Alfred Loisy's Developmental Approach to Scripture: Reading the ‘Firmin’ Articles in the Context of Nineteenth‐ and Twentieth‐Century Historical Biblical Criticism

Abstract

Alfred Loisy's ‘Firmin’ articles applied John Henry Newman's concept of development of doctrine within church history to the Bible. In doing this, Loisy was attempting to convince his Catholic audience to appropriate the historical critical method within Catholic biblical interpretation. Loisy attempted to explain the notion of development within the Bible, which had become commonplace among the Protestant historical critical scholarship of the time, in light of Newman's concept of the development of doctrine within history.

Babylon in Paris: Alfred Loisy as Assyriologist

“…He was likely also trying to demonstrate the usefulness of combining a comparative approach to the Bible -in a way similar to Hermann Gunkel's (1862Gunkel's ( -1932 school -with the more source critical approach epitomised by Julius Wellhausen , both of which methods Loisy used in his comparative Assyriological and biblical works. 85 In this regard he was following a similar path to that which Lenormant had trodden. Loisy's engagement with the Old Testament, and his use of historical criticism, was conditioned by his study of Assyriology, for he was convinced that the Bible must be understood in terms of the literary and cultural matrix in which its human authors lived.…”

“…2-39). Roughly the last half of the slender volume is divided up between a discussion of the Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh and its similarities with the biblical book of Genesis (39-81) and a more extensive treatment of biblical parallels in Genesis with Babylonian literature (82)(83)(84)(85)(86)(87)(88)(89)(90)(91)(92)(93)(94)(95). Pages 1 to the top of 39 are almost completely identical to the sixth article in Revue des religions.…”

Cut Off from Its Wellspring: The Politics behind the Divorce of Scripture from Catholic Moral Theology

“…Like many of his contemporaries, Loisy attempted to examine the Bible apart from theology. He assumed that historical methodology was neutral and objective, and historical biblical criticism was free from commitment …”