Biblical criticism is an umbrella term for
those methods of studying the Bible that embrace
two distinctive perspectives: the concern
to avoid dogma and bias by applying a non-sectarian,
reason-based judgment, and the reconstruction
of history according to contemporary understanding.
Biblical criticism uses the grammar, structure,
development, and relationship of language
to identify such characteristics as the Bible's
literary structure, its genre, its context,
meaning, authorship, and origins.
Biblical criticism includes a wide range of
approaches and questions within four major
contemporary methodologies: textual, source,
form, and literary criticism. Textual criticism
examines the text and its manuscripts to identify
what the original text would have said. Source
criticism searches the texts for evidence
of original sources. Form criticism identifies
short units of text and seeks to identify
their original setting. Each of these is primarily
historical and pre-compositional in its concerns.
Literary criticism, on the other hand, focuses
on the literary structure, authorial purpose,
and reader's response to the text through
methods such as rhetorical criticism, canonical
criticism, and narrative criticism.
Biblical criticism began as an aspect of the
rise of modern culture in the West. Some scholars
claim that its roots reach back to the Reformation,
but most agree it grew out of the German Enlightenment.
German pietism played a role in its development,
as did British deism, with its greatest influences
being rationalism and Protestant scholarship.
The Enlightenment age and its skepticism of
biblical and ecclesiastical authority ignited
questions concerning the historical basis
for the man Jesus separately from traditional
theological views concerning him. This "quest"
for the Jesus of history began in biblical
criticism's earliest stages, reappeared in
the nineteenth century, and again in the twentieth,
remaining a major occupation of biblical criticism,
on and off, for over 200 years.
In the late twentieth and early twenty-first
century, biblical criticism was influenced
by a wide range of additional academic disciplines
and theoretical perspectives, changing it
from a primarily historical approach to a
multidisciplinary field. In a field long dominated
by white male Protestants, non-white scholars,
women, and those from the Jewish and Catholic
traditions became prominent voices. Globalization
brought a broader spectrum of worldviews into
the field, and other academic disciplines
as diverse as Near Eastern studies, psychology,
anthropology and sociology formed new methods
of biblical criticism such as socio-scientific
criticism and psychological biblical criticism.
Meanwhile, post-modernism and post-critical
interpretation began questioning biblical
criticism's role and function.
== History ==
=== Beginnings: the eighteenth century ===
According to tradition, Moses was the author
of the first five books of the Bible, including
the book of Genesis. Philosophers and theologians
such as Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), Benedict
Spinoza (1632–1677), and Richard Simon (1638–1712)
questioned Mosaic authorship. Spinoza said
Moses could not have written the preface to
Deuteronomy, since he never crossed the Jordan;
he points out that Deuteronomy 31:9 references
Moses in the third person; and he lists multiple
other inconsistencies and anomalies that led
him to conclude "it was plain" these Pentateuchal
books were not written by Moses himself. Jean
Astruc (1684–1766), a French physician,
believed these critics were wrong about Mosaic
authorship. According to Old Testament scholar
Edward Young, Astruc believed Moses used hereditary
accounts of the Hebrew people to assemble
the book of Genesis. So, Astruc borrowed methods
of textual criticism, used to investigate
Greek and Roman texts, and applied them to
the Bible in search of those original accounts.
Astruc believed he identified them as separate
sources that were edited together into the
book of Genesis, thus explaining Genesis'
problems while still allowing for Mosaic authorship.
Astruc's method was adopted and developed
at the twenty or so Protestant universities
in Germany. There was a willingness among
the doctoral candidates to re-express Christian
doctrine in terms of the scientific method
and the historical understanding common during
the German Enlightenment (circa 1750–1850).German
pietism played a role in the rise of biblical
criticism by supporting the desire to break
the hold of religious authority. Rationalism
was also a significant influence in biblical
criticism's development, providing its concern
to avoid dogma and bias through reason. For
example, the Swiss theologian Jean Alphonse
Turretin (1671–1737) attacked conventional
exegesis (interpretation) and argued for critical
analysis led solely by reason. Turretin believed
the Bible could be considered authoritative
even if it was not considered inerrant. This
has become a common modern Judeo-Christian
view. Johann Salomo Semler (1725–1791) argued
for an end to all doctrinal assumptions, giving
historical criticism its non-sectarian nature.
As a result, Semler is often called the father
of historical-critical research. Semler distinguished
between "inward" and "outward" religion, the
idea that, for some people, their religion
is their highest inner purpose, while for
others, religion is a more exterior practice:
a tool to accomplish other purposes more important
to the individual such as political or economic
goals. This is a concept recognized by modern
psychology.Communications scholar James A.
Herrick says even though most scholars agree
that biblical criticism evolved out of the
German Enlightenment, there are also histories
of biblical scholarship that have found "strong
direct links" with British deism. Herrick
references the theologian Henning Graf Reventlow
as saying deism included the humanist world
view, which has also been significant in biblical
criticism. Some scholars, such as Gerhard
Ebeling (1912–2001), Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976),
and Ernst Käsemann (1906–1998) trace biblical
criticism's origins to the Reformation. Three
early scholars of the Reformation era who
helped lay the foundations of modern biblical
criticism were Joachim Camerarius (1500–1574),
Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), and Matthew Tindal
(1653–1733). Camerarius advocated for using
context to interpret Bible texts. Grotius
paved the way for comparative religion studies
by analyzing New Testament texts in light
of Classical, Jewish and early Christian writings.
Tindal, as part of English deism, asserted
that Jesus taught natural religion, an undogmatic
faith that was later changed by the Church.
This view drove a wedge between scripture
and the Church's claims of religious truth.
The first scholar to separate the historical
Jesus from the theological Jesus was philosopher,
writer, classicist, Hebraist and Enlightenment
free thinker Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768).
Copies of Reimarus' writings were discovered
by G. E. Lessing (1729–1781) in the library
at Wolfenbüttel where he was librarian. Reimarus
had left permission for his work to be published
after his death, and Lessing did so between
1774 and 1778, publishing them as Die Fragmente
eines unbekannten Autors (The Fragments of
an Unknown Author). Over time, they came to
be known as the Wolfenbüttel Fragments after
the library where Lessing worked. Reimarus
distinguished between what Jesus taught and
how he is portrayed in the New Testament.
