Abstract: Historical-critical biblical studies has profoundly enriched Catholics’ and Jews’ engagement with the Bible. However, it has also posed challenges for Catholic and Jewish Bible scholars because it limits or even disqualifies appeal to postbiblical tradition—central to both Catholic and Jewish biblical interpretation. This reflects the roots of historical criticism in the hermeneutic of sola scriptura , whose influence persists even as the field has become ecumenical and interreligious. In this article, I offer a Jewish reading of Dei Verbum , the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation from Vatican II, as an invitation for Catholic and Jewish Bible scholars to treat their shared experiences of historical criticism as a subject of dialogue. Comparison with Jewish Bible scholarship shows that Dei Verbum implicitly encourages what might be called “tradition-informed historical criticism”: Catholic Bible scholars may embrace tradition as a resource that aids rather than hinders historical-critical work, thereby offering a Catholic contribution to biblical studies. Dialogue between Catholic and Jewish scholars may enrich these efforts, potentially contributing to broader methodological conversations in biblical studies and even modeling how the field might speak to more far-reaching cultural questions about tradition and modernity.
Ethan Schwartz (2026) studied this question.