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126 The Old Testament and Christian Spirituality
how it was” is naïve—both in terms of modern history writing and
the ways in which the past is rendered in biblical texts. 44 One must
draw insights from the philosophy of history 45 and of science 46 in
order to come to terms with the inherently narratological nature of
two resulting extremes of a positivistic view of historiography and an extreme
post-modernistic one, the view that history has a truth claim whereas pure
narrative does not, has been offered—cf. H. Barstad, “‘Fact’ versus ‘Fiction’
and Other Issues in the History Debate, and Their Relevance for the Study of the
Old Testament,” in Vergegenwärtigung des Alten Testaments. Beiträge zur
biblischen Hermeneutik (Festschrift für Rudolf Smend zum 70. Geburtstag; ed.
Christoph Bultmann, W. Dietrich and C. Levin; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 2002), 439–43. However, this too is too simplistic for a fully nuanced
view of Old Testament texts, even when restricted to the more historically
oriented texts in the Hebrew Bible, for the texts of the Old Testament, such as
the Deuteronomistic History versus the Chronicler’s history, present history not
as a truth claim about what happened, but as a truth claim about the meaning of
the past. This current truth claim of the text, its kerugmatic historiography, is
much more important for Old Testament texts than “what actually happened,” to
the point that ancient stories may be completely retold, expanded or even
invented, for the sake of conveying an intended message. This way of working
with the past is closer to the uncertainties offered us by post-modernist
approaches to historiography than to the securities of modernism (cf. Barstad,
“‘Fact’ versus ‘Fiction,’” 443–46). Greater certainties can, however, be gained if
historical-exegetical research focuses not only on the “narrated time,” but also
on the “time of narration,” that is, the context and purposes to which a history is
(re)told. The more editorial work on the text one can detect (whether smaller
emendations or the larger work of placing existing texts within newer textual
contexts), the greater the amount of material that renders us to trace a history of
interpretation, already within the particular biblical texts, rendering us certain
trajectories of meaning, upon which we may then expand.
44 Cf. C. J. S. Lombaard, “Wat Dateer Ons? Enkele Opmerkings rondom die
Datering van Bybelse Tekste,” HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 58,
no. 4 (2002), 1859–63.
45 See e.g., R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994);
J. H. le Roux, “The Nature of Historical Understanding” (or: “Hermeneutics and
History”), Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae XIX, no. 1 (1993): 35–63
46 See e.g., T. S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1962); K. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations:
The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (London: Routledge, 1989).