According to Reimarus, Jesus was a political
Messiah who failed at creating political change
and was executed. His disciples then stole
the body and invented the story of the resurrection
for personal gain. Reimarus' controversial
work prompted a response from Semler in 1779,
Beantwortung der Fragmente eines Ungenannten
(Answering the Fragments of an Unknown). Semler
refuted Reimarus' arguments, but it was of
little consequence. Reimarus' writings had
already made a lasting change in the practice
of biblical criticism by making it clear such
criticism could exist independently of theology
and faith. Reimarus had shown biblical criticism
could serve its own ends, be governed solely
by rational criteria, and reject deference
to religious tradition.Lessing contributed
to the field of biblical criticism by seeing
Reimarus' writings published, but he also
made contributions of his own work, arguing
that the proper study of biblical texts requires
knowing the context in which they were written.
This has since become an accepted concept.
During this period, the biblical scholar Johann
David Michaelis (1717–1791) wrote the first
historical-critical introduction to the New
Testament, in which the historical study of
each book of the Bible is discussed. Instead
of interpreting the Bible historically, Johann
Gottfried Eichhorn (1752–1827), Johann Philipp
Gabler (1753–1826), and Georg Lorenz Bauer
(1755–1806) took a different approach. They
used the concept of myth as a tool for interpreting
the Bible. This concept was later picked up
by Rudolf Bultmann and it became particularly
influential in the early twentieth century.
=== The nineteenth century ===
Theologians Richard and Kendall Soulen say
biblical criticism reached full flower in
the nineteenth century, becoming the "major
transforming fact of biblical studies in the
modern period" and noted that the people working
at that time "saw themselves as continuing
the aims of the Protestant Reformation." Landmarks
in understanding the Bible and its background
were achieved during this century, with many
modern concepts having their roots here. For
example, in 1835 and again in 1845, theologian
Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860) postulated
a sharp contrast between the apostles Peter
and Paul. Since then, this concept has had
widespread debate within topics such as Pauline
and New Testament studies, early church studies,
Jewish Law, the theology of grace, and the
doctrine of justification.Foundations of anti-Jewish
bias were also established in the field at
this time under the guise of scholarly objectivity.
The first Enlightenment Protestant to call
for the "de-Judaizing" of Christianity was
Johann Semler. The "emancipation of reason"
from the Word of God was a primary goal of
Semler and the Enlightenment exegetes, yet
the picture of the Jews and Judaism found
in biblical criticism of this period is colored
by classic anti-Jewish stereotypes "despite
the tradition's lip-service to emancipation."
He took a stand against discrimination in
society while at the same time writing theology
that was strongly negative toward the Jews
and Judaism. He saw Christianity as something
new and universal that supersedes all that
came before it. This stark contrast between
Judaism and Christianity became a common theme,
along with a strong prejudice against Jews
and Judaism, in Herder, Schleiermacher, de
Wette, Baur, Strauss, Ritschl, the history
of religions school, and on into the form
critics of the Twentieth century until World
War II.Biblical criticism was divided into
higher criticism and lower criticism during
this century. Higher criticism focuses on
the Bible's composition and history, while
lower criticism is concerned with interpreting
its meaning for its readers. Later in the
19th century, the discovery of ancient manuscripts
revolutionized textual criticism and translation.
During this period, Bible scholar H. J. Holtzmann
developed a listing of the chronological order
of the New Testament. The height of biblical
criticism is also represented by the history
of religions school (known in German as the
Kultgeschichtliche Schule or alternatively
the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule). This
school was a group of German Protestant theologians
associated with the University of Göttingen
in the late 19th century who sought to understand
Judaism and Christianity within their relationship
to other religions of the Near East.The late
nineteenth century saw the second "quest for
the historical Jesus" which primarily involved
writing versions of the "life of Jesus." Important
scholars of this quest included David Strauss
(1808–1874), whose cultural significance
is in his contribution to weakening the established
authorities, and whose theological significance
is in his confrontation of the doctrine of
Christ's divinity with the modern critical
study of history. Adolf Von Harnack (1851–1930)
contributed to the quest for the historical
Jesus, writing The Essence of Christianity
in 1900, where he described Jesus as a reformer.
William Wrede (1859–1906) was a forerunner
of redaction criticism. Ernst Renan (1823–1892)
promoted the critical method and was opposed
to orthodoxy. Johannes Weiss (1863–1914),
W. Bousset, Hermann Gunkel, and William Wrede
were key figures in the founding of the Religionsgeschichtliche
Schule in Göttingen in the 1890s. While at
Göttingen, Weiss wrote his most influential
work on the apocalyptic proclamations of Jesus.
It was left to Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965)
to finish pursuit of the apocalyptic Jesus
and revolutionize New Testament scholarship
at the turn of the century. He proved to most
of that scholarly world that Jesus' teachings
and actions were determined by his eschatological
outlook. He also critiqued the romanticized
"lives of Jesus" as built on dubious assumptions
reflecting more of the life of the author
than Jesus.
=== The twentieth century ===
In the early part of the twentieth century,
Karl Barth, Rudolf Bultmann, and others moved
away from concern over the historical Jesus
and concentrated instead on the kerygma: the
message of the New Testament. While there
is consensus that Barth was the greatest theologian
of the century, scholars such as theologian
Konrad Hammann call Bultmann the "giant of
twentieth-century New Testament biblical criticism:
His pioneering studies in biblical criticism
shaped research on the composition of the
gospels, and his call for demythologizing
biblical language sparked debate among Christian
theologians worldwide." Bultmann's demythologizing
refers to the reinterpretation of the biblical
myths (myth is defined as descriptions of
the divine in human terms). It is not the
elimination of myth but is, instead, its re-expression
in terms of the existential philosophy of
Martin Heidegger. Bultmann claimed myths are
"true" anthropologically and existentially
but not cosmologically. As a major proponent
of form criticism, Bultmann's views "set the
agenda for a generation of leading New Testament
scholars".Redaction criticism was also a common
form of biblical criticism used in the early
to mid-twentieth century. While form criticism
divided the text into small units, redaction
emphasized the literary integrity of the larger
literary units. The discovery of the Dead
Sea scrolls at Qumran in 1948 renewed interest
in the contributions archaeology could make
to biblical studies as well as to the challenges
it presented to various aspects of biblical
criticism. New Testament scholar Joachim Jeremias
used linguistics and history to describe Jesus'
Jewish environment. The biblical theology
movement of the 1950s produced a massive debate
between Old Testament and New Testament scholars
over the unity of the Bible. The rise of redaction
criticism closed it by bringing about a greater
emphasis on diversity.After 1970, biblical
criticism began to change radically and pervasively.
