What Are Source, Form, And Redaction Criticism?

One fact that must remain in consideration by any student of textual criticism is that there were many other religious and philosophical writings produced simultaneously with the Scriptures of the New Testament era. Robert J. Sargent states, “As the Bible was being written down, numerous other religious

Bruce Waltke begins his argument by establishing the opponent’s view. Waltke writes that forms of criticism hold “that most of the literature of the Old Testament had a long oral prehistory before being written down” (17). Waltke seeks to refute this claim by establishing that “biblical literature had a short oral prehistory

The most rebutted aspect of the work done by the scholars was their idiosyncrasy to equate “unverifiable” with “unauthentic.” Most scholars who study the elements attribute to the life of Jesus stand on common ground when it comes to the realization that many of the sayings and deeds associated to Jesus in the Gospels lack sufficient evidence to establish authenticity. However, to many scholars insufficient evidence means an element cannot be verified, and therefore should not be deemed as historical. In contrast, the Jesus Seminar went beyond this scope and maintained that Jesus did not say or did not do things that cannot be authenticated by evidence. For example, it is widely accepted that there is very little evidence to support whether or not Jesus was born from his virgin mother, Mary. As a result, this element of his life has just been something that one would believe on the foundation of religious faith rather than historical science. However, the Jesus Seminar applied a post-Enlightenment historical scientific view to this element in order to determine authenticity. Under this assessment, they determined not only what is confirmable but what also is scientifically possible. Therefore, the scholars deemed the virgin birth as non-historical, concluding that Jesus had been conceived through normal sexual intercourse between a male and female because it fit the paradigm known today. This stance held by the Jesus Seminar “turn[s] a corner in the traditional understanding of the relationship that faith and philosophy bear to science and history” (Powell, 115). For this reason, I reject the integrity of their work. I believe faith and philosophy should be kept separate of science and history, unless the two aim to support one another. Rescinding concepts of faith simply because they do fall within current scientific boundaries is illegitimate. The major flaw of the Jesus Seminar is their

1. Citation. What type of source is it? Who created it and when did they create it?

When studying the Bible, it is important to understand its origins; for me, I I have become enlightened, but troubled after learning about the subject. I found the unit, as a whole, very important and a positive experience for me. But, with this comes much apprehension and confusion as to the strength of the Bible.

Author Jeremy Bouma, quoting an essay by Anthony Thiselton, elaborates on why this process is best done with smaller sections of the Bible. He describes Childs’s method by breaking it down into five steps. First, Childs studied the history of how a certain passage of Scripture became the modern Biblical version. With that in mind, he thought about the passage in the context of the whole canon—how and where it fit in the canon. Next, if the text had been quoted in the New Testament, he studied the quoted portion and how it was used in the New Testament. Fourth, he “[invited] a historical reading through a history of exegesis” (Bouma); in simpler terms, he sought to understand the passage through the original audience’s eyes. He did this by first studying the many interpretations of the passage throughout history and how they had changed (Bouma). In the final step of the process, Childs produced a “theological reflection” that agreed with the whole canon

He also used different forms of criticism which shed light on the texts. For example, Harrington states how he tries to achieve his goal by reading the Bible in a critical and religious point of view through different forms of criticisms. “That is, I tried to explain the historical-critical method and to show how it might yield fruit in the lives of those who want to read the Bible both critically and religiously. Thus I presented chapters on basic literary criticism, historical criticisms, archaeology, and parallels from antiquity, words and motifs, form criticism, source criticism, redaction criticism, and textual criticism”(90). Harrington also uses the historical-critical method to point out the flaws within the other method that he is using. One problem that he finds is that reading the Bible in a literal way is not an accurate interpretation of what idea ancient authors had for portraying to their audiences. Reading the Bible in a literal way conflicts with ancient ideas. If we read a passage with modern ideology, we would not understand the true meaning of the what the ancient author was trying to convey. The second problem that Harrington comes across is finding the correct language and cultural background to interpret the bible. There were so many different tribes during ancient times so it is hard to pinpoint which one to use so we could have

Many scholars claim the New Testament is not reliable for many reasons. Some claim that the Bible is not reliably transmitted because it's like the telephone game. Others say that the Bible has been copied so many times there is no way it's accurate. When examining documents like the Bible, we can find out it's reliability by asking some fundamental questions. Was the document written close to the events it describes? Is the document able to be corroborated by multiple external sources? Has the document been reliably transmitted or copied? If we answer yes to these questions, we determine the document is reliable.

Blomberg, Craig L., Jennifer Foutz Markley. A Handbook of New Testament Exegesis. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010.

The research method I have demonstrated in this paper is called Pentadic Criticism derived from Kenneth Burke whom made

There were at least 3 views of how the Old Testament was composed which include the critical view, the compositional view, and the common view. Each view was somewhat similar and different in the aspects that gave it it's own characteristics. The main point of this discussion is to focus on the similarities and differences of each view which are but not limited to how the bible was created, the process, and design.

One of the potential weaknesses for Narrative criticism is a little concern for authorial intention. It is clear that, someone who engaged in narrative criticism approach and cannot emphasize the plot, the character, and lose the historical background or the historical reference of the text. In addition, in narrative criticism approach there is a high tendency to look scripture as any other literature and fiction, because they used a methodology of the same kind.

When studying any piece of literature there are many different methods and techniques that can be used. The Bible, in specific, is often referred to as a source of moral code, hope, and answers to social, ethical, and political questions. However, this incredibly influential book can also be read as if it were any other novel. The events, settings, and characters can all be evaluated for what they are, forgetting the notion that they are from a religious text. This approach is called narrative criticism. When regarding to the Bible in this way, we do not need to know any historical information or focus on seeking a deeper theological meaning. Instead, the stories are evaluated in terms of how

New Criticism gave the world a way of reading, absent political ideology. Not really because Ransom and other advocates of New Criticism lacked political ideology. They certainly had their share of it. But because the political ideologies of Ransom have been necessarily disregarded by an overwhelming majority in the technology age. There are no more agrarian societies in the western world to

The process by which the English Bible, as it is known to the English culture today, was compiled is an extraordinary thing to see. The Bible consists of two parts: the Old Testament and the New Testament. The process by which both Testaments were written and then canonized into one book transpired over a period of many years. Once the canonization of the Bible officially came to an end, it was translated into English. Since then, many versions of the modern Bible have been made. Since the individual books of the Bible became scattered as they were written, people set forth to preserve God’s Word by compiling them into one