08 — Orthodoxy and Modern Biblical Scholarship

How the Orthodox Church has met the modern academic study of the Bible — the historical-critical method — with a mixture of caution, critique, and fruitful use; and the twentieth- and twenty-first-century recovery of Orthodox biblical scholarship that reclaimed patristic exegesis while engaging the academy. This section treats a live and unfinished conversation, presenting the range of Orthodox positions from both sides.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

Orthodoxy came to the modern critical study of Scripture later than the Western confessions and with its own convictions intact. This section traces both the encounter with the historical-critical method and the constructive Orthodox biblical scholarship that has grown up in the last century.

Files

File	Description
the-historical-critical-method.md	The both-sides treatment of the Orthodox engagement with historical-critical scholarship — the cautious reception, the fruitful use, and the critique; Florovsky’s “return to the Fathers” versus fuller engagement with the academy; named proponents.
the-orthodox-biblical-recovery.md	The modern Orthodox biblical scholarship — Breck, Pentiuc, Stylianopoulos, Tarazi; the St. Vladimir’s and Holy Cross schools; the recovery of patristic exegesis; the Orthodox Study Bible used critically.

See Also

• The Patristic Mind — the “return to the Fathers” this section discusses
• Scripture within Holy Tradition — the ecclesial frame within which criticism is received
• Reading with the Church — the practical synthesis