What is the Historical-Critical Method and Why Muslims Should Care

The Historical-Critical Method (HCM) is a modern academic approach used to study religious and literary texts. It has been foundational in shaping Western biblical scholarship and is increasingly applied to the Qur’an and Islamic tradition, often with far-reaching theological and epistemological implications.

In this essay, I shall briefly discuss three key points. The first pertains to the whatness of HCM. Second, I ask if it is impartial, as it is generally presupposed to be. It must be understood that my inquiry in the second point ‘on the impartiality of HCM’ shows its non-impartiality and bias towards vulgar materialism and the view of history that it entails. Lastly, I discuss broadly what the Muslim response should be. I argue that the goal should be to correct the false methodological assumptions HCM works under, and to subsume it within the subordination principle, as expounded by the noble master Avicenna, “The principles of every more specific science are questions in the Highest Science.”¹

What is the Historical-Critical Method?

The method’s name already hints at its focus on studying literary documents ‘historically’ and ‘critically.’ It is thus useful to inquire upon its ‘whatness’ by focusing on these two adjectives, that is to say, how it analyses a document ‘critically,’ then how it does the same ‘historically.’

HCM as a ‘Critical’ Method

University of Oxford Professor explains the ‘critical’ method in the following manner: “To interpret a literary document critically means to suspend inherited presuppositions about its origin, transmission, and meaning, and to assess their adequacy in the light of a close reading of that text itself as well as other relevant sources.”² To give an example, regarding the scripture such as the bible, pre-modern philosopher Baruch Spinoza said that we must reject the postulate that the scripture is true and divine.³ We must instead treat it as an ordinary (having no supernatural element) text. This shift in perspective paved the way for more skeptical and analytical methods of interpretation. The principle of dissimilarity, developed by the Dutch Classicist Jacob Perizonius (d. 1715), states that a report that seems to contradict or go against orthodoxy is probably originally true, since no one trying to construct orthodoxy would have made it up.^{4 5}

HCM as a ‘Historical’ Method

Sinai explains the ‘historical’ method in the following manner: “To read a text historically is to require the meanings ascribed to it to have been humanly ‘thinkable’ or ‘sayable’ within the text’s original historical environment, as far as the latter can be retrospectively reconstructed.”³

In most historical-critical scholarship, the terms ‘thinkable’ and ‘sayable’ allude to what is considered possible, as shaped by the principle of historical analogy. The principle of historical analogy is that the past was constrained by the same natural laws as today, the ethical and intellectual abilities of the human beings were not radically different from ours, and the actions of past agents are at least partly explicable by recourse to certain social and economic factors. Another postulate is the detection of anachronism: if the literary document contains something that is anachronistic pertaining to whatever timeline it is thought to be written in, then it is not from that timeline and is a later writing, at least not before than whenever we find that ‘anachronism’ in history.⁶

Before moving forward, I feel compelled to ask: per the HCM scholars, should the meanings ascribed to the text be humanly thinkable and sayable within the text’s original historical environment? And if so, does this mean that the historical context is something we are reconstructing after the fact? Then whatever apparatus we use to retrospectively reconstruct the historical environment has to be rooted in some fundamental notions about reality. If these notions betray a naturalistic worldview, then the past reconstructed will always lack the scope to consider somebody claiming to be a prophet of God to be truthful, or miracles to be real, or some book to be actually revealed or inspired by God. So, in principle this postulate suffers from circularity, for it turns out to be claiming that the scripture should conform to its historical environment which we know by reconstructing it using an atheistic-naturalistic-mechanistic worldview as an apparatus.

Simply put, the worldview used to retrospectively reconstruct the past already excludes what the scripture claims. We shall see that Sinai himself realizes that.

On whether the Historical-Critical Method is Impartial:

We briefly saw what the historical critical method is. Now, let us briefly inquire about its alleged impartiality. As we have seen, it relies on primarily three presuppositions that it treats as postulates, which are 1) the Principle of Historical Analogy (PHA), 2) the Detection of Anachronism (DOA), and 3) the Principle of Dissimilarity (POD).

The principles of historical analogy and the detection of anachronisms—as Sinai himself agrees—carry significant interpretive weight:

“Assuming the validity of the principle of historical analogy has significant consequences. For instance, it will become hermeneutically inadmissible to credit scripture with a genuine foretelling of future events or with radically anachronistic ideas (say, with anticipating modern scientific theories). The notion of miraculous and public divine interventions will likewise fall by the wayside. All these presuppositions can of course be examined and questioned on various epistemological and theological grounds, but they arguably form core elements of the rule book of contemporary historical scholarship.”³

So, this whole methodology, as French metaphysician René Guenon (d. 1951) precisely explains, “rests on a few postulates that are nothing but sheer pre-conceptions.”⁷ The users of this method presuppose (whether they profess it or not) that every doctrine must have taken its start in naturalism (as they work under a secular humanist episteme), henceforth continually twist around texts, missing their real point, always ending with reading into them some interpretation or other that agrees with the naturalist spirit. 

