what are the four types of biblical criticism what are the four types of biblical criticism

Jul 2022 - Present9 months. [82]:213 One of Griesbach's rules is lectio brevior praeferenda: "the shorter reading is to be preferred". For example, in the late 1700s, textual critic Johann Jacob Griesbach (1745 1812) developed fifteen critical principles for determining which texts are likely the oldest and closest to the original. 20. Historical-biblical criticism includes a wide range of approaches and questions within four major methodologies: textual, source, form, and literary criticism. "[162]:151,153 This created an "intellectual crisis" in American Christianity of the early twentieth century which led to a backlash against the critical approach. But times have changed [In the twenty-first century,] [c]an the notion of a sacred text be retrieved? What are the four types of biblical criticism? Description, reviews, and scrollable preview. [97]:64[102]:39,80[107]:11[108][note 5] As a result, few biblical scholars of the twenty-first century hold to Wellhausen's Documentary hypothesis in its classical form. [171] Similarly, the dogmatic constitution Dei Filius ("Son of God"), approved by the First Vatican Council in 1871, rejected biblical criticism, reaffirming that the Bible was written by God and that it was inerrant. [130]:276278 What Kelber refers to as the "astounding myopia" of the form critics has revived interest in memory as an analytical category within biblical criticism. [103]:58,59 Furthermore, they argue, it provides an explanation for the peculiar character of the material labeled P, which reflects the perspective and concerns of Israel's priests. [49][50] Demythologizing refers to the reinterpretation of the biblical myths (stories) in terms of the existential philosophy of Martin Heidegger (18891976). [105]:95 It has been criticized for its dating of the sources, and for assuming that the original sources were coherent or complete documents. [154]:166 Sharon Betsworth says Robert Alter's work is what adapted New Criticism to the Bible. Recension is the selection of the most trustworthy evidence on which to base a text. By the Middle Ages, these four methods of interpretation (or 'senses') had become fairly . [68] In this stronghold of support for Bultmann, Ksemann claimed "Bultmann's skepticism about what could be known about the historical Jesus had been too extreme". [203]:119 Subject matter is identical to verbal meaning and is found in plot and nowhere else. [2]:33 So much biblical criticism has been done as history, and not theology, that it is sometimes called the "historical-critical method" or historical-biblical criticism (or sometimes higher criticism) instead of just biblical criticism. [96]:20, As a type of literary criticism, canonical criticism has both theological and literary roots. He saw it as a "necessary tool to enable intelligent churchgoers" to understand the Bible, and was a pioneer in establishing the final form of the supplementary hypothesis of the documentary hypothesis. [22]:298 Conservative Protestant scholars have continued the tradition of contributing to critical scholarship. If the encrustations can be scraped away, the good stuff may still be there. E lohist (from Elohim) - primarily describes God as El or Elohim . [17]:13, The biblical scholar Johann David Michaelis (17171791) advocated the use of other Semitic languages in addition to Hebrew to understand the Old Testament, and in 1750, wrote the first modern critical introduction to the New Testament. "[1] The original biblical criticism has been mostly defined by its historical concerns. Any explanation offered must "account for (a) what is common to all the Gospels; (b) what is common to any two of them; (c) what is peculiar to each". Both forms of historical criticism . biblical "criticism" does not mean "criticizing" the text (i.e. Textual criticism examines biblical manuscripts and their content to identify what the original text probably said. According to Simon, parts of the Old Testament were not written by individuals at all, but by scribes recording the[which?] Wellhausen's hypothesis, for example, depends upon the notion that polytheism preceded monotheism in Judaism's development. [82]:213[note 3], Forerunners of modern textual criticism can be found in both early Rabbinic Judaism and in the early church. Each of these methods was primarily historical and focused on what went on before the texts were in their present form. [143]:4,11 Rhetorical analysis divides a passage into units, observes how a single unit shifts or breaks, taking special note of poetic devices, meter, parallelism, word play and so on. [13]:82, New Testament scholar Joachim Jeremias (19001979) used linguistics, and Jesus's first-century Jewish environment, to interpret the New Testament. Right is now wrong, and wrong is right. Why is archetypal criticism used? [203]:120. [45]:10 Bultmann had claimed that, since the gospel writers wrote theology, their writings could not be considered history, but Ksemann reasoned that one does not necessarily preclude the other. [26] Over time, they came to be known as the Wolfenbttel Fragments. [22]:297298[2]:189 Long before Richard Simon, the historical context of the biblical texts was important to Joachim Camerarius (15001574) who wrote a philological study of figures of speech