New criticism (literary criticism) developed.
New historicism, a literary theory that views
history through literature, also developed.
Biblical criticism began to apply new literary
approaches such as structuralism and rhetorical
criticism, which were less concerned with
history and more concerned with the texts
themselves. In the 1970s, the New Testament
scholar E. P. Sanders 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. Sanders also advanced study
of the historical Jesus by putting Jesus'
life in the context of first-century Second
Temple Judaism. In 1974, the theologian Hans
Frei published The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative,
which became a landmark work leading to the
development of post-critical biblical interpretation.
The third period of focused study on the historical
Jesus began in 1985 with the Jesus Seminar.By
1990, biblical criticism was no longer primarily
a historical discipline but was instead a
group of disciplines with often conflicting
interests. New perspectives from different
ethnicities, feminist theology, Catholicism
and Judaism revealed an "untapped world" previously
overlooked by the majority of white male Protestants
who had dominated biblical criticism from
its beginnings. Globalization brought different
world views, while other academic fields such
as Near Eastern studies, sociology, and anthropology
became active in biblical criticism as well.
These new points of view created awareness
that the Bible can be rationally interpreted
from many different perspectives. In turn,
this awareness changed biblical criticism's
central concept from the criteria of neutral
judgment to that of beginning from a recognition
of the various biases the reader brings to
the study of the texts.
== Major methods of criticism ==
Theologian David R. Law writes that textual,
source, form, and redaction criticism are
employed together by biblical scholars. The
Old Testament (the Hebrew Bible) and the New
Testament are distinct bodies of literature
that raise their own problems of interpretation.
Therefore, separating these methods, and addressing
the Bible as a whole, is an artificial approach
that is necessary only for the purpose of
description.
=== Textual criticism ===
Textual criticism examines the text itself
and all associated manuscripts to determine
the original text. It is one of the largest
areas of Biblical criticism in terms of the
sheer amount of information it addresses.
The roughly 900 manuscripts found at Qumran
include the oldest extant manuscripts of the
Hebrew Bible. They represent every book except
Esther, though most are fragmentary. The New
Testament has been preserved in more manuscripts
than any other ancient work, having over 5,800
complete or fragmented Greek manuscripts,
10,000 Latin manuscripts and 9,300 manuscripts
in various other ancient languages including
Syriac, Slavic, Gothic, Ethiopic, Coptic and
Armenian. The dates of these manuscripts range
from c.110—125 (the
P
{\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}
52 papyrus) to the introduction of printing
in Germany in the 15th century. There are
also a million New Testament quotations in
the collected writings of the Church Fathers
of the first four centuries. As a comparison,
the next best-sourced ancient text is Homer's
Iliad, which is found in more than 1,900 manuscripts,
though many are of a fragmentary nature. The
two chief works of the first-century Roman
historian Tacitus, Annales and Historiae,
each survive in only a single medieval manuscript.
There are a total of 476 extant non-Christian
manuscripts dated to the second century. These
texts were all written by hand, by copying
from another handwritten text, so they are
not alike in the manner of a printed work.
The differences between them are called variants.
A variant is simply any variation between
two texts, and while the exact number is somewhat
disputed, scholars agree the more texts, the
more variants. This means there are more variants
concerning New Testament texts than Old Testament
texts. Variants are not evenly distributed
throughout the texts. Textual scholar Kurt
Aland explains that charting the variants
shows the New Testament is 62.9% variant-free.
Many variants originate in simple misspellings
or mis-copying. For example, a scribe would
drop one or more letters, skip a word or line,
write one letter for another, transpose letters,
and so on. Some variants represent a scribal
attempt to simplify or harmonize, by changing
a word or a phrase. Ehrman explains: scribe
'A' will introduce mistakes which are not
in the manuscript of scribe 'B'. Copies of
text 'A' with the mistake will subsequently
contain that same mistake. The multiple generations
of texts that follow, containing the error,
are referred to as a "family" of texts. 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. Textual
criticism studies the differences between
these families to piece together what the
original looked like. Sorting out the wealth
of source material is complex, so textual
families were sorted into categories tied
to geographical areas. The divisions of the
New Testament textual families were Alexandrian
(also called the "Neutral text"), Western
(Latin translations), and Eastern (used by
Antioch and Constantinople). Forerunners of
modern textual criticism can be found in both
early Rabbinic Judaism and the early church.
Rabbis addressed variants in the Hebrew texts
as early as AD 100. Tradition played a central
role in their task of producing a standard
version of the Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew text
they produced stabilized by the end of the
second century, and has come to be known as
the Masoretic text, the source of the Christian
Old Testament. However, the discovery of the
Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 has created problems.
While 60% of the Dead Sea manuscripts are
closely related to Masoretic tradition, others
bear a closer resemblance to the Septuagint
(the ancient Greek version of the Hebrew texts)
and the Samaritan Pentateuch. For textual
criticism, this has raised the question of
whether or not there is such a thing that
can be considered "original text."
The two main processes of textual criticism
are recension and emendation. Recension is
the selection of the most trustworthy evidence
on which to base a text. Emendation is the
attempt to eliminate the errors which are
found even in the best manuscripts. Despite
its use of objective rules, there is a subjective
element involved in textual criticism. The
textual critic chooses a reading based on
personal judgment, experience and common-sense.
