the earlier respect for auctours was that most ages have been very aware of their own inferiority in regard to the past. Previous ages almost by definition deferred to their predecessors, sometimes because of the sentiment expressed by Plato: ‘The ancients are better than we, for they dwelled nearer to the Gods’ (Philebus 16c). With this perception, it was well nigh impossible to think of questioning the categories with which those earlier cultures had worked. However, it is much harder for the beneficiaries of the industrial and technological and information revolutions to ‘feel’ that previous ages were their superiors.

It is worthwhile unpacking some of the consequences of this new attitude to the past. Obviously, it tends to heighten the otherness of the past. Whereas even in relatively recent times people might have seen naturally the connections and similarities with antiquity, historical consciousness tends to flag up the strangeness, the discontinuities, the differences. When the world of a text from the distant past is perceived as so very different from our own, to take such a text as normative becomes much less natural, and the easy submission to a text, no matter how traditionally authoritative, less spontaneous. This is in marked contrast to many epochs that have naturally and spontaneously looked to the past for guidance.

Besides, quite often historical analysis has disclosed that a text was not really saying what it was claimed to say. This is not primarily because modern research shows that a text has been totally misunderstood (although this cannot be ruled out; the Zoroastrian gathas are a nightmare to interpret). It is much more likely that historical study shows that the traditionally accepted ‘scriptural meaning’ is just one among many views extractable from different portions of the scripture. In most cases, this is because although unicity (the presumption of one coherent interlocking whole) is almost invariably attributed to scripture, scripture in the vast majority of cases is in fact a compilation of pieces of quite diverse provenance. A rigorous historical approach often reveals that what has been taken to be the meaning has resulted from privileging one segment, and reading the whole through the spectacles provided by this privileged segment. In these cases it is evident that the scripture is far from self-interpreting: it is tradition or the living community that has been influential in ensuring that this is the received meaning of scripture. Examples abound, but the point is succinctly captured in this vignette of Africa’s response to Christian missions:

Protestant missionaries introduced the Bible to Africans as the ultimate earthly authority, but were bewildered when their African converts selected their biblical data so differently, highlighting the complex rituals, revelations through dreams and visions, the separation between clean and unclean animals, the practice of polygamy, the descent of God upon prophets, miraculous healings and exorcisms, and so on.

(Hastings 1979: 70)

All these things so peripheral for the missionaries are just as clearly in the Christian Bible as the images, motifs and narratives that the missionaries stressed. It was only when other ‘readings’ were proffered that it became obvious that the received reading was a highly selective interpretation, even if traditionally authoritative.

Further, historical analysis often reveals that what the text has been traditionally taken to mean is, on closer inspection, found to be a later idea retrojected back into it. Judaism provides a classic example. The Mishnah and Talmud are widely viewed as commentaries on the Tanakh (the Torah, the Prophets, the Writings). They are presented in that way, as comment on or elaboration of the earlier text. On deeper inspection, however, the secondary

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or derivative appearance is revealed as just that – an appearance arising from the framework imposed on them. In fact both the Mishnah and the Talmud are deeply original works; in some cases their novelty is quite startling. It is the prior assumption that they must be expounding the ‘more authoritative’ Tanakh that has obscured this. In fact, rather than seeing it as a commentary on a preceding scripture, ‘one might suggest rather that (the Mishnah) presents as it were that preceding scripture, if at all, as a commentary on itself’ (Smith 1993: 114).

Authorship

The Mishnah and Talmud were the creation of so many (the former collated by Judah haNasi, the latter produced by the Amoraim) that they might be considered genuinely community products. But gifted or charismatic individuals within the community must often be viewed in the same light; the contribution of individual commentators has often been enormous. Their works, too, are often not best understood as commentaries at all, but more adequately as remarkably creative developments which might well have been celebrated as such except for the overriding assumption of the priority of the scripture, an assumption that functioned to disguise any innovation as a deeper elaboration of the text. Consider Augustine of Hippo (354–430 ce). His influence on subsequent Christianity is unparalleled, even though much of his influence is disguised by the fact that he did much of his theological work in terms of commentaries or homilies on scripture. His influence is so great that what subsequent Christian tradition has often understood as Paul, is really Augustine’s reading of Paul. When subsequent Christians thought they were harkening to scripture they were in fact harkening to Augustine’s understanding of scripture. Augustine’s role or influence is underestimated because in the received understanding of scripture the canonical author Paul should be regarded as authoritative.

In Judaism, this phenomenon is perhaps even more salient. Until well into the twentieth century the Tanakh was hardly ever published without a key commentary, normally by Rashi (1040–1105 ce), Radak (1160–1235) or Ramban (1194–1270). It was through the often highly original lenses provided by these great commentators that the Tanakh was read. One observer perceptively catches the dynamics here: ‘The bulk of Jewish literature is in the form of commentary on Scripture, whether this form is always justified or not (often the pretense of commentary disguises a full-fledged original personal viewpoint)’ (Greenberg, cited in Smith 1993: 117).

