Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 165:660 (Oct 2008)
Article: Periodical Reviews
Author: Jefferson P. Webster

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BSac 165:660 (October-December 2008) p. 480

Periodical Reviews

By The Faculty and Library Staff of

Dallas Theological Seminary

Jefferson P. Webster

Editor

“The Role of Faith in Historical Research: A Rejoinder,” Jens Bruun Kofoed, Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 21 (2007): 275-98.

In 2005 Jens Kofoed, of the Copenhagen Lutheran School of Theology in Denmark, published his dissertation for the University of Ärhus titled Text and History: Historiography and the Biblical Text (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns). His so-called “faith-based” approach generated a flurry of negative responses from the “minimalist school,” including Thomas L. Thompson of the University of Copenhagen (see his “The Role of Faith in Historical Research,” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 19 [2005]: 111-34]). The article under review here is Kofoed’s reply to Thompson’s critique.

The “minimalist school,” centered mainly in Copenhagen and Great Britain, rejects the Bible’s own claims as to its historicity, preferring rather the notion that the Old Testament in particular is essentially fictional propaganda composed by second-temple ideologues to provide the Jewish state with an etiology and justification for the occupation of the land of Yehud. Therefore the Bible’s historical assertions are deemed to be self-serving theological traditions, and scholars who support its claims are derogatively described as unscientific and faith-based, thus unable to approach the evidence objectively (p. 276).

Kofoed focuses on four of Thompson’s criticisms and observations: (1) conservatives are “muddling the distinction between faith and reason”; (2) they engage in “unscientific” research; (3) they ignore the function of biblical narrative; and (4) as a result they should be ousted from the academy. To each of these Kofoed offers reasonable and persuasive responses. As for (1), he makes the salient point that every student of biblical historiographic texts—not just the evangelical—undertakes his critical method with his own axioms and control beliefs that affect that method (p. 279).

Point (2) concerns mainly the use of sources, primary and secondary, and Thompson’s charge that the Old Testament does not measure up to the definition of true history writing since it consists of secondary sources only. Kofoed challenges this allegation, arguing that “it is simply wrong to describe the biblical texts all together as secondary sources, since the texts contain both primary and secondary evidence” (p. 286). He cites the Taylor Prism account of Sennacherib’s siege of Jerusalem. The biblical account is

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