Following this method they commit a double error.⁸ The first is that, due to their ignorance of higher philosophy (which cannot be escaped even if you are a ‘historian’), they are unaware of the ungrounded naturalistic theories underlying the method, and of the fact that one’s fundamental notions about reality—metaphysical convictions, that is—shape one’s view of history and other lower, more specific sciences. The second error they commit is regarding the scope of this method: falsely predicating universality of it, considering it to be applicable wholesale everywhere, deluding themselves by imagining that their linguistic capabilities entitle them to speak on every conceivable subject. 

The modern West’s worldview of history, rooted in ‘evolutionistic’ naturalism, is the result of its specific experience and is not at all universal, so the presuppositions it relies on and applies to the ‘Orient’ can, and do in fact produce inaccurate results. If someone says otherwise, then let him present to us his argument for its universality. None can be given, for universality requires necessity, and necessity is not established even by a survey showing 100% agreement on some methodological norm. And if it is said that nobody has said that it is universal, then what we say is correct and moreover, it shouldn’t then be treated as if it is universal. DOA, as used by the Orientalists, renders all true prophecies and miracles unintelligible a priori—they must be later constructions, rather than a possible conclusion to be reached upon. This becomes a principle, like American philosopher Alvin Plantinga says, “The meaning of the text will be what the human author intended to assert [if it is assertive discourse]; divine intentions and teachings do not enter the discourse.”⁹

The principle of dissimilarity presumes the falsehood of the orthodox body of whatever religion it is applied to, for it says that whatever goes against orthodoxy is most likely to be true, as nobody constructing orthodoxy would invent something that goes against it. What is the proof of this presupposition, such that it is treated as if it were an uncontested deductive principle? It clearly reveals a bias against orthodoxy, having already presumed its falsehood rather than impartially inquiring about whether the general orthodox view is correct or incorrect. 

Let’s take a quick look at an example that portrays the ‘non-neutrality’ of the principle of dissimilarity (the following example is given only to make it easier for the reader to understand, anything against the specific example doesn’t harm principally what we have mentioned above and henceforth). 

On the question of when the Qur’an originated, the ‘critical historians’—skeptical of Islamic historical accounts— argued that the Qur’an was a later construct assembled in the 8^th or even the 9^th century. This claim was undermined when the Qur’anic manuscript in the Hijazi script, held by the University of Birmingham, was dated by the experts in radiocarbon analysis at the university of Oxford to be between the years 568 and 645 AD. The orthodox Islamic narrative tells us that the Qur’an was revealed during the time of Prophet Muhammad’s (ﷺ) prophetic career, dated from 610 to 632 AD, and then around 650 AD the Caliph Uthman (ra) promulgated the written compilation of the Qur’an. So, from 610 AD to 650 AD, is broadly speaking, marks the period of Qur’anic revelation and its compilation.¹⁰ Now, Professor Gabriel Said Reynolds, after the carbon dating of the Birmingham manuscript, wrote an article in which he says, “The upshot of all of these early dates is that the Qur’an may very well date earlier than Uthman, possibly much earlier. It may be time to rethink the story of the Qur’an’s origins, including the traditional dates of Muhammad’s career.”¹¹

What is shown here is that what’s going on behind the scenes in the minds of these ‘Orientalists’ is the Principle of Dissimilarity. So, first they rejected the orthodox view by claiming that the Qur’an was constructed way later than the orthodox timeline suggests, then the Birmingham manuscript’s carbon dating happens and shows that the most plausible option now seems to align with the orthodox narrative. But since it is a given that orthodoxy is wrong, we must concoct a new narrative, and in light of the principle of dissimilarity, Reynolds proposes this new third option (as quoted above). Moreover, he states clearly, “In other words what observers have celebrated as something like evidence of the traditional story of Islams origins (the New York Times article argued that the manuscript ‘offered a moment of unity and insight for the worlds 1.6 billion Muslims’) may actually be when considered carefully, evidence that the story of Islam’s origins is quite unlike what we have imagined.”¹¹

This seems quite ‘neutral’ (sarcasm intended) but secretly smuggles in a total naturalist worldview according to which all religious claims are false. One can believe the traditional narrative of the Qur’an’s compilation and still be an Atheist, Christian or whatever because in this case, positing the traditional date of Qur’an’s compilation doesn’t entail leaving your worldview necessarily for orthodoxy just happens to be correct in one plane. But no! This can’t be accepted; either it must be much later or much earlier. 

