Historical criticism
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The historical-critical method, also sometimes called the scientific-critical method, is a broad term that includes numerous methodologies and strategies for understanding ancient manuscripts, especially the Bible. The historical-critical method should not be confused with the errors of modernism (Roman Catholicism).
Historical criticism is divided into two main branches: lower or textual criticism and higher criticism.
The historical critical method "studies the biblical text in the same fashion as it would study any other ancient text and comments upon it as an expression of human discourse".[1]
Types of historical-critical methods
Lower criticism
None of the original books of the New Testament have survived to modern times. All that exists are copies of these original documents. Since they often do not match, lower criticism was developed to find what the original looked like.
For example, Josephus employed scribes to copy his Antiquities of the Jews. As the scribes copied the Antiquities, they made mistakes. The copies of these copies also had the mistakes. Each generation of copies contained errors, but not necessarily more than the previous generation as errors would be fixed when caught by scribes.
When an error consists of something being left out, it is called a deletion. When something was added, it is called an interpolation.
Today, none of Josephus' original work survives, but different families of texts have survived. Lower Criticism studies these surviving families, particularly the differences among them. Scholars are then able to piece together what the original looked like. The more surviving copies, the more accurately they can piece together the original. Lower criticism is applied to understanding the source documents of the Historical Jesus.
Higher criticism
Once lower critics have done their job and we have a good idea of what the original text looked like, higher critics can then compare this text with the writing of other authors.
Scholars try to understand whether the author is an eyewitness to Jesus, or whether he is basing his work on primary or even secondary sources. They also try to understand the bias of the writer, which will give us hints to why he focuses on one aspect of Jesus' life but omits another.
An example of higher criticism at work would be the study of the Synoptic problem. Higher critics noticed that the three Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, were very similar, indeed, at times identical. The dominant theory to account for the duplication is called the two-source hypothesis . It suggests that both Matthew and Luke relied on two different sources: Mark and the hypothetical sayings document Q.
Today, most higher critical scholars believe that Luke edited three sources: Mark, the Q document, and Proto-Luke into the Canonical Lukean Gospel. They do not agree on the nature of Proto-Luke
Attitudes to the historical-critical method
Roman Catholic view
The Catholic Church uses Catholic historical-critical methods as a required approach to interpreting sacred scripture based on the Magisterium recommendations found in Divino Afflante Spiritu and Dei Verbum.
The modern Catechism states that #110 "In order to discover the sacred authors' intention, the reader must take into account the conditions of their time and culture, the literary genres in use at that time, and the modes of feeling, speaking and narrating then current. "For the fact is that truth is differently presented and expressed in the various types of historical writing, in prophetical and poetical texts, and in other forms of literary expression."
The Church Father St. Augustine used the historical-critical method. [2]
Patrologia Latina records the tradition of this method [3]
Father Raymond E. Brown was an American Roman Catholic priest and Biblical scholar who was one of the leading proponents of the historical-critical method.
See also
- Textual criticism (lower criticism)
- Higher criticism
- Historical-grammatical method
References
- ^ Interpretation of the Bible
- ^ St. Augustine "On Christian Doctrine" III, 18, 26
- ^ J.P. Migne, ed., Patroligia Latina(Paris, 1841-1855) 34, 75-76.
External links
- Rutgers University: Synoptic Gospels Primer: introduction to the history of literary analysis of the Greek gospels, and aids in confronting the range of factors that need to be taken into consideration in accounting for the literary relationship of the first three gospels.
- Journal of Higher Criticism
- "From the Divine Oracle to Higher Criticism" from The Warfare of Science With Theology by Andrew White, 1896
- Catholic Encyclopedia article (1908) "Biblical Criticism (Higher)"
- Teaching Bible based on Higher Criticism
- Dictionary of the history of Ideas: Modernism in the Christian Church