in the biblical texts using their context to understand them. Critics began asking if these texts should be understood on their own terms before being used as evidence of something else. Copies of scribe 'A's text with the mistake will thereafter contain that same mistake. [149]:ix,9, Biblical rhetorical criticism makes use of understanding the "forms, genres, structures, stylistic devices and rhetorical techniques" common to the Near Eastern literature of the different ages when the separate books of biblical literature were written. [4]:21,22 Biblical criticism's central concept changed from neutral judgment to beginning from a recognition of the various biases the reader brings to the study of the texts. [114]:41 Q allowed the two-source hypothesis to emerge as the best supported of the various synoptic solutions. [157]:121 The most profound legacy of the loss of biblical authority is the formation of the modern world itself, according to religion and ethics scholar Jeffrey Stout. The 1980s saw the rise of formalism, which focuses on plot, structure, character and themes[143]:164 and the development of reader-response criticism which focuses on the reader rather than the author. By the end of the eighteenth century, advanced liberals had abandoned the core of Christian beliefs. [53][54]:443, The discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls at Qumran in 1948 renewed interest in archaeology's potential contributions to biblical studies, but it also posed challenges to biblical criticism. The Enlightenment age, and its skepticism of biblical and church authority, ignited questions concerning the historical basis for the human Jesus separately from traditional theological views concerning his divinity. [32]:23 In 1835, and again in 1845, theologian Ferdinand Christian Baur postulated the apostles Peter and Paul had an argument that led to a split between them thereby influencing the mode of Christianity that followed. . Many variants are simple misspellings or mis-copying. [4]:82, Many insights in understanding the Bible that began in the nineteenth century continue to be discussed in the twenty-first; in some areas of study, such as linguistic tools, scholars merely appropriate earlier work, while in others they "continue to suppose they can produce something new and better". Literary criticism also offers many possibilities for enriching the devotional and . Key Concepts: Psychoanalysis, the unconscious, drive, psychic [45]:12 According to Ben Witherington, probability is all that is possible in this pursuit. Tradition played a central role in their task of producing a standard version of the Hebrew Bible. [4]:20 Karl Barth (18861968), Rudolf Bultmann (18841976), and others moved away from concern over the historical Jesus and concentrated instead on the kerygma: the message of the New Testament. By the mid-twentieth century, the high level of departmentalization in biblical criticism, with its large volume of data and absence of applicable theology, had begun to produce a level of dissatisfaction among both scholars and faith communities. [60] In the 1970s, the New Testament scholar E. P. Sanders (b. "[128]:14 Redaction criticism developed after World War II in Germany and arrived in England and North America by the 1950s. Textual criticism Main article: Textual criticism Biblical criticism, in particular higher criticism, covers a variety of methods used since the Enlightenment in the early 18th century as scholars began to apply to biblical documents the same methods and perspectives which had already been applied to other literary and philosophical texts. The term was originally used to differentiate higher criticism, the term for historical criticism, from lower, which was the term commonly used for textual criticism at the time. [4]:vii,21 New criticism, which developed as an adjunct to literary criticism, was concerned with the particulars of style. [22]:298[177] The dogmatic constitution Dei verbum ("Word of God"), approved by the Second Vatican Council and promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1965 furtherly sanctioned biblical criticism. This "leads naturally to a second indictment against biblical criticism: that it is the preserve of a small coterie of people in the rich Western world, trying to legislate for how the vast mass of humanity ought to read the Bible. [195], Michael Joseph Brown writes that African Americans responded to the assumption of universality in biblical criticism by challenging it. He postulated a hypothetical collection of the sayings of Jesus from an additional source called Q, taken from Quelle, which is German for "source". [153], Narrative criticism was first used to study the New Testament in the 1970s, with the works of David Rhoads, Jack D. Kingsbury, R. Alan Culpepper, and Robert C. Many like Roy A. Harrisville believe biblical criticism was created by those hostile to the Bible. The Old Testament (the Hebrew Bible), and the New Testament, as distinct bodies of literature, each raise their own problems of interpretation - the two are therefore generally studied separately. This sets it apart from earlier, pre-critical methods; from the anti-critical methods of those who oppose criticism-based study; from later post-critical orientation, and from the many different types of criticism which biblical criticism transformed into in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Updates? [35]:173[47]:24 Schweitzer concluded that any future research on the historical Jesus was pointless. [4]:21,22 Newer forms of biblical criticism are primarily literary: no longer focused on the historical, they attend to the text as it exists now. