Biblical Criticism

From New World Encyclopedia

Biblical criticism is a form of historical criticism that seeks to analyze the Bible through asking certain questions about the text, such as who wrote it, when it was written, for whom was it written, why was it written, what was the historical and cultural setting of the text, how well preserved is the original text, how unified is the text, what sources were used by the author, how was the text transmitted over time, what is the text's literary genre, and how did it come to be accepted as part of the Bible?

Biblical criticism has been traditionally divided into textual criticism—also called lower criticism—which seeks to establish the original text out of the variant readings of ancient manuscripts, and higher criticism, which focuses on identifying the author, date, and place of writing for each book of the Bible. In the twentieth-century a number of specific critical methodologies have been developed to address such questions in greater depth.

What passed for ancient history was at times uncritical, prejudiced and many times just copied from an earlier writer. Historical criticism can not determine if the events that are recorded in the Bible are entirely accurate or clothed with material from another time such as myth, theology or tradition. It is evident that in Biblical literature the authors were comfortable with teaching theology in story form.


Lower criticism

The so-called lower criticism is a branch of philology or bibliography that is concerned with the identification and removal of errors from texts and manuscripts. No original biblical texts exist today. What we have are copies of the original documents, with several generations of copyists intervening in most cases. Lower criticism was developed in an attempt to find out what the original actually said.

When an error consists of something being left out, it is called a deletion. When something was added, it is called an interpolation. Biblical critics attempt to recognize interpolations by differences of style, theology, vocabulary, etc., from the main source. When more than one ancient manuscript exists, they can also compare the manuscripts, sometimes discovering verses that have been added, deleted, or changed.

Higher criticism

Higher criticism is a name given to critical studies of the Bible that treat it as a text created by human beings at a particular historical time and for various human motives, in contrast with the treatment of the Bible as the inerrant word of God. Higher criticism thus studies the biblical text as it would study any other ancient text, in order to discover its cultural context, audience, purpose, influences, and ultimately its meaning.

The phrase "the higher criticism" became popular in Europe from the mid-eighteenth century to the early twentieth century, to describe the work of such scholars as Jean Astruc, Johann Gottfried Eichhorn (1752-1827), Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792-1860), and Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918).

Two primary examples of higher criticism are the Documentary Hypothesis in Old Testament studies and the theory of the existence of the Q Document in New Testament studies. The Documentary Hypothesis, also known as the Graf-Wellhausen theory, holds that the Pentateuch, or first five books of the Hebrew Bible, are not the work of Moses as traditionally claimed, but come from several later sources which were combined into their current form during the seventh century B.C.E. The Q Document was posited by New Testament scholars to explain the relations among the Synoptic Gospels, with the most common theory being that Mark was written first, with both Matthew and Luke us a saying source, called "Q" to expand Mark's basic narrative.

Types of Biblical criticism

See also

  • Biblical studies
  • Internal consistency of the Bible
  • Science and the Bible
  • The Bible and history
  • Biblical archaeology
  • The Gospel of Mark
  • 40th century B.C.E.
Further reading
  • Barton, John (1984). Reading the Old Testament: Method in Biblical Study, Philadelphia, Westminster, ISBN 0-664-25724-0.
  • Birch, Bruce C., Walter Brueggemann, Terence E. Fretheim, and David L. Petersen (1999). A Theological Introduction to the Old Testament, ISBN 0-687-01348-8. 
  • Coggins, R. J., and J. L. Houlden, eds. (1990). Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation. London: SCM Press; Philadelphia: Trinity Press International. ISBN 0-334-00294-X. 
  • Ehrman, Bart D. (2005). Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. HarperSanFrancisco. ISBN 0-06-073817-0. 
  • Fuller, Reginald H. (1965). The Foundations of New Testament Christology. Scribners. ISBN 0-684-15532-X. 
  • Goldingay, John (1990). Approaches to Old Testament Interpretation. Rev. ed. Downers Grove, IL, InterVarsity, ISBN 1-894667-18-2.
  • Hayes, John H., and Carl R. Holladay (1987). Biblical Exegesis: A Beginner's Handbook, Rev. ed. Atlanta, GA, John Knox, ISBN 0-8042-0031-9.
  • Knight, Douglas A., and Gene M. Tucker, eds. (1993). To Each Its Own Meaning: An Introduction to Biblical Criticisms and Their Applications, Louisville, KY, Westminster/John Knox, ISBN 0-664-25784-4.
  • Morgan, Robert, and John Barton (1988). Biblical Interpretation, New York, Oxford University, ISBN 0-19-213257-1.
  • Soulen, Richard N. (1981). Handbook of Biblical Criticism, 2nd ed. Atlanta, Ga, John Knox, ISBN 0-664-22314-1.
  • Stuart, Douglas (1984). Old Testament Exegesis: A Primer for Students and Pastors, 2nd ed., Philadelphia, Westminster, ISBN 0-664-24320-7.
  • Shinan, Avigdir, and Yair Zakovitch (2004). That's Not What the Good Book Says, Miskal-Yediot Ahronot Books and Chemed Books, Tel-Aviv

References
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External links

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