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Joe MacDonald

What is Historical Criticism? « Messianic Jewish Musings - 1 views

derek4messiah.wordpress.com/...what-is-historical-criticism

historical criticism

shared by Joe MacDonald on 19 Feb 10 - Cached
  • Alan Cooper spoke basically to say that for Jewish readers it is not difficult to uphold historical critical views of the text at the same time as upholding Torah as sacred authority.
  • Peter Machinist defined historical criticism as reading the Bible from its human side and seeing it as rooted in historical realities.
  • Francis Watson
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Francis Watson of Durham University gave a provocative lecture. He said we should abandon the term historical criticism altogether for the following reasons: (1) Biblical scholars are not historians and should not imply that we are. (2) Historical criticism is not a neutral characterization. In its origin the term referred to textual criticism, which is about restoring texts. Historical criticism, by contrast, has been about doubting them. The historical critical movement has had an agenda to criticize, in the harsh sense, other views of the Bible. (3) Historical criticism has claimed that its methods are objective, neutral, and not about dogma. This has been shown to be a farce. (4) The real issue has been modernity and rationalism versus tradition. (5) Historical approaches to a text are far from the totality of the work we do. Much Biblical scholarship is not historical but interpretive. (6) The distance historical critics claim to put between themselves and the text is illusory. (7) Therefore, we should talk about biblical studies or scholarship and make the term historical criticism defunct.
  • Historical criticism, simply put, is the idea of studying the Biblical texts scientifically, which has led to dissecting the Bible into many alleged source texts.
  • First, it is important to know that historical criticism has fallen on increasing disfavor. The whole project is so rationalist and assumes the possibility of so much knowledge and the superiority of the modern over pre-modern cultures, that in this post-modern age, the enterprise is looking more and more imperialistic.
  • Legaspi traced the history of historical criticism and its move from seeing the Bible as scripture to seeing the Bible as simply a text.
  • One step in this journey was the Reformation, in which there arose a question for the first time about which version of the Bible and which selection of Bible books was valid.
  • The death of scripture in the West was solidified in 18th century German universities.
  • H-C was successful for a time, quite a long time in fact. My point was simply that it is no longer in a position to function as it once did. I don’t believe it is in an epistemological position inferior to that of confessional modes, i.e. regarding objectivity or tradition. But I believe that the discourse that it has framed is not a promising one for actual religious communities functioning now, in a post-Christian–not simply post-confessional–society.
  • Joe MacDonald on 19 Feb 10
     
    This is a very nice summary of several SBL papers addressing the issue of historical criticism. Several different views are expressed in a very well framed and concise manner.
suesaldin

Psychoanalytic Criticism - 28 views

Thanks, Aaron. You've hit on a lively topic in psychology - nature versus nurture. I agree that physiologically our human brain structure has been stable for an extraordinarily long time. I thin...

Psychoanalytic Criticism

started by Aaron Pope on 17 Feb 10 7 follow-ups, last by suesaldin on 18 Feb 10
Joe MacDonald

Reader-response Criticsm - 24 views

This approach is in direct contrast to the approach which I studied. I enjoy this approach much better, because there is room for theological interpretation. In historical criticism that is not t...

Reader-response

started by Mary Price on 16 Feb 10 6 follow-ups, last by Joe MacDonald on 19 Feb 10
Joe MacDonald

Yarbrough on the Failed Enterprise of Christianizing Historical Criticism - Justin Taylor - 0 views

thegospelcoalition.org/...brough-on-failed-enterprise-of

historical criticism

shared by Joe MacDonald on 19 Feb 10 - Cached
  • A final and poignant shortcoming of the book is that its vaunted center, historical criticism, is actually not amenable to Sparks’s deployment of it. He may try to Christianize it, but it is much bigger than he is and will recognize him as a scholar only to the extent that he bends the knee to its rules and internal logic. . . . Troeltsch, . . . did not invent historical criticism. But he codified its rules— criticism, analogy, correlation—and articulated its worldview. Historical criticism as generally affirmed by biblical scholars worldwide assumes those rules and requires that worldview.
  • The problem is that Troeltschian historiography rules the roost in mainstream biblical scholarship. That is what “historical critical” means, or even “historical” when used by “historical critical” scholars (Bart Ehrman is an excellent example). It means radical doubt of the (biblical) source, analysis using the tool of analogy, and reconstruction under the principle of correlation. It is a radically immanent enterprise—divine causation is not allowed. I think Sparks is instinctively sensitive to this; it may be a reason (see the first weakness above) why the concept “Jesus is Lord,” the most fundamental of all cognitive Christian affirmations, plays no active role that I can recall in the formation of knowledge in this book. Jesus’ lordship is irrelevant and must remain so for historical criticism to operate. Believe it privately as you wish, but the moment it affects your scholarship, you have left the nurturing bosom of historical criticism.
  • Joe MacDonald on 19 Feb 10
     