Biblical scholar David Clines gives the example
of Amos 6.12. It reads: "Does one plough with
oxen? The obvious answer is 'yes', but the
context of the passage seems to demand a 'no';
the usual reading therefore is to amend this
to, 'Does one plough the sea with oxen?' The
amendment has a basis in the text, which is
believed to be corrupted, but is nevertheless
a matter of personal judgment."All of this
contributes to textual criticism being one
of the most contentious areas of biblical
criticism as well as the largest. It uses
specialized methodologies, enough specialized
terms to create its own lexicon, and is guided
by a number of principles. Yet any of these
can be contested, as well as any conclusions
based on them, and they often are. For example,
in the late 1700s, textual critic Johann Jacob
Griesbach developed fifteen critical principles
for determining which texts are likely the
oldest and closest to the original. One of
Griesbach's rules is lectio brevior praeferenda:
"the shorter reading is preferred". This was
based on the idea scribes were more likely
to add to a text than omit from it, making
shorter texts more likely to be older. Latin
scholar Albert C. Clark challenged this in
1914. Based on his study of Cicero, Clark
argued omission was a more common scribal
error than addition, saying "A text is like
a traveler who goes from one inn to another
losing an article of luggage at each stop."
Clark's claims were criticized by those who
supported Griesbach's principles. Clark responded,
but disagreement continued. Nearly eighty
years later, the theologian and priest James
Royse took up the case. After close study
of multiple New Testament papyri, he concluded
Clark was right. Some scholars have recently
called to abandon older approaches to textual
criticism in favor of new computer-assisted
methods for determining manuscript relationships
in a more reliable way.
=== Source criticism ===
Source criticism is the search for the original
sources that form the basis of biblical text.
It can be traced back to the 17th-century
French priest Richard Simon. In Old Testament
studies, source criticism is generally focused
on identifying sources within a single text.
For example, the modern view of the origins
of the book of Genesis was first laid in 1753
by the French physician Jean Astruc. He presumed
Moses used ancient documents to write it,
so his goal was identifying and reconstructing
those documents by separating the book of
Genesis back into those original sources.
He discovered Genesis alternates use of two
different names for God while the rest of
the Pentateuch after Exodus 3 omits that alternation.
He found repetitions of certain events, such
as parts of the flood story that are repeated
three times. He also found apparent anachronisms:
statements seemingly from a later time than
Genesis was set. Astruc hypothesized that
this separate material was fused into a single
unit that became the book of Genesis thereby
creating its duplications and parallelisms.
Further examples of the products of source
criticism include its two most influential
and well-known theories concerning the origins
of the Pentateuch (the Documentary hypothesis)
and the four gospels (two-source hypothesis).
==== Wellhausen's documentary hypothesis ====
Theologian Antony F. Campbell says 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. Wellhausen
correlated the history and development of
those five books, known as the Pentateuch,
with the development of the Jewish faith.
The Documentary hypothesis, also known as
the JEDP theory, or the Wellhausen theory,
says the Pentateuch was combined out of four
separate and coherent sources known as J (which
stands for Yahwist, which is spelled with
a J in German), E (for Elohist), D (for Deuteronomist),
and P (for the Priestly source). Old Testament
scholar Karl Graf (1815–1869) suggested
the P in 1866 as the last stratum of the Wellhausen
theory. Therefore, the Documentary hypothesis
is sometimes also referred to as the Graf–Wellhausen
hypothesis. Later scholars inferred more sources,
with increasing information about their extent
and inter-relationship.The fragmentary theory
was a later understanding of Wellhausen produced
by form criticism. This theory argues that
fragments of various documents, and not continuous
documents, are the sources for the Pentateuch.
This accounts for diversity but not structural
and chronological consistency. The Supplementary
hypothesis can be seen as an evolution of
the Documentary hypothesis that solidified
in the 1970s. Proponents of this view assert
three sources for the Pentateuch, with the
Deuteronomist as the oldest source, and the
Torah assembled from a central core document,
the Elohist, then supplemented by fragments
taken from other sources.Advocates of the
Documentary hypothesis contend it accounts
well for the differences and duplication found
in each of the Pentateuchal books. 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. However, the original
theory has also been heavily criticized. Old
Testament scholar Ernest Nicholson says that
by the end of the 1970s and into the 1990s,
"one major study after another, like a series
of hammer blows, ... rejected the main claims
of the Documentary theory, and the criteria
on ... which those claims are grounded." It
has been criticized for its dating of the
sources, for assuming that the original sources
were coherent, and for assuming E and P were
originally complete documents. Studies of
the literary structure of the Pentateuch have
shown J and P used the same structure, and
that motifs and themes cross the boundaries
of the various sources, which undermines arguments
for separate origins. Problems and criticisms
of the Documentary hypothesis have been brought
on by such literary analysis, but also by
anthropological developments, and by various
archaeological findings, such as those indicating
Hebrew is older than previously believed.
Presently, few biblical scholars still hold
to Wellhausen's Documentary hypothesis in
its classical form. However, while current
debate has modified Wellhausen's conclusions,
Nicholson says "for all that it needs revision
and development in detail, [the work of Wellhausen]
remains the securest basis for understanding
the Pentateuch." Critical scholar Pauline
Viviano agrees, stating that the general contours
of Wellhausen's view remain with the Newer
Documentary Hypothesis providing the best
answers to the complex question of how the
Pentateuch was formed.
