Iain W. Provan

The following is only a review of Part 1--

It would not come as a shock to many Christians to hear that those in the ivory tower place very little trust in the historical accuracy of the Old Testament. After all, we are finding it increasingly difficult today to find even self-described Christians who affirm events like the flood narrative, the parting of the Red Sea, or the rescue of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego as historical realities. What may come as a revelation, however, is the rejection of a historical Israel at all. “Biblical history is apparently dead!” report Provan, Long, and Longman (3). What are we to do with such a radical dismissal of the biblical testimony?

Christians have largely responded in one of two ways. The first is retreat. It's not wrong to say academia is hostile to historical, traditional Christianity. Many Christian scholars no longer receive an audience in the halls they once roamed only a few decades ago. Newer spaces in evangelical colleges and seminaries provide scholars with much needed freedom to continue their research in a context friendly to their deeply held religious beliefs. However, a certain level of expertise has been sacrificed in the exchange. The result is a “Christianized” form of the academic pursuit with little cross-pollination with the field broadly. Today, evangelical discourse looks and sounds different. It has developed its own jargon and assumptions which are alien to most scholars in the field.

A second approach has been what the authors of A Biblical History of Israel call “methodological nontheism,” or the willingness to argue the case by systematically adopting the nontheist standards, categories, and definitions of “the naked public square.” It requires complete willingness on behalf of the believing scholar to think and write as though he did not believe at all. I do not believe it too harsh to call it capitulation. Provan, Long, and Longman are right to reject the so-called naked public square for what it is: “a misleading and dangerous label, since there is nothing naked about it” (147).

Indeed, the value of the first half of the book is the authors’ willingness to expose the hidden ideology and assumptions of modern scholars who fancy themselves stewards of objectivity and unbiased history. In their devastating critique of modern historiography and its practitioners, the authors demonstrate a better method for Christian scholars: lively debating peers on their own terms. Their case is refreshingly free of modern ideology and evangelical nonsense. They painstakingly address every criticism, often by turning the question back on their critics and challenging their own assumptions and methodologies. In the end, it is their critics who are revealed to be the ideologically poisoned ones.

Provan, Long, and Longman begin by pointing out the marginalization of the biblical text in the study of biblical history. Many of their critics, they argue, are now committed to correcting the course of biblical history by focusing on supposedly objective archeological data and extrabiblical sources. But is objectivity, in the modern sense, even possible? The authors are skeptical. After all, no historian can get behind partiality or ideology, even in fields like archeology. Even archeological data must be interpreted and argued by scholars who themselves are animated by a host of presumptions. They continue to raise concerns with the nascent positivism within the field of biblical history. Can it be that history is truly more a science than an art, interested only in empirical proof of specific historical events and the transcendent laws which guide them?

The substance of the authors’ thesis rests on two counterfactuals. The first is that history largely comes to us through testimony and there is no reason to discount testimony as a legitimate form of transmission. The second is that history is an art, dependent on the choices, styles, and motivations of the storyteller. We will deal with these two points in turn.

History as Testimony
The authors are correct to frame the question as a matter of epistemology: “How do we know what we claim to know about the past?? (38) In the early part of their second chapter, Provan, Long, and Longman argue testimony is as much a valid source of historical knowledge as archeological data, anthropology, sociology, or any other darling of modern scholars:

We know about the past, to the extent that we know about it all, primarily through the testimony of others. Testimony lies at the very heart of our access to the past. There is the testimony of people from the past about their own past, communicated in oral and written forms. There is the testimony of people from the past about the past of other peoples, also communicated in oral and written forms. Figures from the present also offer testimony about the past–the past of their own and of other peoples…Testimony gives us access to the past, to the extent that anything does. All historiography is founded upon it (39).

Because history is testimony, we cannot avoid the category of trust, or faith. Indeed, the two are synonymous (39). It is perhaps for this reason alone that modern scholars with grand visions of absolute rationality and objectivity disdain the testimony of the biblical texts. Instead, they prefer the scientific pursuits of archeological observation. The problem is no such objectivity exists. “We understand more clearly than many of our predecessors how what is perceived in the so-called real world is inevitably connected with the knowledge, prejudices, and ideologies that the perceiving person brings with her to the observation” (40). No evidence is neutral, and no evidence can be neutrally observed. Thus, the debate is as Provan, Long, and Longman argue at the outset: “what counts as evidence” (9).

For the authors, there is no logical reason–only ideological biases–as to why the biblical testimony ought to be rejected. The rest of the chapter touches on matters such as the modern skepticism toward tradition and the postmodern dismissal of objective truth at all. Christians familiar with the more popular works of Os Guinness or Carl Trueman will find Provan, Long, Longman’s own contributions similar without shedding much new light. However, the question remains: if the myth of modern rationalism and objectivity is just that, what keeps us from the slippery slope of postmodernism?

History as an Art
Christians may find themselves in an awkward position saying all historical knowledge is subject to interpretation. After all, is this not simply a suggestion that no such thing actually exists? Our postmodern age would certainly agree. But Provan, Long, and Longman are no postmodernists and, in fact, spend as much time debunking their epistemology as much as that of the modernists.

The answer requires a shift in one’s paradigm. For so long, we have trained our brains to think of history as a science. But that was not always so. History was an art for much of the pre-Enlightenment world, best exemplified in Plutarch’s Lives or Tactitus’ Histories. These were historical narratives of impressive men and women with pedagogical ends. Yes, these ancient historians crafted their narratives according to aesthetic decisions, intentionally selecting certain details and not others in order to argue a particular interpretation of the events at hand. But this does not necessarily disqualify their histories as history. It simply requires a different way of thinking about history.

Provan, Long, and Longman employ a helpful analogy. Imagine a Renaissance painter hired to paint a young woman of his day. Years later, historians discover his painting. Is the painting history? Is it fiction? Or is it some combination of the two?

In one sense, a portrait is all history, since its essential purpose is to represent a historical subject. Ideally, every brushstroke in the portrait serves that purpose. In another sense, however, a portrait is all fiction–that is, it is all “fabrication,” just paint on canvas. No brushstroke or combination of brushstrokes exactly duplicates the historical subject. Taken together, however, the brushstrokes depict, or represent, the historical subject (115).

The historian–or the artist–is free to depict the historical event according to his own “voice,” but he is always bound by the actual event itself (118). A different historian may add his voice to the chorus, adding a different perspective. But never does this negate the reality of the historical event itself. As the authors so simply put it, “History is one, but historiographies may be many” (118).

Conclusion
As Provan, Long, and Longman clearly demonstrate, biblical history is far from dead! In fact, it remains an important source of knowledge about the Ancient Near East and the people who populated it. Turning people’s opinions on the merit of biblical testimony will be difficult. Academia is replete with ideologues, fervently committed to the priors of modernism and increasingly open to the relativism of its postmodern heir.

Perhaps then confessional Christians will find hope in their respective doctrines of Scripture. The Westminster Larger Catechism confidently attests to Scripture’s self-evident majesty, purity, and coherence (WLC 4). But it is quick to remind us of the darkness of man’s heart. Though self-evident, sin clouds our judgment in such a way that it requires the illuminating power of the Holy Spirit to persuade us of its quality. Without divine intervention, we are blind to the power of its testimony. But if Provan, Long, and Longman are any example, that ought not dissuade us from proclaiming its truth.… (more)