Francis Watson of Durham University gave a provocative lecture. He
said we should abandon the term historical criticism altogether for the
following reasons:
(1) Biblical scholars are not historians and should not imply that we
are.
(2) Historical criticism is not a neutral characterization. In its origin the
term referred to textual criticism, which is about restoring texts. Historical
criticism, by contrast, has been about doubting them. The historical critical
movement has had an agenda to criticize, in the harsh sense, other views of the
Bible.
(3) Historical criticism has claimed that its methods are objective, neutral,
and not about dogma. This has been shown to be a farce.
(4) The real issue has been modernity and rationalism versus tradition.
(5) Historical approaches to a text are far from the totality of the work we
do. Much Biblical scholarship is not historical but interpretive.
(6) The distance historical critics claim to put between themselves and the
text is illusory.
(7) Therefore, we should talk about biblical studies or scholarship and make
the term historical criticism defunct.
Michael Hemenway on 10 Feb 10Halbwachs summary (pp. 127ff.) is very useful. Three main contributions: "the opposition between memory and history; the role of physical location in collective memory; and the importance of social power in cultural memory" (127). I agree with Smith and others (Yerushalmi, Assmann), that history and memory do not operate in an oppositional binary as Halbwachs seems to suggest. The relationship between the past, history and memory is more complex than this.
I'd really like to read this book - it's going on my list.
