Читать книгу A Contemporary Introduction to the Bible - Colleen M. Conway - Страница 40

The name of Israel’s God in Hebrew is Yahweh, but you will not see this name written out in most English translations of the Bible. Instead, most translations have “the LORD” where the Hebrew manuscripts have a strange combination of the consonants for Yahweh (YHWH) and the vowels for the Hebrew word “lord.” Why this combination?

The consonants are earlier, since the earliest Hebrew Bible manuscripts were written in all consonants. When Jewish scholars started producing manuscripts with vowels, the divine name Yahweh had become so holy that they did not pronounce it out loud. (This is still true for many Jews.) Therefore, they added the vowels for “lord” in every place where the consonants for Yahweh occurred so that readers would say “lord” rather than the holy name. English translations reflect this combination when they put “lord” in all capital letters (LORD), indicating that this particular “lord” is Yahweh. (Note “Jehovah” is the word that is produced when you simply pronounce the consonants of YHWH with the vowels for the Hebrew word for “lord.”)

We will be focusing here on the state of the Bible before such prohibitions on pronouncing the divine name existed. So there will be occasions where it will be helpful to refer to Israel’s God by the name Yahweh.

Historical criticism is a family of historical methods that analyzes how and where the biblical texts (and oral traditions in them) were composed. “Criticism” in this case does not mean that historical critics find fault with the biblical texts that they study, but that they use academically critical analysis to arrive at their conclusions rather than starting on the basis of faith assumptions. Through tradition criticism, for example, biblical scholars attempt to identify early oral traditions standing behind the biblical text. For example, past tradition critics have supposed that the following song of Miriam may be one of the earliest traditions in the Bible to speak of the defeat of the Egyptian army at the Red Sea:

Sing to Yahweh, for he has been victorious

Horse and rider, he has thrown into the sea. (Exod 15:21)

The next chapter will discuss places where other texts of the Bible, though being later written texts, still reflect the general outlines of earlier oral traditions.

Many scholars, however, focus not on how the Bible was formed, but on what it means and has meant to generations of readers of the Bible. For example, literary criticism has drawn on methods in the study of modern literature to study the plot, characterization, pacing, and shape of biblical texts. Scholars employing such criticism have examined Exodus 1–15 as if it were a novel, looking at how the story is artfully told: how is Moses introduced and characterized? How does this contrast with the characterization of the Egyptians and their leaders? What does the reader expect and learn as the narrative unfolds? Such study of the poetic and narrative dynamics of biblical texts is distinct from study of how such texts have been interpreted by later readers, which is the history of interpretation. Historians of interpretation study how the story of the exodus became central to Judaism and Christianity in different ways. For example, the exodus story is the centerpiece of the Jewish celebration of Passover and is a founding story for the Christian practices of baptism and Eucharist.

Finally, various forms of ideological criticism analyze ways that the exodus story can be, has been, and should be read in the midst of systemic structures of power. For example, early feminist criticism lifted up the importance of the story of the midwives in the lead-up to the exodus (Exod 1:15–21), and later feminist critics have raised questions about the male (androcentric) focus of the exodus story and most other parts of the Bible.

This is just a sampling of some of the different types of academic research that are used to investigate the Bible and its readings. Across this Introduction numerous other forms of biblical criticism will be introduced.