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). [104] By the end of the 1970s and into the 1990s, "one major study after another, like a series of hammer blows, has rejected the main claims of the Documentary theory, and the criteria on the basis of which they were argued". In Old Testament studies, source criticism is generally focused on identifying sources of a single text. Nearly eighty years later, the theologian and priest James Royse took up the case. For example, Psalm 8 is a hymn that begins, "Lord, our Lord, / how majestic is your name in all the earth!" (verse 1). Fundamentalism began, at least partly, as a response to the biblical criticism of nineteenth century liberalism. [152]:5, As a form of literary criticism, narrative criticism approaches scripture as story. There are five highly detailed arguments in favor of Q's existence: the verbal agreement of Mark and Luke, the order of the parables, the doublets, a discrepancy in the priorities of each gospel, and each one's internal coherence. Further, it is not at all clear whether the difference was made by the evangelist, who could have used the already changed story when writing a gospel. These types of criticisms assume that people agree that there is a reality which is beyond personal experience. [191]:27, Feminist criticism is an aspect of the feminist theology movement which began in the 1960s and 1970s as part of the feminist movement in the United States. Biblical criticism can be broken into two major forms: higher and lower criticism. The obvious answer is "yes", but the context of the passage seems to demand a "no". [140]:335,336 In the New Testament, redaction critics attempt to discern the original author/evangelist's theology by focusing and relying upon the differences between the gospels, yet it is unclear whether every difference has theological meaning, how much meaning, or whether any given difference is a stylistic or even an accidental change. Redaction criticism later developed as a derivative of both source and form criticism. [158][156]:9 Soulen adds that biblical criticism's "leading practitioners have set standards of industry, acumen, and insight that remain pace-setting today. [133]:47[134], According to religion scholar Werner H. Kelber, form critics throughout the mid-twentieth century were so focused on finding each pericope's original form, that they were distracted from any serious consideration of memory as a dynamic force in the construction of the gospels or the early church community tradition. Historical-biblical criticism includes a wide range of approaches and questions within four major methodologies: textual, source, form, and literary criticism. Lower biblical criticism has actually made several valuable contributions to biblical studies, since its only aim is to make certain that what we are reading are the actual words that the prophets and apostles wrote. The existence of separate sources explained the inconsistent style and vocabulary of Genesis, discrepancies in the narrative, differing accounts and chronological difficulties, while still allowing for Mosaic authorship. They derived them by two methods: (a) by assuming that purity of form indicates antiquity, and (b) by determining how Matthew and Luke used Mark and Q, and how the later literature used the canonical gospels. Don Richardson writes that Wellhausen's theory was, in part, a derivative of an anthropological theory popular in the nineteenth century known as Tylor's theory. 1937) advanced the New Perspective on Paul, which has greatly influenced scholarly views on the relationship between Pauline Christianity and Jewish Christianity in the Pauline epistles. [138]:100, Followers of other theories concerning the Synoptic problem, such as those who support the Greisbach hypothesis which says Matthew was written first, Luke second, and Mark third, have pointed to weaknesses in the redaction-based arguments for the existence of Q and Markan priority. ), Allen P. Ross (Beeson Divinity School, Samford University), "The Study of Textual Criticism", List of artifacts in biblical archaeology, List of biblical figures identified in extra-biblical sources, List of burial places of biblical figures, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Biblical_criticism&oldid=1140998625, All articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases, Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from July 2021, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0. In the 1980s, Phyllis Trible and Elisabeth Schssler Fiorenza reframed biblical criticism by challenging the supposed disinterest and objectivity it claimed for itself and exposing how ideological-theological stances had played a critical role in interpretation. "[196], Social scientific criticism is part of the wider trend in biblical criticism to reflect interdisciplinary methods and diversity. [168]:136,137,141, Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Catholic theology avoided biblical criticism because of its reliance on rationalism, preferring