==== The New Testament synoptic problem ====
In New Testament studies, source criticism
has taken a slightly different approach from
Old Testament studies by focusing on identifying
the common sources of multiple texts. This
has revealed the Gospels are both products
of sources and sources themselves. As sources,
Matthew, Mark and Luke are partially dependent
on each other and partially independent of
each other. This is called the synoptic problem,
and explaining it is the single greatest dilemma
of New Testament source criticism. Multiple
theories exist to address the dilemma. However,
two theories have become predominant: the
two-source hypothesis and the four-source
hypothesis.Mark is the shortest of the four
gospels with only 661 verses, but six hundred
of those verses are in Matthew and 350 of
them are in Luke. Some of these verses are
copied verbatim. Most scholars agree that
this indicates Mark was a source for Matthew
and Luke. There is also some verbatim agreement
between Matthew and Luke of verses not found
in Mark. In 1838, the religious philosopher
Christian Hermann Weisse developed a theory
about this. He postulated a hypothetical collection
of Jesus' sayings from an additional source
called Q, taken from Quelle, which is German
for "source". If this document existed, it
has now been lost, but some of its material
can be deduced indirectly. Comparing what
is common to Matthew and Luke, yet absent
in Mark, the critical scholar Heinrich Julius
Holtzmann demonstrated (in 1863) the probable
existence of Q well enough for it to be accepted
as a likely second source, along with Mark,
for Matthew and Luke. This allowed the two-source
hypothesis to emerge as the best supported
of the various synoptic solutions. There is
also material unique to each gospel. This
indicates additional separate sources for
Matthew and for Luke. Biblical scholar B.
H. Streeter used this insight to refine and
expand the two-source theory into a four-source
theory in 1925.While most scholars agree that
the two-source theory offers the best explanation
for the Synoptic problem, it has not gone
without dispute. The Synoptic Seminar disbanded
in 1982, reporting that its members "could
not agree on a single thing", leading some
to claim the problem is unsolvable. No single
theory offers a complete solution. There are
complex and important difficulties that create
challenges to every theory. One example is
Basil Christopher Butler's challenge to the
legitimacy of two-source theory, arguing it
contains a Lachmann fallacy that says the
two-source theory loses cohesion when it is
acknowledged that no source can be established
for Mark.
=== Form criticism ===
Form criticism began in the early twentieth
century when theologian Karl Ludwig Schmidt
observed that Mark's Gospel is composed of
short units. Schmidt asserted these small
units were remnants and evidence of the oral
tradition that preceded the writing of the
gospels. Bible scholar Richard Bauckham says
this "most significant insight," which established
the foundation of form criticism, has never
been refuted. Hermann Gunkel (1862–1932)
and Martin Dibelius (1883-1947) built from
this insight and pioneered form criticism.
Form criticism breaks the Bible down into
those short units, called pericopes, which
are then classified by genre: prose or verse,
letters, laws, court archives, war hymns,
poems of lament, and so on. Form criticism
then theorizes concerning the individual pericope's
Sitz im Leben ("setting in life" or "place
in life"). Based on their understanding of
folklore, form critics believed the early
Christian communities formed the sayings and
teachings of Jesus according to their needs
(their "situation in life"), and that each
form could be identified by the situation
in which it had been created.
Form criticism, represented by Rudof Bultmann,
its most influential proponent, was the dominant
method in the field of biblical criticism
for nearly 80 years. However, Old Testament
scholar Rolf Knierim says contemporary scholars
have produced an "explosion of studies" on
structure, genre, text-type, setting and language
that challenge several of its aspects and
assumptions. Biblical scholar Richard Burridge
explains:
The general critique of form criticism came
from various sources, putting several areas
in particular under scrutiny. The analogy
between the development of the gospel pericopae
and folklore needed reconsideration because
of developments in folklore studies; it was
less easy to assume the steady growth of an
oral tradition in stages... the length of
time needed for the "laws" of oral transmission
to operate was greater than taken by the gospels;
even the existence of such laws was questioned.
In the early to mid twentieth century, Bultmann
and other form critics said they had found
oral "laws of development" within the New
Testament. In the 1970s, New Testament scholar
E. P. Sanders argued against the existence
of such laws. During the latter half of the
twentieth century, observations from field
studies of cultures with existing oral traditions
lent support to Sanders' view. For example,
in 1978 linguists Milman Parry and Albert
Bates Lord observed that oral tradition does
not develop in the same manner as written
texts. Writing tends to develop in a linear
manner, beginning with a crude first draft
which is then edited bit by bit to become
more polished. Oral tradition is more complex
and multidirectional in its development. Religion
scholar Burke O. Long sums up the contemporary
view by observing that, since oral tradition
does not follow the same developmental pattern
as written texts, laws of oral development
cannot be arrived at by studying written texts.Additional
challenges of form criticism have also been
raised. For example, biblical studies scholar
Werner H. Kelber says form criticism throughout
the mid-twentieth century was so focused toward
finding each pericope's original form, that
it distracted from any serious consideration
of memory as a dynamic force in the construction
of the gospels or the early church community
tradition. What Kelber refers to as form criticism's
"astounding myopia" has produced enough criticism
to revive interest in memory as an analytical
category within biblical criticism. Knierim
says Sitz im Leben has been challenged by
studies that demonstrate a text type "does
not automatically reveal the setting." Another
example concerns the Hellenistic culture that
surrounded first-century Palestine. Form criticism
assumed the early Church was heavily influenced
by that culture. However, in the 1970s, E.
P. Sanders, as well as Gerd Theissen, sparked
new rounds of studies that included anthropological
and sociological perspectives, reestablishing
Judaism as the predominant influence on Jesus,
Paul and the New Testament. New Testament
scholar N. T. Wright says, "The earliest traditions
of Jesus reflected in the Gospels are written
from the perspective of Second Temple Judaism
[and] must be interpreted from the standpoint
of Jewish eschatology and apocalypticism."Bultmann
has been personally criticized for being overly
focused on Heidegger's philosophy in his philosophical
foundation, and for working with a priori
notions concerning "folklore, the distinction
between Palestinian and Hellenistic communities,
the length of the oral period, and more, that
were not derived from study but were instead
constructed according to a preconceived pattern".
For some, the many challenges to form criticism
mean its future is in doubt. Bible scholar
Anthony J. Campbell says:
Form criticism had a meteoric rise in the
early part of the twentieth century and fell
from favor toward its end. For some, the future
of form criticism is not an issue: it has
none. But if form criticism embodies an essential
insight, it will continue. ...Two elements
embody this insight and give it its value:
concern for the nature of the text and for
its shape and structure... If the encrustations
can be scraped away, the "good stuff" may
still be there.