One popular historian Tom Holland even goes on to say, in all seriousness, that the carbon dating of Birmingham Manuscript suggests that the Qur’an predates Muhammad’s life. In the background, what is working, again, behind these far-fetched claims broadly is the Principle of Dissimilarity. The psychology at play is that the ‘orthodoxy’ is simply a later construct and whatever the religion says officially is not the original history, rather a later construction. German sociologist Max Weber (d. 1920) said that the original founders of religions were not actually responsible for their formalized teachings; rather, these were organized by later generations to institutionalize the founder’s charismatic religious authority.¹² Contrast this with the Islamic orthodox view as later generations merely preserving their Prophet’s (ﷺ) original teaching by fending off lies attributed to him. On what epistemic bases should Max Weber’s claim be given more weight than the orthodox view? What grounds that episteme? A western secular humanist humean physicalist-cum-materialist Eurocentric worldview? Such a theoretical underpinning and the universality ascribed to it must be defended on grounds outside of secularism itself, to ensure that no circularity is committed. This leads to what W. T. Stace beautifully stated, “Whether we like it or not, we cannot escape philosophy; because, on whatever road of knowledge we travel, philosophy lies in wait for us with its questions.”¹³

On the Muslim Response

What we have alluded to makes plain that, with very few exceptions, the aptitude to truly understand the ‘Orient’ is lacking among Westerners. Broadly speaking, being a progeny of Enlightenment, the ‘scholars’ of this ‘science of religion’, as Guénon states,

“Introduce all the preconceived notions which go to make up their own particular mentality, with the manifest intention of forcing the theories they are studying into the habitual framework of European thought. In short, questions of method apart, the cardinal error of these orientalists is to look at everything from their own Western standpoint and through their own mental prism, whereas the first condition for the correct interpretation of any doctrine is to make an effort to assimilate it by placing oneself as far as possible at the viewpoint of those who conceived it.”¹⁴

This secular humanist Eurocentric attitude of the Orientalists, whether they explicitly recognize it or not, as Professor Joseph Lumbard rightly states, “privileging a secular approach, the scholar has already come to the text with as many embedded assumptions as has the devoted theologian. The fundamental difference may be that the secular scholar is less ‘confessional’ regarding his or her views, though equally constrained by them,”¹⁵ makes them believe that they understand the Islamic Tradition better than the Muslims themselves. The likes of Muir, Sprenger, Gibbon, Goldziher, Schacht and others after these personalities, some manifesting the ‘we know thy tradition better than thee’ attitude more than others, seem to have been working under the spirit that ‘Muslims didn’t really understand their Prophet and tradition until we came along.’ 

Moreover, one of the abuses that arises out of the application of such a non-impartial method is treating the traditions it studies, in our context Islamic Tradition, as one might study some tradition extinct long ago. In the latter case, it can be understood that for a lack of a better alternative, one must be content with approximate reconstructions of the past, without ever being sure of establishing an exact correspondence with what formerly existed. It is forgotten, however, that the Islamic Tradition has continued to exist without interruption to the present day, it is alive and well, and still has its authorized representatives, whose advice is of incomparably greater value than all the academic learning in the world. But their advice won’t be of any value if one assumes that they themselves are better informed as to the real meaning of their ideas. This attitude is the result of what Guénon calls ‘intellectual myopia’, more incurable than physical shortsightedness. He aptly says, “like the latter, mental shortsightedness also is a distortion induced by certain habits that bring it on gradually and imperceptibly, although there must doubtless be some predisposition toward it as well. This being the case, the ill-will shown by the majority of orientalists toward those who will not submit to their methods or accept their conclusions should not be a cause of surprise; it is only one more example of the results that normally follow on the abuse of specialization, and one of the countless manifestations of that pseudo-scientific attitude of mind that is so easily mistaken for the true scientific spirit.”¹⁶

In general, the Orientalists have done more damage to intellectuality than the positive results their researches have yielded, blocking other intellectual paths by asserting them as ‘unscientific’ while themselves working under the most ungrounded secular humanist worldview spread via colonization.

Guénon writes that t​​hey scare away “from these paths nearly all those who might be minded to enter upon them…given the prejudices of the modern West, [they] declare solemnly that such and such an approach ‘is unscientific’, simply because it does not conform to the methods and theories accepted and officially taught in the universities…it must be added that this ‘science of religions’, while affecting an air of disinterested impartiality and even advertising its ridiculous and indeed positively outrageous claim to ‘stand above all the doctrines’, usually serves simply as a weapon of polemic in the hands of people whose real purpose is to employ it against religion…such a use of scholarship in a negative and subversive spirit is natural to the fanatics of the ‘historical method’; it is indeed of the very nature of that method, which is by its very nature anti-traditional, or at least becomes so as soon as it is allowed to overstep its legitimate bounds.”¹⁷

