James A. Sanders

Sanders emphasizes the process of canonization for the sake of interpretation rather than simply the final form itself. Whereas Childs seeks to apply a hermeneutic organic to the use of the text’s final form, Sanders is primarily concerned with the hermeneutic that helped historically to construct the text. Sanders holds that the “primary character of canon or authoritative tradition … is its adaptability; its secondary character is its stability” (Sanders, “Biblical Criticism,” 163). The essence of canonical criticism, then, is the process of “discerning the hermeneutics used by the ancient biblical thinkers and authors in adapting the early authoritative traditions to their contexts, [and] for their people” (Sanders, “Biblical Criticism, 163). Thus, by analyzing the biblical text canonically, the interpreter values the process whereby a text became normative throughout the entire history of the text’s creation and transmission in addition to its final form.

In Torah and Canon Sanders details his belief that the tools of the historical-critical method should not be overshadowed so drastically. Written as a mediating voice between Childs’ canonical approach and more strictly historical and literary critical approaches, Sanders applies canonical insights into an analysis of the Torah as a “canon within the canon” (xv). His thesis concerns the actual contents of the Torah and how, though the modern Torah concludes with Deuteronomy, older collections conclude with Joshua. According to Sanders, in a canonical context, the story of Israel has been reinterpreted. The canonical approach furthers the work of critics using other methods, essentially resuming where redaction criticism must end, in order to gain a fuller understanding of the text. The canonical shift of the story of Israel by editors during the Babylonian exile thus bespeaks of a community reintegrating themselves with the overall narrative, altering the focus of the text from the occupation of the promised land to the dominance of the Law. The Torah of the Old Testament is linked with the New Testament as a whole through Jesus Christ, the “Torah incarnate” (121).

Sanders’ follow-up to this work, Canon and Community, serves as a more hermeneutically-focused and systematic study of canonical criticism and is a longer exploration of the issues raised in his review of Childs’ Introduction. In the latter, Sanders expresses discontent with Childs’ focus on the final product of the process of canonization at the expense of the process. His strongest objection is that Childs bases his approach on an unrealistic picture of the stability of the canon (Sanders, “Canonical Context,” 190). Sanders unashamedly contends that he considers “biblical historical and literary criticism a gift of God in due season. It is only when it is abused or taken as an end in itself, or when it does not keep issues of authority clear, that it generates problems” (“Canonical Context,” 192). Canon and Community thus has a two-fold purpose: to understand the role of both the canonical process and canonical hermeneutics within the method. The canonical process is the historical path of a text’s shaping throughout antiquity; canonical hermeneutics is the attempt to use the interpretive decisions throughout that history in modern biblical study.