instead to engage in traditional exegesis, based on the works of the Church Fathers. This article is about the academic treatment of the Bible as a historical document. history In societies where the "lay person" often has a passionate relationship with the Bible, it has been controversial to examine the book through historical types of literary criticism.Even though, as religious experts explain, historical criticism is used in seminaries, it is not popular in non-academic environments, where many people . (As a comparison, the next best-sourced ancient text is the Iliad, presumably written by the ancient Greek Homer in the late eighth or early seventh century BCE, which survives in more than 1,900 manuscripts, though many are of a fragmentary nature. Meanwhile, post-modernism and post-critical interpretation began questioning whether biblical criticism had a role and function at all. Say scribe 'A' makes a mistake and scribe 'B' does not. [159] There are aspects of biblical criticism that have not only been hostile to the Bible, but also to the religions whose scripture it is, in both intent and effect. [124]:298[note 6], Scholars from the 1970s and into the 1990s, produced an "explosion of studies" on structure, genre, text-type, setting and language that challenged several of form criticism's aspects and assumptions. [13]:43 "Despite the difference in attitudes between the thinkers and the historians [of the German enlightenment], all viewed history as the key in their search for understanding". Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. [91], Latin scholar Albert C. Clark challenged Griesbach's view of shorter texts in 1914. Theological studies is topical. [141], In the mid-twentieth century, literary criticism began to develop, shifting scholarly attention from historical and pre-compositional matters to the text itself, thereafter becoming the dominant form of biblical criticism in a relatively short period of about thirty years. Some of these subdivisions are: textual criticism, source criticism, form criticism, redaction criticism and other criticisms under literary criticism. Terms in this set (5) Biblical Criticism. Vaughn A. Booker writes that, "Such developments included the introduction of the varieties of American metaphysical theology in sermons and songs, liturgical modifications [to accommodate] Holy Spirit possession presences through shouting and dancing, and musical changes". Historical-biblical criticism includes a wide range of approaches and questions within four major methodologies: textual, source, form, and literary criticism. Over time the texts descended from 'A' that share the error, and those from 'B' that do not share it, will diverge further, but later texts will still be identifiable as descended from one or the other because of the presence or absence of that original mistake. Source criticism's most influential work is Julius Wellhausen's Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels (Prologue to the History of Israel, 1878) which sought to establish the sources of the first five books of the Old Testament - collectively known as the Pentateuch. [38]:22 In the previous century, Semler had been the first Enlightenment Protestant to call for the "de-Judaizing" of Christianity. 3 Factual criticism. [11]:214, Communications scholar James A. Herrick (b. The letter gave the first formal authorization for the use of critical methods in biblical scholarship. [86], This contributes to textual criticism being one of the most contentious areas of biblical criticism, as well as the largest, with scholars such as Arthur Verrall referring to it as the "fine and contentious art". "[27]:22,16 According to Schweitzer, Reimarus was wrong in his assumption that Jesus's end-of-world eschatology was "earthly and political in character" but was right in viewing Jesus as an apocalyptic preacher, as evidenced by his repeated warnings about the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of time. [105]:96 Yet no replacement has so far been agreed upon: "the work of Wellhausen, for all that it needs revision and development in detail, remains the securest basis for understanding the Pentateuch". Most scholars agree that this indicates Mark was a source for Matthew and Luke. [54]:495 The biblical theology movement of the 1950s produced debate between Old Testament and New Testament scholars over the unity of the Bible. [143]:3, By 1974, the two methodologies being used in literary criticism were rhetorical analysis and structuralism. [36]:90 Notable exceptions to this included Richard Simon, Ignaz von Dllinger and the Bollandist. The 'ideal' of higher criticism, originally, was to study the Bible without biasand there's nothing wrong with thatin theory. [200]:288 Literary texts are seen as "cultural artifacts" that reveal context as well as content, and within New Historicism, the "literary text and the historical situation" are equally important". [122]:10,11 In this manner, compelling evidence developed against the form critical belief that Jesus's sayings were formed by Christian communities. [189]:8 Kaufmann was the first Jewish scholar to fully exploit higher criticism to counter Wellhausen's theory. [122]:10 Within these oral cultures, literacy did not replace memory in a natural evolution. It does not mean the same thing as a complaint or disapproval. It