Department of Biblical Studies

The significance of Biblical Studies

A provocative look at just the what, why, where and how of Biblical Studies: What is the Bible? How do we study it academically? And why does it matter?

For over 60 years, the Department of Biblical Studies at Sheffield has provided a unique cutting-edge approach to the study of the most influential text in Western and perhaps global culture. The critical study of the Bible is vital on a number of levels.

The biblical texts were written and composed over a period covering at least 450 years, interacting with the Persian Empire, Hellenism, and the Roman Empire. The historical study of these texts in their original contexts requires experts not only in the historical and cultural settings of these texts but awareness of languages such as Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, not to mention a range of important languages such as Ugaritic and Coptic and the countless languages into which the Bible has been translated.

This collection of texts gives us access to the stories of Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezra, Jesus, Peter, Judas, Paul, and John of Revelation. It tells us the stories of the origins of Israel, Judaism and Christianity.

Biblical Studies and the history of religion

Through critical interaction with the biblical and related texts, major historical issues are discussed. For example:

• What if the historical Jesus was not, as many scholars now stress, the 'founder of Christianity'?
• Who was the historical Jesus?
• Why do we get the origins of both Judaism and Christianity based on, and partly found through, biblical texts?
• Which people were responsible for collecting these texts and providing seemingly definitive collections?
• Why are there different collections?
• Why were so many texts not included?

The biblical texts have provided the basis for almost anything of major cultural significance, from legal systems to three world religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam). The history of reception has been long and turbulent, with the Bible used for good and ill.

Like it or not, these texts, stories and figures have had a profound impact on world history. It is a crucial component of any discipline in the humanities to find out why, to get involved in some of the most controversial and prominent debates in the humanities over the past two centuries.

Biblical Studies and the Humanities

As a subject within the arts and humanities, few can be so relevant to so many disciplines:

• How can the biblical texts and contexts be understood without at least some knowledge of archaeology?
• How do we understand the long and diverse history of Judaism without the massive amount of biblical exegesis from the Mishnah to the Talmuds?
• How do we understand the history of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism without knowing about crucial New Testament texts?
• Can philosophers, historians, theologians, authors like Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin and Kierkegaard be understood properly outside their context as biblical interpreters?
• How can the Reformation and the English Civil War be comprehended without a detailed knowledge of the ways in which the Bible has been interpreted and translated?
• How can Milton, Caravaggio, Spenser, Tolstoy, Eliot, von Trier and countless others be understood without an understanding of interpretation of the biblical texts?

And this is not just a historical phenomenon: The seemingly secular world of popular music and popular culture is saturated with biblical allusions and retellings of biblical stories. Consider the origins and influence of two seemingly different cultural phenomena, Mel Gibson's violent but hugely popular, Passion of the Christ, and Dan Brown's equally popular, The Da Vinci Code.

Biblical Interpretation and Politics

Politics is not immune: Mainstream US party politics is heavily influenced by the interpretative history of the biblical texts. In recent presidential elections, candidates bent over backwards to try and make themselves sound sufficiently 'biblical'. A significant percentage of the American electorate believe, not only that the world was created in the way narrated in Genesis, but that pursuing the right Middle East policy will precipitate the (imminent) coming of Christ. It is not unknown for presidents themselves to be very sympathetic to such interpretation.

• Why do books, films and video games on these sorts of subjects sell in their millions?
• How do we understand US foreign policy without recognising the role of biblical interpretative traditions in American culture?
• Why do so many people believe the events in Israel since 1948 and the recent conflicts in the Middle East were prophesied in the Bible?
• How can we make sense of the claims made in the Israel-Palestine conflict without understanding the Bible, its influence and its interpretative traditions?

Biblical interpretation in a Postcolonial world

For and against slavery, women's rights, colonisation… It is impossible to identify an issue of justice and rights where the Bible has not been employed, usually on both sides of the debate.

• Is there another collection of texts so influential in framing ethical debates on race, gender and sexuality?
• Can any other collection of texts claim such significance in postcolonial settings?

The successful deployment of biblical texts to support both imperialism and reactions against it by liberation theologians is testimony not only to human inventiveness, but to the complexity of the texts themselves.

The Bible in modern Britain: a case of illiteracy?

The areas of influence would be multiplied endlessly but, despite the fact that people have murdered one another, fought wars and conquered lands in the name of biblical interpretation, there remains a strong degree of indifference, at least in the UK, towards understanding the complex histories of biblical interpretation. Little wonder that non-believers such as Andrew Motion and Richard Dawkins complain about the lack of biblical literacy in the UK.

It should be no surprise that the most famous contemporary critical theorists and continental philosophers such as Jacob Taubes, Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek have turned to figures like Paul, pointing out that the history of Western thought cannot be understood without detailed appreciation of Paul's revolutionary impact. And yet, inevitably, it is through biblical studies we find the detailed interpretation of Paul's letters and it is through biblical studies that we find the cultural and historical and cultural background to Paul.

The critical study of the Bible cannot be brushed aside if we want a serious understanding of these texts of unparalleled influence in western culture. Nor can the critical study of the Bible be put in the hands of a few individuals scattered across a given university or universities. A serious understanding requires people with expertise in different areas of history and archaeology, film studies, art history, politics, cultural studies, philosophy, critical theory, ethics, translation studies, literature and language, and so on.

And what of Sheffield?

'Sheffield Biblical Studies' has had a unique reputation in academic circles for at least forty years. This is because of its high profile at academic conferences (the 'Sheffield reception' at the major SBL conference is the centrepiece for many scholars), its investment in and dedication to publishing, and its famously innovative and cutting edge scholarship (Sheffield has long been at the forefront of critical-historical, literary and cultural, and political approaches to biblical texts).

Sheffield has been and remains at the forefront of the analysis of the reception of the biblical texts, right up to and including the role of the Bible in contemporary politics and film. Many biblical scholars will openly talk of 'the Sheffield school' and its distinctive world class academics. For these reasons, Sheffield is synonymous with the most innovative and important approaches to biblical studies in the past forty years.

Jesus in an Age of Terror

Recent publications from staff within the department offer more extensive reflection on the issues raised above. For example:

• James G Crossley, Jesus in an Age of Terror (Equinox, 2008)

An Unsuitable Book: The Bible as Scandalous Text

• Hugh Pyper, An Unsuitable Book: The Bible as Scandalous Text (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2005)

Origins of the 'Second' Temple

• Diana Edelman, The Origins of the 'Second' Temple: Persian Imperial Policy and the Rebuilding of Jerusalem (Equinox, 2005)