==== Redaction criticism ====
Redaction is the process of editing multiple
sources, often with a similar theme, into
a single document. Redaction critics focus
on discovering how the literary units were
originally edited—"redacted"—into their
current forms. Redaction criticism developed
after World War II in Germany and in the 1950s
in England and North America, and can be seen
as a correlative to form criticism. It is
dependent on both source and form criticism,
because it is necessary to identify the traditions
before determining how the redactor has made
use of them. However, redaction criticism
rejects source and form criticism's description
of the Bible texts as mere collections of
fragments. Where form criticism fractures
the biblical elements into smaller and smaller
individual pieces, redaction criticism attempts
to interpret the whole literary unit. As a
result, redaction criticism "provides a corrective
to the methodological imbalance of form criticism".
Form criticism saw the synoptic writers as
mere collectors and focused on the Sitz im
Leben as the creator of the texts. Redaction
criticism deals more positively with the Gospel
writers restoring an understanding of them
as theologians of the early church. Bible
scholars Richard and Kendall Soulen explain
that when redaction criticism is applied to
the synoptic gospels, "it is the evangelist's
use, disuse or alteration of the traditions
open to him that is in view, rather than the
form and original setting of the traditions
themselves."Since redaction criticism was
developed from form criticism, it shares many
of its weaknesses. For example, it assumes
an extreme skepticism toward the historicity
of Jesus and the gospels just as form criticism
does. Redaction criticism seeks the historical
community of the final redactors of the gospels,
though there is often no textual clue, and
its method in finding the final editor's theology
is flawed. In the New Testament, redaction
discerns the 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 a difference is a stylistic or
even an accidental change. 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. The evangelist's theology more likely
depends on what the gospels have in common
as well as their differences.One of the weaknesses
of redaction criticism in its New Testament
application is that it assumes Markan priority.
Redaction criticism can only function when
sources are already known, and since redaction
criticism of the Synoptics has been based
on the Markan priority of two-source theory,
if the priority of Matthew is ever established,
redaction criticism would have to begin all
over again. 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,
do not accept redaction criticism.
=== Literary criticism ===
Literary criticism shifted scholarly attention
from historical and pre-compositional matters
to the text itself, becoming the dominant
form of biblical criticism in a relatively
short period of about thirty years. New Testament
scholar Paul R. House says the discipline
of linguistics, new views of historiography,
and the decline of older methods of criticism
opened the door for literary criticism. In
1957 literary critic Northrop Frye wrote an
analysis of the Bible from the perspective
of his literary background that used literary
criticism to understand the Bible forms. It
became influential in moving biblical criticism
from a historical to a literary focus.By 1974,
the two methodologies being used in literary
criticism were rhetorical analysis and structuralism.
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. It
then charts the writer's thought progression
from one unit to the next, and finally, assembles
the data in an attempt to explain the author's
intentions behind the piece. Structuralism
looks at the language to discern "layers of
meaning" with the goal of uncovering a work's
"deep structures": the premises as well as
the purposes of the author. In 1981 literature
scholar Robert Alter also contributed to the
development of biblical literary criticism
by publishing an influential analysis of biblical
themes from a literary perspective. The 1980s
saw the rise of formalism, which focuses on
plot, structure, character and themes. Reader-response
criticism, which focuses on the reader rather
than the author, was put forward by the Old
Testament scholar David M. Gunn in 1987.New
Testament scholar Donald Guthrie highlights
a flaw in the literary critical approach to
the Gospels. The genre of the Gospels has
not been fully determined. No conclusive evidence
has yet been produced to settle the question
of genre, and without genre, no adequate parallels
can be found, and without parallels "it must
be considered to what extent the principles
of literary criticism are applicable." The
validity of using the same critical methods
for novels and for the Gospels, without the
assurance the Gospels are actually novels,
must be questioned.
==== Types of literary criticism ====
Canonical criticism has both theological and
literary roots. Its origins are found in the
Church's views of scripture as sacred as well
as in the literary critics who began to influence
biblical scholarship in the 1940s and 1950s.
Canonical criticism responded to two things:
1) the sense that biblical criticism had obscured
the meaning and authority of the canon of
scripture; and 2) the fundamentalism in the
Christian Church that had arisen in America
in the 1920s and 1930s. Canonical criticism
does not reject historical criticism and sociological
analysis, but considers them secondary in
importance. Canonical critics believe the
texts should be treated with respect as the
canon of a believing community. Canonical
critics use the tools of biblical criticism
to study the books of the Bible, but approach
the books as whole units. They take the books
as finished works and treat each book as a
unity, instead of taking them apart and focusing
on isolated pieces. This begins from the position
that scripture contains within it what is
needed to understand it, rather than being
understandable only as the product of a historically
determined process. Canonical criticism helped
literary criticism move biblical studies in
a new direction by focusing on the text rather
than the author. It uses the text itself,
the needs of the communities addressed by
those texts, and the interpretation likely
to have been formed originally to meet those
needs. The canonical critic then relates this
to the overall canon. Canonical criticism
is associated with Brevard S. Childs (1923–2007),
though he declined to use the term.James Muilenburg
(1896–1974) is often referred to as "the
prophet of rhetorical criticism". A product
of the 1960s, rhetorical criticism seeks to
understand text type, as does form criticism,
but moves beyond form criticism by looking
into the inner theological meaning the author
was trying to communicate. The rhetorical
scholar Sonja K. Foss says there are ten methods
of practicing rhetorical criticism, but each
focuses on three dimensions of rhetoric: the
authors, what they use to communicate, and
what they are trying to communicate. Rhetorical
criticism is the systematic effort to understand
the message being communicated in a focused
and conscious manner. Biblical rhetorical
criticism asks how hearing the texts impacted
the audience. It attempts to discover and
evaluate the rhetorical devices, language,
and methods of communication used within the
texts to accomplish the goals of those texts.
