God's Word in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship

478 Pages·2008·2.72 MB·English

by  Kenton L. Sparks

Praise for God’s Word in Human Words
“This is a fine survey of the issues that historical criticism raises for an
evangelical understanding of Scripture and a useful survey of options in
approaching those issues.”
—John Goldingay, David Allan Hubbard Professor of Old Testament, Fuller
Theological Seminary
“Finally, a fresh, creative, carefully nuanced approach to biblical criticism from
an evangelical! Sparks skillfully makes his case for a ‘believing criticism’ by
carefully assessing the current available alternatives. In the process, he offers a
useful survey of, and response to, typical hot-button issues. His thorough,
methodical work stakes out for many thoughtful evangelicals a credible,
theologically based, devout place to stand in integrating critical work and faith. I
highly recommend it.”
—Robert L. Hubbard Jr., professor of biblical literature, North Park
Theological Seminary
“This important volume provides a bridge between critical scholarship and
traditional views on Scripture. Sparks’s aim is to present a reasoned and
sometimes impassioned insider look at evangelical approaches to biblical
scholarship. In the process of surveying the flash points created by modern
critical scholarship, he champions ‘practical realism’ as an approach that
provides a more productive middle ground between traditionalist views of
authorship and dating of the text, which depend on harmonization or forced
interpretations, and the antirealists of postmodern scholarship, who disregard
historical context or the original audience. Both evangelicals and
nonevangelicals will benefit from this very frank discussion of the history and
possible future for biblical scholarship.”
—Victor H. Matthews, associate dean, College of Humanities and Public
Affairs, Missouri State University
“Sparks issues an irenic invitation to reconcile academic consensus with
evangelical conviction in ways that respect and inform both. His plea for his
fellow evangelicals to take historical criticism much more seriously features
impressive and honest arguments for mainstream critical stances toward Old and
New Testament texts, informative tours of fields from hermeneutics to
Assyriology to patristic and Reformation theology, and a bold proposal to affirm
biblical inerrancy in terms of perfect divine accommodation to human error. May
it encourage and shape the fruitful conversation we evangelicals absolutely need
to have.”
—Telford Work, assistant professor of theology, Westmont College
“Kent Sparks asks hard questions. In this volume he provides answers that he
believes satisfy intellectually as well as spiritually. His erudition is evident on
every page, whether summarizing the epistemological heritage of the
Enlightenment, the historical-critical methods as applied to Assyriology, the
constructive features of Barthian hermeneutics, or the ways in which the church
has ‘trumped Scripture.’ Of course, not all will agree with his version of
‘practical realism’ and how it relates to biblical hermeneutics, but few can deny
that that he has advanced the conversation in a way that is helpful and healthy.”
—Bill T. Arnold, professor of Old Testament and Semitic languages, Asbury
Theological Seminary
“What do we mean when we say our Bible—written by prophets, chroniclers,
sages, evangelists, and apostles—is the word of God? In this book, Kenton
Sparks engages that very question, emphatically affirming both the methodology
and results of historical and modern biblical criticism and the authority of
Scripture. He distinguishes divine inerrancy from the finite and fallible human
vessels through whom God chose to reveal God’s Word. The biblical text
manifests significant theological diversity that is best addressed by recognizing
the distinct genres of human and divine discourse; God accommodates his
message to the finite and fallen perspectives of his human audience. While some
readers will be uncomfortable with Sparks’s characterization of conservative
evangelical scholarship and his conclusions regarding the historicity of biblical
narratives, this is a valuable window into the ‘progressive evangelical’ approach
to the nature of Scripture.”
—Elaine A. Phillips, professor of biblical and theological studies, Gordon
College
GOD’S WORD
IN HUMAN
WORDS
GOD’S WORD
IN HUMAN
WORDS
AN EVANGELICAL APPROPRIATION OF
CRITICAL BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP
KENTON L. SPARKS
© 2008 by Kenton L. Sparks
Published by Baker Academic
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.bakeracademic.com
Printed in the United States of America
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior
written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sparks, Kenton L.
God’s word in human words : an evangelical appropriation of critical biblical scholarship / Kenton L.
Sparks.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-8010-2701-7 (pbk.)
1. Bible—Criticism, interpretation, etc.—History. 2. Evangelicalism. I. Title.
BS500.S597 2008
220.601—dc22
2007037586
Scripture quotations labeled RSV are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd
edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in
the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations labeled NIV are from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®.
NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan.
All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations labeled NRSV are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright ©
1989, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the
United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations labeled KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.
To my father,
who taught me that God is big enough for our questions
CONTENTS
Preface
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Epistemology and Hermeneutics
2. Historical Criticism and Assyriology
3. The Problem of Biblical Criticism
4. “Traditional” Responses to Biblical Criticism
5. Constructive Responses to Biblical Criticism
6. The Genres of Human Discourse
7. The Genres of Divine Discourse
8. The Context of the Whole and Biblical Interpretation
9. Negotiating the Context of the Whole
10. Biblical Criticism and Christian Theology
Conclusions: Biblical Criticism and Christian Institutions
Bibliography
PREFACE
I
RECALL THE MOMENT WELL. I was 14. It was a hot summer evening in
the woodlands of Georgia, where I was attending yet another week of Christian
service camp. While sitting on a tree stump during the “quiet time” hour, I read
these words from Exodus 6:3: “I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as
God Almighty, but by my name the Lord I did not make myself known to them.”
Instinctively, I flipped back through the book of Genesis, ready to observe the
black-and-white evidence for this, yet another mystery from Scripture. But what
I found was not mystery but rather mystery upon mystery. While Exodus clearly
said that the patriarchs did not know the divine name, numerous texts from
Genesis seemed to confirm that they surely did know that God was “the Lord.”
Although I did not realize it at the time, this was my first bout with historical
criticism, or at least with the kinds of data that give rise to historical criticism.
It would be some thirteen years before an answer for this conundrum was
inadvertently presented to me, in a set of study notes from the hand of the
evangelical scholar Kenneth Kitchen. It was Kitchen’s purpose to explain why
the prevailing notion in biblical scholarship, that Genesis and Exodus were
composed from several different sources, was completely wrong. The theory was
not entirely new to me. I had heard this theory before from my graduate
professor at the University of North Carolina, John Van Seters. Van Seters
explained that there were two major sources in Genesis and Exodus, one in
which the divine name was known to humanity more or less from the beginning
of history, and another in which the divine name was revealed to humanity only
at the time of Moses. When these two narratives were combined, he said, this
produced the odd effect that I noticed on that old tree stump as a teenager. Of
course, I did not believe Van Seters. He was not any sort of evangelical
Christian, and I had been warned about the deceptive and beguiling ways of the
biblical critics. Paradoxically, it was Kitchen himself— not Van Seters—who
convinced me that the critics were right.
I have read numerous books by Kitchen, and though he is a fine Egyptologist,
it is my experience that he generally does a poor job of presenting the views of
critical biblical scholarship. But in the study notes to which I refer here,
Kitchen’s presentation was adequately clear. Indeed, by the time he had fully