    Very nice struggle with the debate as to whether historical-criticism may or may not be appropriate in Christian scholasticism.
suesaldin

Sugirtharajah: Postcolonial Criticism and Biblical Interpretat - Oxford University Press - 0 views

ukcatalogue.oup.com/...9780198752691.do

Postcolonial

shared by suesaldin on 16 Feb 10 - Cached
  • suesaldin on 16 Feb 10
     
    "In this stimulating study, R. S. Sugirtharajah explores the implications of postcolonial criticism for biblical studies. He provides a comprehensive overview of the origins, definitions, and procedures of postcolonial criticism, followed by a discussion of the significance of postcolonial criticism in biblical interpretation. He reveals how postcolonial criticism can offer an alternative perspective to our understanding of the Bible, and how, when the Bible has been deployed as a Western cultural icon, it has come to be questioned in new ways. " This book provides an overview of postcolonial Biblical criticism from a leading scholar - may be heavy going but is recommended for interested lay readers.
Joe MacDonald

Historical criticism - 0 views

jmm.aaa.net.au/15048.htm

historical criticism

shared by Joe MacDonald on 19 Feb 10 - Cached
  • The approach to the text of Sacred Scripture known as historical criticism began as far back as 1678, when Richard Simon, a Catholic priest, published a "critical history" of the Old Testament (placed on the Index of Prohibited Books in 1682).
  • This critical approach was taken up and fostered throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by liberal Protestant exegetes. In the late nineteenth century the assumption was firmly in place among these liberal scholars that the early chapters of the Book of Genesis were little more than a concatenation of myths and legends, and the search was under way for the history behind the fiction.
  • The historical critics eventually won the long and at times bitter fight for the ear of the hierarchy over the contested Replies of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, and the reason for this victory seems to have been a tactical error in the approach of the traditional Catholic exegetes who opposed them. Many of these traditional exegetes were able scholars, but they pitched their arguments against the historical critics more in terms of the questionable orthodoxy of the presuppositions and logical results of the form-critical method than by analyzing in detail and refuting the technical procedures of the method itself.
  • Joe MacDonald on 19 Feb 10
     
    This article introduces historical criticism in the perspective of Catholic exegetical approaches from Richard Simons in the 17th century to the present.
suesaldin

Postcolonial Biblical Criticism: Interdisciplinary Intersections: Segovia, Fernando F.;... - 0 views

www.abebooks.com/...BookDetailsPL

Postcolonial

shared by suesaldin on 16 Feb 10 - Cached
  • suesaldin on 16 Feb 10
     
    "This volume explores postcolonial biblical criticism from a number of different but interrelated angles, so as to bring it into as sharp a focus as possible. Thus far, such a mapping of postcolonial biblical criticism as a whole has not been undertaken in explicit and detailed terms. Postcolonial Biblical Criticism seeks to do this primarily by carefully situating postcolonial biblical criticism in relation to other important political and theoretical currents in contemporary biblical studies: feminism; racial/ethnic studies; poststructuralism; and Marxism."
Schawn Kellogg

Narrative Criticism - 4 views

Narrative Criticism is a modern critical approach to Biblical reading. It treats the text as a whole, rather than in parts such as is common in the more historical critical approaches of the 18th c...

narrative Criticism

started by Schawn Kellogg on 17 Feb 10 no follow-up yet
Mary Price

Reader-response criticism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...Reader-response_criticism

Reader-response

shared by Mary Price on 16 Feb 10 - Cached
  • Reader-response critics hold that, to understand the literary experience or the meaning of a text, one must look to the processes readers use to create that meaning and experience
  • In stressing the activity of the scholar, reader-response theory justifies such upsettings of traditional interpretations as, for example, deconstruction or cultural criticism.
  • Since reader-response critics focus on the strategies readers are taught to use, they address the teaching of reading and literature
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Also, because reader-response criticism stresses the activity of the reader, reader-response critics readily share the concerns of feminist critics and critics writing on behalf of gays, ethnic minorities, or post-colonial peoples.
Joe MacDonald