Phyllis Trible, a student of Muilenburg, has
become one of the "leading practitioners of
rhetorical criticism" and is known for her
detailed literary analysis and her feminist
critique of biblical interpretation.Within
narrative criticism, critics approach scripture
as story. Narrative criticism began being
used to study the New Testament in the 1970s,
and a decade later, study also included the
Old Testament. However, the first time a published
approach was labeled narrative criticism was
in 1980, in the article "Narrative Criticism
and the Gospel of Mark," written by Bible
scholar David Rhodes. Narrative criticism
has its foundations in form criticism, but
it is not a historical discipline. It is purely
literary. Historical critics began to recognize
the Bible was not being studied in the manner
other ancient writings were studied, and they
began asking if these texts should be understood
on their own terms before being used as evidence
of something else like history. It is now
accepted as "axiomatic in literary circles
that the meaning of literature transcends
the historical intentions of the author."
Narrative criticism embraces the textual unity
of canonical criticism, while admitting the
existence of the sources and redactions of
historical criticism. Narrative critics choose
to focus on the artistic weaving of the biblical
texts into a sustained narrative picture.
The literary scholar Steven Weitzman (1892–1957)
has argued that "narrative economy" (omitting
comments about the thoughts or emotional state
of a character) and "narrative unity" are
what make the text a "work of art". Narrative
critics encourage the "implied reader" to
see biblical characters as literary figures,
observe textual unity, the importance of the
narrator, "implied" authorial intent, and
to be aware that a narrative can be interpreted
in multiple ways. This perspective is key,
Auerbach says: "Since so much in [Bible stories]
is dark and incomplete, and since the reader
knows that God is a hidden god, [the reader's]
effort to interpret it constantly finds something
new to feed on... there is no end for interpretation."
== 
Life of Jesus research ==
The Quest for the historical Jesus, also known
as life of Jesus research, is an area of biblical
criticism that seeks to reconstruct the life
and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth by critical
historical methods. The quest began with the
posthumous publication of Hermann Reimarus'
effort to reconstruct an "authentic" historical
picture of Jesus instead of a theological
one. The quest was a product of the Enlightenment
skepticism of the late eighteenth century
and produced a stark division between history
and theology. The study flourished in the
nineteenth century, making its mark in the
theology of the German Protestant liberals.
They saw the purpose of a historically true
life of Jesus as a critical force that functioned
theologically against the high Christology
established by Roman Catholicism centuries
before.After Albert Schweitzer's Von Reimarus
zu Wrede was published as The Quest of the
Historical Jesus in 1910, its title provided
the label for the field of study for the next
eighty years. Interest languished in the early
twentieth century, but revived in the 1950s,
with some scholars asserting there have been
three distinct quests. However, Bible scholar
Stanley Porter asserts that there has been
one fluctuating, but still continuous, multifaceted
quest for the historical Jesus from the beginning.
By the end of the twentieth century, a more
trusting attitude towards the historical reliability
of sources gradually replaced Enlightenment
skepticism. E. P. Sanders explains that, because
of the desire to know everything about Jesus,
including his thoughts and motivations, and
because there are such varied conclusions
about him, it seems to many scholars that
it is impossible to be certain about anything.
Yet according to Sanders, "we know a lot"
about Jesus. Sanders' view characterizes most
contemporary studies. Reflecting this shift,
the phrase "quest for the historical Jesus"
has largely been replaced by "life of Jesus
research". The lasting achievement of the
contemporary quest has been sensitizing scholars
to Jesus' Jewish environment.
== Contemporary developments ==
=== 
Responses ===
At first, biblical historical criticism and
its deductions and implications were so unpopular
outside liberal Protestant scholarship it
created a schism in Protestantism. The American
fundamentalist movement of the 1920s and 1930s
began, at least partly, as a response to nineteenth
century liberalism. Some fundamentalists believed
liberal critics had invented an entirely new
religion "completely at odds with the Christian
faith". However, there were also conservative
Protestants who accepted it. William Robertson
Smith (1846–1894) is an example of a nineteenth
century evangelical who believed historical
criticism was a legitimate outgrowth of the
Protestant Reformation's focus on the biblical
text. 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. A similar view
was later advocated by the Primitive Methodist
biblical scholar A. S. Peake (1865–1929).
Other evangelical Protestant scholars such
as Edwin M. Yamauchi, Paul R. House, and Daniel
B. Wallace have continued the tradition of
conservatives contributing to critical scholarship.
Monseigneur Joseph G. Prior says, "Catholic
studies in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries avoided the use of critical methodology
because of its rationalism [so there was]
no significant Catholic involvement in biblical
scholarship until the nineteenth century."
In 1890, the French Dominican Marie-Joseph
Lagrange (1855–1938) established the École
Biblique in Jerusalem to encourage study of
the Bible using the historical-critical method.
Two years later he funded a journal, spoke
thereafter at various conferences, wrote Bible
commentaries that incorporated textual critical
work of his own, did pioneering work on biblical
genres and forms, and laid the path to overcoming
resistance to the historical-critical method
among his fellow scholars. However, Pope Leo
XIII (1810–1903) condemned biblical scholarship
based on rationalism in his encyclical letter
Providentissimus Deus ("On the Study of Holy
Scripture") on 18 November 1893. It declared
that no exegete was allowed to interpret a
text to contradict church doctrine. Later,
in 1943 on the fiftieth anniversary of the
Providentissimus Deus, Pope Pius XII issued
the papal encyclical Divino afflante spiritu
('Inspired by the Holy Spirit') sanctioning
historical criticism, opening a new epoch
in Catholic critical scholarship. The Jesuit
Augustin Bea (1881–1968) had played a vital
part in its publication. This tradition is
continued by Catholic scholars such as John
P. Meier, Bernard Orchard, and Reginald C.
Fuller.Hebrew Bible scholar Marvin A. Sweeney
argues that some Christian theological assumptions
within biblical criticism have reached anti-semitic
conclusions. This has discouraged Jews from
engaging in biblical criticism. Hebrew Bible
scholar Jon D. Levenson described how some
Jewish scholars, such as rabbinicist Solomon
Schechter (b. 1903), saw biblical criticism
of the Pentateuch as a threat to Jewish identity.
