Religious Education Journal of Australia Vol. 25 (2009) 17 Teaching Scripture in a Post Critical Context Gerard McLarney* St. Joseph’s College, University of Alberta, Canada Email: gom@ualberta.ca Richard Rymarz* Religious Education, St Joseph’s College, University of Alberta, Canada Abstract This paper argues that developments in biblical scholarship allow us to consider pedagogical approaches to teaching scripture that move beyond a strictly historical critical approach. While not precluding a historical component, post critical approaches can develop themes that can be otherwise neglected. One of these is seeing scripture as an instance of wisdom. This paper explores the origins and development of biblical theology as a discipline as a departure point to posit a critique of the historical critical method. Use of story and narrative is seen as key to a post critical teaching of scripture in the classroom. It is also argued that the role of the teacher, utilizing a Vygotskian framework, is crucial in provided adequate scaffolding for future learning in this approach. Key Words: historical critical, post critical, scripture, narrative State of the Problem Understanding post critical approaches to reading scripture involves reckoning with key developments in the field of biblical theology in the modern era. Envisioning where new trends may lead, in other words, requires a glance at the past. This cursory overview of biblical scholarship and the emergence of historical criticism as the dominant interpretative approach in the modern period highlights several premises as well as limitations to the historical critical approach. The field of biblical studies has witnessed incredible growth throughout the modern era. The resulting yield in biblical knowledge has been matched by increasingly complex and diverse approaches to interpreting scripture (Helmer, 2005). The German Old Testament scholar Manfred Oeming, in Contemporary biblical hermeneutics, aptly illustrates this point (2006). He cites one study which collected contributions from 30 researchers on the figure of Elijah. The study identified nearly one and a half dozen different methodological approaches amongst researchers ranging from historical-critical, linguistic-structuralist, existential, to liberationist interpretation. “The current diversity of methods and the resulting flood of biblical meanings,” however, is not reason for unavoidable confusion, Oeming states (2006, p.143). Rather it is a testimony to the richness contained with sacred scripture. John Barton, whose Reading the Old Testament (1984, 1996) has long served as a standard introductory undergraduate text, likewise, downplays the fragmentation of the discipline and casts the development of many methodological approaches in an optimistic light (2007). Others paint a less sanguine picture of contemporary biblical studies. Anglican scholar Ephraim Radner laments that “for someone of my generation, Biblical Theology never seemed so much in ‘crisis’ as already crumbled,” (1999, p.355). A leading Catholic American exegete, L.T. Johnson, in a 2002 work with Kurz, couches his assessment of current biblical scholarship in stark terms. Specialization has resulted in arcane divisions and subspecialties; there is a danger, argues Johnson, that the present generation of scholars will approach “the state of idiots savants” who know everything about one small