Biblical Research Institute - Historical Criticism - 0 views

biblicalresearch.gc.adventist.org/...historicalcriticism.htm

historical criticism

shared by Joe MacDonald on 17 Feb 10 - Cached
  • The historical-critical method assumes the autonomy of the human scientist from the Bible as the word of God. It assumes that one must start with the secular world as a norm for determining meaning and for deciding what has happened in the past.
    • Joe MacDonald
      Joe MacDonald on 17 Feb 10
       
      Good definition, but there must be some component of the scientific process to be complete.
  • The science of historical criticism is a new method based upon a secular understanding of history. In its basic intent it therefore differs radically from biblical studies which arose out of the Reformation. The Reformation assumed that the content and production of Scripture resulted by the will of God rather than the will of man, and that, although the prophet himself operated within a historical situation and within a particular language, culture, and thought form, that he was nonetheless guided by the Holy Spirit in such a way that the result was the Word of God.
  • The historical-critical method has been under development since the age of the enlightenment. It was popularized for biblical studies by Ernst Troeltsch at the end of the nineteenth century. He enunciated three basic principles to guide the historian: (1) the principle of criticism or methodological doubt indicates that all knowledge relies upon the judgment of historical science and receives a status or probability, (2) the principle of analogy indicates that present experience is the criteria of probability for that which took place in the past—all events are in principle similar, (3) the principle of correlation indicates that events are so interrelated that a change in one phenomenon necessitates a change in its causes and effects
  • Joe MacDonald on 17 Feb 10
     
    Review of Historical Criticism in 1981. While it is very informative, the article leaves the historical criticsim within the hands of the critic.
Joe MacDonald

Historical Criticism | where are you coming from? | collaborative theology for the emer... - 0 views

www.opensourcetheology.net/...648

historical criticism

shared by Joe MacDonald on 19 Feb 10 - Cached
  • Historical criticism attempts to find the world the text is set in and the world the text was written in. Historical criticism wants to know where the text is coming from.
  • It’s probably useful at this time to notice the intertextuality of the Bible. By this, I mean that the people writing were aware of everything that was written beforehand. This is especially noticeable when New Testament authors quote Old Testament sources. When we come across this in our reading we should take note of how the author echoes his source and how he re-interprets it.
  • Joe MacDonald on 19 Feb 10
     
    This is a basic analysis of historical criticism. There is also a basic approach to understanding the process by which historical criticism might be utilized.
Schawn Kellogg

Biblical criticism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 4 views

en.wikipedia.org/...Biblical_criticism

narrative

shared by Schawn Kellogg on 11 Feb 10 - Cached
  • Narrative criticism is one of a number of modern forms of criticism based in contemporary literary theory and practice - in this case, from narratology. In common with other literary approaches (and in contrast to historical forms of criticism), narrative criticism treats the text as a unit, and focusses on narrative structure and composition, plot development, themes and motifs, characters and characterisation.[14] Narrative criticism is a complex field, but some central concerns include the reliability of the narrator, the question of authorial intent (expressed in terms of the context in which the text was written and its presumed intended audience), and the implications of multiple interpretation (meaning an awareness that a narrative is capable of more than one i
    • Schawn Kellogg
      Schawn Kellogg on 11 Feb 10
       
      a nice introductory description
Carlene Hill

Form Criticism - 3 views

Form criticism is an approach to biblical studies that was originated by Old Testament scholar Hermann Gunkel (1862-1932). Though initially this form originated upon the principals of analyzing OT...

form criticism literary genre Hermann Gunkal Walter Brueggemann Rudolf Bultmann deconstruction

started by Carlene Hill on 22 Feb 10 no follow-up yet
Carlene Hill

Canonical Criticism - 31 views

I agree, Steve, which is why I asked the question about our understanding having a limit. I, too, believe we continue to learn through human-God interactions today. Martin Luther King Jr. is an exa...

canonical criticism

started by Marcus Carlson on 16 Feb 10 12 follow-ups, last by Carlene Hill on 22 Feb 10
Joe MacDonald