Much the same could be said within Islam of jurists up to the Ayatollah Khomeini (1902–89 ce), of countless gurus within the Hindu tradition, and of masters within the Zen tradition. Under the rubric of interpreting their respective scriptures they were providing their community with new resources to meet new situations. In many cases they would have positively repudiated any idea that they exercised an authoritative role within a tradition, seeing themselves as simply servants of the text. But they were obviously far more than that, as historical criticism reveals.

The scripturalising of a text, therefore, has in many cases obscured as much as it has revealed the dynamics operative in the life of the religious community. By dint of scripturalising a text, the community has committed itself to presenting novelty in the form of exposition of or commentary on ‘what was there already’ in the community’s scripture. In many cases this commitment has the effect of reducing the scripture almost to a tabula rasa on which the community can read what it wants to or has to. Barton has referred to this quality of ‘semantic indeterminacy’ of sacred texts. ‘Sacred texts … tend to be semantically

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indeterminate, for they have to be read as supporting the religious system to which they belong, even at the expense of their natural sense’ (Barton 1997: 61). The classic instance of this is in the Christian interpretation of the Jewish scripture as Christian. This was the result of a certain combination of presupposition and need: ‘They [the Jewish Scriptures] were ostensibly the absolutely authoritative divine revelation; but in reality they functioned as a tabula rasa on which Christians wrote what they took (on quite other grounds) to be the meaning of Christ’ (ibid.: 19). That this is more than something uniquely Christian is evident from the fact that the sectaries of the Dead Sea saw the Jewish scripture as referring to their Teacher of Righteousness (see especially their Habbakuk Commentary).

Interpretative techniques

This tendency to find in the scripture whatever the community needs for its continuing development is remarkably widespread. This is in effect the purpose of all forms of figurative or non-literal interpretation, namely to enable the community to find there what it must. In many traditions this approach has been taken to considerable lengths, often through elaborate theories of multiple senses of scripture. In Christianity, there were sometimes as many as seven, but most often four: the literal, the allegorical, the moral and the anagogic (or related to the end times). Judaism had its system of pardes, from the different forms of exegesis: peshat (literal), remez (allusive), derash (homiletical) and sodh (mystical). Islam has its ta’wil to explore symbolic and inner meanings (especially prominent in Shi’i and Sufi or mystical contexts). Once again, it is significant that this whole trajectory (through Judaism, Christianity and Islam) actually has its roots outside religion and in the world of classical literature. The techniques of allegory were introduced into the classics to avoid having to find in Homer and Hesiod meanings (the natural or common sense meanings) that were considered unworthy of them by scholars who looked back to them with awe and reverence. These approaches flourished in Alexandria, whence Philo introduced them into Judaism, Christian Fathers (again most notably of the Alexandrian school) adopted them, and later they found their way into Islamic scholarship. These multiple senses of the text, with the ‘literal’ not necessarily the most important, persisted right through until the rise of modern historical consciousness, when (at least in the West) the literal tended to become all-important, and the others largely fell away.

Layers of scripture

The scripturalising of a text has thus obscured much of the activity of the community in creatively addressing new issues and contexts. The theories constructed to explain the elevated role of scripture have most often reflected what was thought should have been the case, rather than what in fact was the case. Historical research has laid bare what was in fact occurring as the community utilised its Âscriptures. An additional aspect of this phenomenon is that the books that matter (in our sense, have authority) are in many cases not the theoretically acknowledged scripture at all, but others. In some religions there are evident layers of sacred books. The Avesta, Qur’an and the Tanakh are recognised in their respective religions as scripture par excellence, but these religions have other texts (respectively the Pahlavi texts, Hadith and Mishnah) as a subordinate or supporting layer. Historical criticism may reveal that in some cases it is not the primary but the secondary layer that is more authoritative. Much popular Hinduism is of this kind. In entire swathes

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of India the Mahabharata (especially the Bhagavad-Gita) and the Ramayana are far more significant than the Vedas, even though the former are smrti (‘that which is remembered’), the secondary and derivative scriptural category, and the latter sruti (‘that which is heard’, namely by the seers) or scripture par excellence. Indeed, for Hinduism on Mauritius, the really authoritative works are the theoretically very subsidiary Ramcaritmanas of Tulsi Das and the religious poems of Kabir, as remembered by the indentured labourers taken there.

In all these ways, where on the face of it scripture seemed determinative and frequently enough was claimed to be determinative, it is at least as helpful to see the community determining its own shape in response to new needs, but portraying these responses as derived from the resources of the sacred text. It seems to be an essential element of scripture that it be used in this way.