began to be recognized that: "Literature was written not just for the dons of Oxford and Cambridge, but also for common folk Opposition to authority, especially ecclesiastical [church authority], was widespread, and religious tolerance was on the increase". [124]:296298 In 1978, research by linguists Milman Parry and Albert Bates Lord was used to undermine Gunkel's belief that "short narratives evolved into longer cycles". [46] Schweitzer revolutionized New Testament scholarship at the turn of the century by proving to most of that scholarly world that the teachings and actions of Jesus were determined by his eschatological outlook; he thereby finished the quest's pursuit of the apocalyptic Jesus. [79], Variants are classified into families. [23] Hugo Grotius (15831645) paved the way for comparative religion studies by analyzing New Testament texts in the light of Classical, Jewish and early Christian writings. Wellhausen's theory went virtually unchallenged until the 1970s, when it began to be heavily criticized. [76], The exact number of variants is disputed, but the more texts survive, the more likely there will be variants of some kind. [147]:156, Rhetorical criticism is also a type of literary criticism. In any case, the form critics did not derive the laws from or apply the laws to the Gospels systematically, nor did they carry out a systematic investigation of changes in the post-canonical literature. Most scholars agree the first quest began with Reimarus and ended with Schweitzer, that there was a "no-quest" period in the first half of the twentieth century, and that there was a second quest, known as the "New" quest that began in 1953 and lasted until 1988 when a third began. According to Reimarus, Jesus was a political Messiah who failed at creating political change and was executed by the Roman state as a dissident. Historical-biblical criticism includes a wide range of approaches and questions within four major methodologies: textual, source, form . [29][30][31], In addition to overseeing the publication of Reimarus's work, Lessing made contributions of his own, arguing that the proper study of biblical texts requires knowing the context in which they were written. "Higher" criticism is used in contrast with Lower criticism (or textual criticism), whose goal is to determine the original form of a text from among the variants. [4]:22, There is no general agreement among scholars on how to periodize the various quests for the historical Jesus. Exemplars drawn from the Bible provided models for contemporary human activity, in part by embodying types of ideal behaviour. In this way, biblical criticism also led to conflict. [184], Biblical criticism posed unique difficulties for Judaism. The Quest for the Historical Jesus- 4. [37], Biblical criticism's focus on pure reason produced a paradigm shift that profoundly changed Christian theology concerning the Jews. Jonathan Sheehan has argued that critical study meant the Bible had to become a primarily cultural instrument. [142][143]:34 Hans Frei proposed that "biblical narratives should be evaluated on their own terms" rather than by taking them apart in the manner we evaluate philosophy or historicity. [27]:15, Reimarus's controversial work garnered a response from Semler in 1779: Beantwortung der Fragmente eines Ungenannten (Answering the Fragments of an Unknown). Fiorenza says, "Christian male theologians have formulated theological concepts in terms of their own cultural experience, insisting on male language relating to God, and on a symbolic universe in which women do not appear Feminist scholars insist that religious texts and traditions must be reinterpreted so that women and other "non-persons" can achieve full citizenship in religion and society". [117]:158, Form criticism began in the early twentieth century when theologian Karl Ludwig Schmidt observed that Mark's Gospel is composed of short units. For criticisms of the Bible as a source of reliable information or ethical guidance, see, The widely accepted two-source hypothesis, showing two sources for both Matthew and Luke, Source criticism of the Old Testament: Wellhausen's hypothesis, Source criticism of the New Testament: the synoptic problem. Based on their understanding of folklore, form critics believed the early Christian communities formed the sayings and teachings of Jesus themselves, according to their needs (their "situation in life"), and that each form could be identified by the situation in which it had been created and vice versa. His disciples then stole the body and invented the story of the resurrection for personal gain. [2]:119,120 So biblical criticism became, in the perception of many, an assault on religion, especially Christianity, through the "autonomy of reason" which it espoused. For full treatment, see biblical literature: Biblical criticism. Centre hospitalier universitaire de Toulouse, a growing destructive modernist tendency in the Church, "Religiousness and mental health: a review", "God does not act arbitrarily, or interpose unnecessarily: providential deism and the denial of miracles in Wollaston, Tindal, Chubb, and Morgan", "Foreword to The Testament of Jesus, A Study of the Gospel of John in the Light of Chapter 17", "Docetism, Ksemann, and Christology: Can Historical Criticism Help Christological Orthodoxy (and Other Theology) After All?