The growing anti-semitism in Germany of the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
the perception that higher criticism was an
entirely Christian pursuit, and the sense
many Bible critics were not impartial academics
but were proponents of supersessionism, prompted
Schechter to describe "Higher Criticism as
Higher Anti-semitism". Professor of Hebrew
Bible Baruch J. Schwartz states that these
perceptions delayed Jewish scholars from entering
the field of biblical criticism. These problems
began to be corrected in the modern era. The
Holocaust led to Christian theologians rethinking
ways to relate to Judaism, and the entry of
Jewish scholars into academic departments
from which they had formerly been excluded
aided that process.The first historical-critical
Jewish scholar of Pentateuchal studies was
M. M. Kalisch in the nineteenth century. In
the early twentieth century, historical criticism
of the Pentateuch became mainstream among
Jewish scholars. In 1905, Rabbi David C. Hoffman
wrote an extensive, two-volume, philologically
based critique of the Wellhausen theory, which
supported Jewish orthodoxy. Bible professor
Benjamin D. Sommer says it is "among the most
precise and detailed commentaries on the legal
texts [Leviticus and Deuteronomy] ever written."
Yehezkel Kaufmann was the first Jewish scholar
to appreciate fully the import of higher criticism.
Mordechai Breuer, who branches out beyond
most Jewish exegesis and explores the implications
of historical criticism for multiple subjects,
is an example of a contemporary Jewish biblical
critical scholar.
=== Contemporary methods ===
Socio-scientific criticism is part of the
wider trend in biblical criticism reflecting
interdisciplinary methods and diversity. It
grew out of form criticism's Sitz im Leben
and the sense that historical form criticism
had failed to adequately analyze the social
and anthropological contexts which form criticism
claimed had formed the texts. Using the perspectives,
theories, models, and research of the social
sciences to determine what social norms may
have influenced the growth of biblical tradition,
it is similar to historical biblical criticism
in its goals and methods. It has less in common
with literary critical approaches. It analyzes
the social and cultural dimensions of the
text and its environmental context.
In the 1940s and 1950s the term postmodern
came into use to signify a rejection of modern
conventions. Many of these early postmodernist
views came from France following World War
II. Postmodernism has been associated with
Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, radical politics,
and arguments against metaphysics and ideology.
Soulen and Soulen quote French philosopher
Jean-François Lyotard saying "I define postmodernism
as incredulity toward meta-narratives." Biblical
scholar A. K. M. Adam says postmodernism is
not so much a method as a stance. It has three
general features: 1) it denies any privileged
starting point for truth; 2) it is critical
of theories that attempt to explain the "totality
of reality"; and 3) it attempts to show that
all ideals are grounded in ideological, economic
or political self-interest. Postmodernists
are suspicious of traditional theology and
the neutrality of reason, and emphasize relativism
and indeterminacy of texts. In textual criticism,
postmodernists reject the idea of a sacred
text, treating all manuscripts as equally
valuable.Feminist criticism is an aspect of
the feminist theology movement which began
in the 1960s and 1970s in the context of Second
Wave feminism in the United States. Feminist
theology has been ground-breaking in biblical
criticism, disrupting the long-standing exclusivity
of Christian theology as Western. In the 1980s,
Phyllis Trible and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza
reframed biblical criticism itself by challenging
the supposed disinterest and objectivity it
claimed for itself and exposing how ideological-theological
stances had played a critical role in interpretation.
Feminist biblical interpreters are characterized
by the claim that classical models of understanding
are patriarchal and therefore that makes it
impossible for those models to identify the
true contribution of women. Feminist criticism
embraces a reader-response approach to the
text that includes an attitude of "dissent"
or "resistance."Post-critical biblical interpretation
shares the postmodernist suspicion of non-neutrality
of traditional approaches, but is not hostile
toward theology. It begins with the understanding
that historical biblical criticism's focus
on historicity produced a distinction between
the meaning of what the text says and what
it is about (what it references). This produced
doubts about the text's veracity. The theologian
Hans Frei writes that what he refers to as
the "realistic narratives" of literature,
including the Bible, don't allow for such
separation. Subject matter is identical to
verbal meaning and is found in plot and nowhere
else. "As Frei puts it, scripture 'simultaneously
depicts and renders the reality (if any) of
what it talks about'; its subject matter is
'constituted by, or identical with, its narrative'."Psychological
biblical criticism applies psychology to biblical
texts; it was not until the 1990s that it
began to have an influence among the new critical
approaches. Bible scholar Wayne Rollins says
the goal of a psychological critical approach
is to find expressions of the human psyche
in the biblical texts. It can be used in both
a historical and a literary manner to examine
the psychological dimensions of scripture
through the use of the behavioral sciences.
== See also ==
Bible portal
== Notes ==
== 
References ==
== 
Further reading ==
Barton, John (2007). The Nature of Biblical
Criticism. Westminster John Knox Press. ISBN
978-0-664-22587-2
Frei, Hans (1974). The Eclipse of Biblical
Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth
Century Hermeneutics. New Haven, Connecticut):
Yale University Press.
Jeremias, Joachim (2002). Jesus and the Message
of the New Testament. Minneapolis, Minnesota:
Fortress Press. ISBN 978-0-8006-3469-8
Levenson, Jon D. (1993). The Hebrew Bible,
The Old Testament, and Historical Criticism:
Jews and Christians in Biblical Studies. Westminster
John Knox Press. ISBN 0-664-25407-1
== External links ==
David J. A. Clines, "Possibilities and Priorities
of Biblical Interpretation in an International
Perspective", in On the Way to the Postmodern:
Old Testament Essays 1967–1998, Volume 1,
(JSOTSup, 292; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic
Press, 1998), pp. 46–67 See Section 6, Future
Trends in Biblical Interpretation, overview
of some current trends in biblical criticism.
Philip Davies, review of John J. Collins,
"The Bible after Babel: Historical Criticism
in a Postmodern Age", 2005 Reviews a survey
of postmodernist biblical criticism.
Allen P. Ross (Beeson Divinity School, Samford
University), "The Study of Textual Criticism"
Guide to the methodology of textual criticism.
Yair Hoffman, review of Marvin A. Sweeney
and Ehud Ben Zvi (eds.), The Changing Face
of Form-Criticism for the Twenty-First Century,
2003 Discusses contemporary form criticism.
