The self-identity of “postmodern biblical criticism” depends on setting up a long list of binary oppositions between postmodernism and its fantastic Other, historical criticism. As with all such attempts, it results in a simplistic caricature which is a convenient object of polemic and self-construction, but which oversimplifies the amorphous and diverse forms of criticism which have been carried out under the heading “historical criticism”.
It is a commonplace that historical critics conceived of their work as “objective”. But what does this mean? Objectivity is itself a slippery term; it can range in meaning from an assertion about (ontological) realism to one’s (epistemological) scientific basis for conclusions to a claim about lack of personal bias (of the subject). The accusation that historical critics claimed objectivity suffers from this ambiguity, which has been rhetorically useful when it is employed as an accusation by a system of thought which valorizes the personal and subjective.
But objectively (and I mean, in fact) did historical critics ever claim to be “objective” in the sense of complete absence of bias? Or when they talked about “objectivity”, was this not in a context of historical opposition to those biblical scholars who proceeded on theological and dogmatic assumptions? Is the attack on the false “objectivity” of the past due more to the increased importance presently afforded to one’s personal situation than to any (objective) facts about the history of scholarship?
“It has often been argued that attempts at ‘objective’ work involved the illusion of standing outside the stream of time and producing a result wholly independent of one’s own modern opinion. This argument is often used to discredit historical-critical studies. It is one of the many myths thought up by the fertile imaginations of anti-historical writers. For, of course, it is entirely untrue that the great historical critics like Harnack, or the great theorists of critical theory like Troeltsch, had any such idea of themselves.”
(James Barr, The concept of biblical theology: an Old Testament perspective, 206)
On the other hand, it is true that you are much more likely to find explicit contemplation of one’s subjective situatedness in contemporary biblical scholarship. Navel gazing has become much more accepted in biblical studies and in some cases an obsessive preoccupation. But it is this very trend towards subjectivism in biblical studies that casts suspicion on the current tendency of “postmodern biblical scholars” to paint previous generations of biblical scholars as their mirror opposites.
The Dunedin School 
Now this post has made me realise that the immense amount of energy that is going to defending historical criticism from its discontents is a case of putting the wagons in a circle. I recall an extraordinary session at the SBL a couple of years ago, where the minimalist and maximalist Hebrew Bible historians were bashing each other over the head. And how did each side try to define the other side? As postmodernist! Apparently, Niels Peter Lemche and Thomas Thompson are postmodernists. But then, if you listen to that side, so are the likes of William Dever. But no, its the evangelicals like Provan who are postmodernists, which they use to get legitimacy before doing ‘real’ criticism. The bogeyman in all this is the dreadful ‘postmodernist’, as if its a trend or a fashion that one pursues.
It’s always a bad move to criticise something you don’t understand in terms of something you understand even less – and from recent uses of “postmodernism” by BW3 &c, they don’t have a clue what it means, except that it is a useful insult with the same ignorant force as “commie bastard” was in the 1970s. Which is why George Aichele was so right to call for dialogue. Yet, for a dialogue, there has to be someone who is comfortable standing on both sides of the great ugly ditch which exists between historical criticism and postmodernism, or at least make that attempt before beginning to dialogue. I suspect, by and large, that the historical critics don’t see any advantage in reading that Continental nonsense, and the “postmodernists” (once burned) have discounted the worth of historical criticism (even in my broad sense) from the beginning. And then there is the problem that each stand on epistemological grounds which are at the level of paradigmatic difference, i.e. when the most basic of assumptions are opposed, it is hard to create a dialogue, which requires some common ground to start with. It’s not quite as stark as that today, because historical criticism has absorbed most of the points made by postmodernism – although at a superficial level; PMLite.
“[D]id historical critics ever claim to be “objective” in the sense of complete absence of bias?”
I’m afraid they came terribly close to such claims. Consider e.g. what Harnack, who seems to get an absolution too easily in the quote from Barr, has to say about historical research contra writing biographies (or histories):
“The aim of historical research is to exclude the subjective element entirely and to construct an edifice of the greatest objectivity…”
Source: Adolf von Harnack: Liberal Theology at its Height. Edited by Martin Rumscheidt. Continuum 1989, 47.
I don’t need to emphasize the words “entirely” and “greatest”. Even though Harnack gives some leeway to various objections he summarizes, on the whole he comes off much much too fixated on his “objectivity”.
Oh, Timo – why confuse the argument by introducing some facts?
But seriously, it is true that this was the aim, and it was considered an unproblematic aim. Was it Noth who believed that by becoming thoroughly familiar with the text, reading it over and over again, that his mind would become one with the text, eliminating all subjective bias? There is indeed an illusion of objectivity here, but also some truth. For it is possible to become more familiar with a text’s meaning, to come closer to its objective (though perhaps polysemous) meaning – yet at the same time to do so from a point of view that restricts and even obfuscates other aspects of the meaning. I think we do both at the same time. Aiming for determination of the objective meaning should still be the goal – but we need to temper this with recognition of our ineptitude. Are we going two steps forward and one step back? Or one step forward and two steps back? It’s hard to tell when you’re in the middle of it, but if you don’t attempt taking a step forward, then (in the absence of accident) what is certain is that you’re only going to go backwards.
Timo, point well made. And it is not difficult to find a scholar – especially German – at a biblical studies conference arguing that one must cut out and burn any trace of subjectivity.
Deane, the Aichele et al vs van Seters exchange suggests to me that there is little room for dialogue in the way the condemnations have shaped up. However, there is in all this a woeful misuse of the term ‘postmodernism’. It is assumed to be a style, a mode of interpretation, a fad, but that simply follows the old idealist conceit of the determining nature of ideas. Scholars have a self-interest in doing so, but I much prefer to see postmodernism as a socio-economic phenomenon or phase (per Jameson et al). That means: a) the sharp difference is itself a feature of a postmodern landscape; b) the strenuous, hyper-modernist defence of historical criticism is also a feature of that situation.
In a thoroughgoing materialism, ideas are themselves material objects. So I don’t see any need to reduce all sociological analysis to socio-economic circumstances excluding ideas. And heuristically, ideas often provide the clearest and most fruitful abstraction from material reality with which to analyse that reality – e.g. Bruce Lincoln combines both material circumstance and ideas in his analyses. The most informed material dialectic cannot afford to ignore the place of ideas in the determination of society.
I didn’t understand how you concluded (a) and (b) or exactly what you meant by it.
As I pointed out over in my blog, socio-economic analysis is an expansion rather than a reduction, especially in response to a tendency to see ideas as the driving force (an ailment common to academics). As for a and b, if we understand postmodernism as the ‘cultural logic’ of late capitalism (Jameson), it describes one element of our social formation. That means that we are all postmodern in various ways. It also obviously means that postmodernism is not a style or an option we might choose to use. However, one feature of this landscape is that modernism begins to take different forms (Lyotard), mutating in a strange land. One element is a desperate effort to reassert modernist values, which itself becomes a feature of postmodernism because those modernist assumptions are no longer givens. When they are givens, no-one needs to argue in their favour, but when they are viewed critically, found wanting and so on, then it becomes necessary to argue for them.
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