Historical criticism, also known as the historical-critical method, was the dominant approach in the academic study of the Bible from the midnineteenth century until a generation ago. In the English-speaking world it is now under a cloud. There is much talk of a 'paradigm shift' away from historical methods and towards 'text-immanent' interpretation which is not concerned with the historical context and meaning of texts; it is widely felt that historical criticism is now itself of largely historical (or 'academic'!) interest (see Barton, The Future of Old Testament Study; Keck, 'Will the Historical- Critical Method Survive?'; Watson, Text, Church and World). It is still practised, however, by a large number of scholars even in the English-speaking world, and by many more in areas where German is the main language of scholarship.

What is historical criticism? Unfortunately its definition is almost as controversial as its desirability. It may be helpful to begin by identifying the features which many students of the Bible now find objectionable in the historical-critical method, before trying to refine our definition by seeing what can be said in its defence. We shall outline four features normally said to be central to historical-critical study of the Bible.

The character and contents of the Bible have shaped the ways in which it has been interpreted. They have not, however, exercised total control. The different aims and interests of its readers have also been influential, and this chapter will consider the most far-reaching of these. The terms of our title could be reversed to 'Christian theology and the Bible', indicating that the primary focus will be on the subjects who read, not the object that is read. The Bible has never of itself given birth to theology. Even its most heavily theological parts contribute to the ongoing task of Christian theology only by being interpreted in quite particular ways. Christians seek to understand their faith in part through their thoughtful engagement with the biblical texts. What they are doing needs explanation as much as the texts that they are reading. This Companion introduces to a wider audience not only the Bible but some of those who interpret it.

By the last decades of the nineteenth century, a more or less coherent account of the formation of the Pentateuch had emerged and was widely accepted by Hebrew Bible scholars. The main tenet of this newer documentary hypothesis, as it was called, was that the Pentateuch reached its present form incrementally, by way of an accumulation and editing together of sources over a period of about half a millennium, from the first century of the monarchy to around the time of Ezra in the fifth or early fourth century BC. With its emphasis on origins, sources and development, the hypothesis was a typical product of academic research in the late eighteenth and throughout the nineteenth century. A century before the appearance of Julius Wellhausen's Prolegomena to the History of Israel in 1883, which laid out the documentary hypothesis in its classic form, Friedrich August Wolf published his Prolegomena to Homer which argued along much the same lines for the composite nature of the two epic poems.

Any discussion of the Bible in relation to the arts carries its own not-so-hidden agenda. As the extensive range of biblical stories in Islamic painting reminds us, not all biblical art is Christian, or even Judaeo-Christian. Just as it is impossible to speak of the Bible as a 'neutral' piece of writing free from a particular hermeneutic context, so it is impossible even to begin to speak of its artistic interpretations without realizing that these have always constituted a two-way exchange. What may look at first sight like the Bible casting a wide cultural penumbra was, in fact, a dynamic interpretative relationship through which the perception of the text was itself transformed. If the Bible helped to create a particular aesthetic, what was understood by the Bible was, equally, a creation of that aesthetic - indeed, it is my thesis here that biblical interpretation has historically followed, rather than created, aesthetic interpretation.

Paul is undoubtedly the most important Christian thinker of all time. His letters are the only Christian writings we can confidently date to the first generation of Christianity; they define the first distinctives of Christian faith as do no other New Testament documents. They reflect and document the most crucial period in Christian history - the expansion of a Jewish messianic sect into the non-Jewish world, the emergence of Christianity as a (soon to be) predominantly Gentile religion. And their theology has been a primary formative influence in most of the great theological confessions and statements of the Christian churches to the present day. Their interpretation has therefore always been at the heart of attempts to understand Christian beginnings and to reformulate Christian faith and life.

THE EXTENT OF THE PAULINE CORPUS

The initial task in the study of the Pauline Letters has traditionally been the introductory issues of authenticity, date and circumstances, and these remain basic to sound interpretation. Fortunately the areas of disagreement have been relatively few. The letters were written in the course of Paul's work as a Christian missionary. That work extended from the mid-3os AD (soon after his conversion) to the early 60s, when he was executed, according to popular tradition, in Rome. The period of the letter-writing was much briefer, covering only the last ten to fifteen years of his life. This means, among other things, that the letters come from Paul's most mature period; none of them is the work of a young Christian or inexperienced missionary; they all reflect considerable experience and developed reflection on the Christian gospel. We may not deduce from this that there is no development in Paul's thought from letter to letter; but we should be cautious about assuming that such development was inevitable.

The New Cambridge History of India covers the period from the beginning of the sixteenth century. In some respects it marks a radical change in the style of Cambridge Histories, but in others the editors feel that they are "working firmly within an established academic tradition.

During the summer of 1896, F.W. Maitland and Lord Acton between them evolved the idea for a comprehensive modern history. By the end of the year the Syndics of the University Press had committed themselves to the Cambridge Modern History, and Lord Acton had been put in charge of it. It was hoped that publication would begin in 1899 and be completed by 1904, but the first volume in fact came out in 1902 and the last in 1910, with additional volumes of tables and maps in 1911 and 1912.