Historical Criticism - 0 views

www.webspawner.com/...historycriticism

historical criticism

shared by Joe MacDonald on 19 Feb 10 - Cached
  • Historical criticism is the art of distinguishing the true from the false concerning facts of the past. It has for its object both the documents which have been handed down to us and the facts themselves. We may distinguish three kinds of historical sources: written documents, unwritten evidence; and tradition. As further means of reaching a knowledge of the facts there are three processes of indirect research, viz.: negative argument, conjecture, and a priori argument.
  • The critic must now make the best possible use of the written sources at his disposal, i. e. he must understand them well, which is not always an easy matter. His difficulty may arise from the obscurity of certain words, from their grammatical form, or from their grouping in the phrase he seeks to interpret. As to the sense of the individual words it is supremely important that the critic should be able to read the documents in the language in which they were written rather than in translations.
  • In general, whenever there is occasion to verify the exactness of a quotation made in support of a thesis, it is prudent to read the entire chapter whence it is taken, sometimes even to read the whole work. An individual testimony, isolated from all its surroundings in an author's work, seems often quite decisive, yet when we read the work itself our faith in the value of the argument based on such partial quotation is either very much shaken or else disappears entirely.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • What is now the value of a text rightly understood? Every historical statement or testimony naturally suggests two questions: Has the witness in question a proper knowledge of the fact concerning which he is called to testify? And if so, is he altogether sincere in his deposition? On an impartial answer to these questions depends the degree of confidence to be accorded to his testimony.
  • Joe MacDonald on 19 Feb 10
     
    This is a Catholic work dated in 1908. One can see the negotiation of science and faith in the writing. While Kantian terms such as a priori and a sence of evaluating data, there is a space for accepting unquantified data as part of the author's definition of historical criticism.
  • Carlene Hill on 22 Feb 10
     
    I think that when we start to talk about what is authentic in the Bible versus what isn't authentic can lead us to call things "false" or untrue when in fact the stories may very well be true and authentic, just not in the modern way of what we deem as true. This is why I found Philip Davies commentary posted by Michael H. quite helpful because it talks about reading the Bible from the perspective of what the writer or scribe was trying to convey to his audience instead of reading from the perspective of trying to figure out for example, if hundreds of thousands of Hebrew people actually lived and survived in the desert for more than forty years.
Joe MacDonald

Jesus Crisis: The Inroads of Historical Criticism into Evangelical Scholarship, The | T... - 0 views

findarticles.com/...ai_n8894481

shared by Joe MacDonald on 19 Feb 10 - Cached
  • The book begins by tracing the various sub-disciplines of historical criticism and the effects of using them on hermeneutics, apologetics, and preaching. It then examines the impact of Bacon, Hobbes, Spinoza, deism, Hume, Kant, Schleiermacher, Hegel, Darwin, and Kierkegaard on the philosophical foundation of the historical-critical method and its users. A chapter by Robert Yarbrough, a colleague of several of the criticized scholars, treats Eta Linnemann, her contributions to scholarship, and her view of the (lack of a) a synoptic problem.
  • Chap. 2 examines the philosophical history of the development of the historical critical disciplines. The editors carefully show the dependence of these disciplines on anti-supernatural, rationalist philosophies of the Enlightenment. These philosophies resulted in a division between faith and reason. This division continues to this day, dividing the Jesus of history from the Christ of the worship and faith of the early church and providing the underlying philosophical foundation for historical criticism.
  • The chapter on the effect of historical criticism on preaching is the weakest in the book, focusing on the importance of proper hermeneutics rather than on preaching.
Joe MacDonald

Historical Criticism - 1 views

Biblical historical-criticism is an exegetical approach to study that is mainly concerned with the factual evidence of the culture in which the text originated. Those who utilize this type of crit...

historical criticism

started by Joe MacDonald on 19 Feb 10 no follow-up yet
Aaron Pope

Psychological biblical criticism - Google Books - 1 views

books.google.com/books

psychoanalytic

shared by Aaron Pope on 17 Feb 10 - Cached
  • Aaron Pope on 17 Feb 10
     
    Along with Rollin's Book Soul and Psyche, Psychological Biblical Criticism was the other book that helped to launch Psychological (Psychoanalytic) Criticism to the forefront of biblical scholarship.
Schawn Kellogg

Biblical exegesis: a beginner's handbook - Google Books - 1 views

books.google.com/books

narrative literary

shared by Schawn Kellogg on 14 Feb 10 - Cached
  • Schawn Kellogg on 14 Feb 10
     
    Does not contain a specific chapter on narrative criticism; however it details the literary critical approach from which narrative criticism developed.
  • Schawn Kellogg on 14 Feb 10
     
    Small volume, also helpful as beginning look at exegesis
Mary Price

Reader-Response Criticism Criticism - 0 views

www.enotes.com/...reader-response-criticism

Reader-response

shared by Mary Price on 16 Feb 10 - Cached
  • During the late 1970s and 1980s, reader-response criticism, influenced in part by trends in other disciplines, especially psychology and psychoanalytical theories, expanded to include a study of the reader as subject, a combination of various social practices, defined and positioned socially by his or her environment. This shift from the relationship between reader and text, and their mutual impact, to a focus on self-knowledge and observation has been summarized in anthologies, including Jane Tompkins's Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Poststructuralism (1980).
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