This leads us to recognize the fact that we need a more comprehensive method wherewith we can study the past in manners unrestricted to materialism; something more than mere ‘textual criticism’ that loses itself in an endless maze of detail, clinging to the letter while blind to the spirit. We need this more than even this ‘historical critical’ method. This is not to cast aspersions on the relative uses of dictionaries and similar compilations, but what is being said here is that we need a deeper interpretive method, one in which these grammatical and lexical tools are placed in proper relation, subsumed within the traditional model of subordination. As Avicenna explicated, “The principles of every more specific science are questions in the Highest Science,” metaphysics corrects every lower science when the correction is needed, thus the naturalistic postulates of the Historical-Critical Method will be corrected, otherwise the very goal of HCM, as Guenon says, “is certain to be missed; absence of true understanding can only give birth to wild and arbitrary interpretations, that is to say to real falsehoods, even when it is only a question of historical exactitude.”⁸

The Orientalists, handicapped by way too narrow a specialization and lacking a foundation in the first principles, will never succeed in genuinely understanding Islamic Tradition as it is, let alone the truth. Muslims, therefore, shouldn’t “commit the error of confusing the true intellectual elite with the professional men of learning. A power of wide understanding is worth incomparably more in our eyes than mere scholarship, which is nothing but an obstacle to understanding as soon as it is turned into a ‘speciality’, instead of remaining, as it normally should remain, simply an instrument in the service of that understanding, that is to say an adjunct of pure knowledge and genuine intellectuality.”¹⁸

By broadening epistemic standards, philosophy can help shape historical interpretation more accurately. The general purpose of this essay has been to make known the malady; what is needed with utmost immediacy is a return to the first principles via a realignment with the pure intellect. Here I shall recommend two key texts that explore with great rigor the all-comprehensive traditional subordination model grounded in the first principles and the first principles, The Anatomy of Knowledge and the Ontological Necessity of First Principles by  Karim Lahham and Things as They are: Nafs al-Amr and the Metaphysical Foundations of Objective Truth by Hasan Spiker.

Of course, it can be said in response that correcting the fundamental methodological assumptions of the method changes the method and therefore, you in some sense, do reject it absolutely. I leave it to the reader to make out if they want to treat it as a complete rejection of HCM or a nuanced correction of the method. As for what I think I am doing it is that I am merely pointing out its biases by critically analyzing some of its methodological assumptions and urging that it must be corrected and looked at within an all-comprehensive model of the subordination of sciences, nonetheless I have no problem if one calls it a complete rejection. “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”¹⁹

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Works Cited:

1. Avicenna, The Metaphysics of the Healing, trans. Michael E. Marmura (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2005, book 1. [↩]
2. Nicholas Sinai, The Qur’an: A Historical-Critical Introduction, Edinburgh University Press, p. 2. [↩]
3. Nicholas Sinai, The Qur’an: A Historical-Critical Introduction, Edinburgh University Press, p. 3. [↩] [↩] [↩]
4. Bart D. Ehrman. The New Testament. pp. 204-205; Arnaldo Momigliano, Studies in Historiography, p. 21. [↩]
5. Jonathan A. C. Brown, Hadith: Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World, Oneworld Publications, pg. 203. [↩]
6. Jonathan A. C. Brown, Hadith: Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World, Oneworld Publications, pg. 201. [↩]
7. René Guénon, Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines, trans. Marco Pallis (Hillsdale NY: Sophia Perennis), pg. 217. [↩]
8. René Guénon, Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines, trans. Marco Pallis (Hillsdale NY: Sophia Perennis), pg. 215. [↩] [↩]
9. https://ccel.org/ccel/plantinga/warrant3.vii.ii.iii.html [↩]
10. From 53:00 onwards, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALdaISU3ZFY. [↩]
11. Variant readings: The Birmingham Qur’an in the Context of Debate on Islamic Origins, Times Literary Supplement, 7 Aug, 2015, p. 15. [↩] [↩]
12. Jonathan A. C. Brown, Hadith: Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World, Oneworld Publications, pg. 202. [↩]
13. Stace, W. T. (1937), The place of philosophy in human culture. Philosophy, 12(47), 302–316, p. 316. [↩]
14. René Guénon, Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines, trans. Marco Pallis (Hillsdale NY: Sophia Perennis), pg. 2. [↩]
15. Lumbard, J. E. B. (2022). Decolonizing Qurʾanic studies. Religions, 13(2), 1–14, p. 10. [↩]
16. René Guénon, Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines, trans. Marco Pallis (Hillsdale NY: Sophia Perennis), p. 213. [↩]
17. René Guénon, Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines, trans. Marco Pallis (Hillsdale NY: Sophia Perennis), p. 214-215, 218. [↩]
18. René Guénon, Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines, trans. Marco Pallis (Hillsdale NY: Sophia Perennis), p. 238. [↩]
19. Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act II Scene II. [↩]