Various Modern Methods of Interpreting the Biblical Text

Historical (Higher) Criticism – This type of criticism investigates the origins of the Biblical text in order to understand “the world behind the text.” Two key aspects of Historical Criticism include: (1) Trying to discover the original meaning of the Bible in its original historical context and literal sense. (2) Trying to reconstruct the historical situation of the author and recipients of the Bible. This is done through archaeology and studying texts from other ANE cultures.

Before the printing press, scribes had to copy the books of the Bible by hand and were bound to make errors. Textual criticism attempts to reconstruct the original text of the Bible by identifying and removing these transcription errors in Biblical manuscripts.

We have encountered one individual example of source criticism when we learned about Julius Wellhausen’s “source hypothesis.” What source criticism aims to do is learn about the sources that the editor (redactor) of the finished text used. So, for example, Wellhausen wanted to learn more about J, E, D, and P: such as when these source materials were written and what the styles/methods of the sources are.

Form Criticism is often used together with Source Criticism. Form Criticism is a field of biblical studies that sees the Bible as a collection of traditional stories and sayings (or “units”) which were circulated orally and eventually strung together and preserved in writing. Form criticism attempts to determine literary patterns in Scripture, isolate units of text (by separating things such as love poems, parables, sayings, elegies, legends), and trace each unit to its “origin” in oral tradition.

This method seeks to discover how the redactor (editor) has shaped and molded the texts from their original versions to express his theological goals. This is different than source criticism because the primary goal of redaction criticism is to focus on the redaction (editing) process itself in order to learn about the views/interests of the redactor.