Necessary reappraisal

This radical reappraisal arising from historical awareness does not mean that scripture is no longer of any significance for those religious communities where historical thinking has taken root. After all, the most fastidious historical scholar may worship in scriptural forms, and meditate on scriptural texts. For his or her personal religious life (indeed for the spiritual life of the community), all sorts of processes may be fruitful. One can do other things with scriptures than situate them in their context, find their ‘original’ meaning, analyse them historically (although the historical approach has become so dominant in the West that restricting significant enquiry to these issues is a real danger, particularly for academics). Nevertheless, in the West, it is widely agreed that if it is historical questions that are at issue

– and the nature and extent of scripture’s impact on a religious community over time is such a historical question – they must be answered with the strictest historical warrants. In such cases, even a believer cannot merely repeat the accepted doctrinal position in the face of historical evidence to the contrary.

No one should be in any doubt about the extent of the rethinking required by the rise of historical consciousness. (I repeat that in discussion here is the narrow historical point of the nature and extent of the influence of scripture on the community; broader questions of the impact of scientific or historical thinking on religion itself are beyond our present scope.) Two important Christian theologians, in an article entitled ‘Scripture and Tradition’, begin:

Until recently, almost the entire spectrum of theological opinion would have agreed that the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, together with their doctrinal interpretations, occupy a unique and indispensable place of authority for Christian faith, practice and reflection. But this consensus now seems to be falling apart.

(Farley and Hodgson 1985: 61)

They then rethink the traditional view, in light of such considerations as have been raised above. Their conclusion is that the accepted theory is ‘actually inappropriate’ to Christianity ‘when properly understood’ (ibid.: 62).

It is Christianity and Judaism that are most affected by historical criticism because their centre of gravity has long been in the West, and the dominant strands of both are by and large committed to a general cultural relevance (as opposed to cultural isolation). Other religious traditions have been affected differently. Some have rejected the whole historical approach (Muslims tend to see the attempt to submit the Qur’an or Hadith to the same historical

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criticism as other books as yet another Western attempt to denigrate Islam). Some other traditions, still largely cocooned from the ‘corrosion’ of historical criticism, have been able to carry on relatively unchanged. Yet even in these latter instances, they have not proved totally impregnable; many have sizeable diasporas in the West, and their young, learning at school to approach texts historically, inevitably begin to address their scriptures in the same way.

This last point highlights a further complication hindering a simple correlation between kinds of authority and particular religions. We mentioned above the different attitudes to scripture within a single religion. Protestants have differed from Catholics (the difference usually expressed in the terms of precisely our problematic – ‘Scripture versus Tradition’); Mahayana Buddhists differ from Theravada Buddhists; Shi’ites from Sunni Muslims. But the twentieth century saw a new phenomenon. Now Judaism and Christianity have a totally new division, between those who accept the legitimacy of historical criticism, and those who do not. In the West, most mainstream Christians, whether Catholic or Protestant, have come to accept it (officially as late as 1964 for Catholics). However, most Christians are now found in the Third World, where most are pre-critical and can maintain an unselfconscious attitude to scripture virtually impossible now for their Western co-religionists. In a further complication, some in the West positively deny the legitimacy of applying the historical approach to scripture, seeing this as destructive of Christianity itself. This is indeed a third and different stance, for such fundamentalists are not so much either critical or pre-critical as anti-critical. Despite the frequent claim of these fundamentalists to preserve the traditional attitude to scripture, their stance is every bit as modern as the critical approach to which they are reacting. Here then we have a profound three-way split within the one religion in attitudes to scriptural authority (and indirectly tradition).

Tradition

We should be clear what is being claimed here. We are not arguing that academic historical study of religion has ‘destroyed’ the authority of scripture in the sense of rendering scripture superfluous. The scriptures remain important, even where they are now understood to exert their influence as an originating repository of the images, myths, symbols, metaphors, narratives, laws, persons and paradigms that have given the community its identity, recalled it to its roots, anchored its legal structures, linked it with its founder, provided its classic access to the divine, created its general cultural ambiance, suggestively guided it through history, and exercised a crucial role in facing new challenges. These are, of course, the functions that scripture always played, although so often something rather more was claimed. So, in one sense, historical consciousness has merely brought theory into line with practice. Scripture has always functioned in a way that involved the living community. It never functioned in some absolute, unqualified, mechanical way, even though this was often presumed in theories about scripture (understood as blueprint, charter, constitution, inspired revelation, timeless word of God). You cannot talk of the authority of scripture apart from the religious community on its ongoing historical journey (that is, apart from its tradition). You cannot talk of authority, scripture or tradition in isolation. Graham has well expressed it: ‘A text becomes scripture in living, subjective relationship to persons and to historical tradition. No text … is sacred or authoritative in isolation from a community’ (Graham 1987: 134).

It should be obvious that this historical consciousness has affected the understanding of tradition as much as of scripture. The awareness of inevitable change that constitutes this historical consciousness reveals that tradition persists only as a continual process of