7.2 Critical Methodologies

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• 7.2 Critical Methodologies

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Critical Methodologies

• 1. Warning
• 1.1 John Updike, In the Beauty of the Lilies
  Clarence
• 1.2 Rickie Moore

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Critical Methodologies

• 2. Text Criticism
• 2.1 Goals of Text Criticism
• 2.1.1 Earliest possible Reading Urtext?
• 2.1.2 Understanding the different textual
  "groups" their theological significance

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Critical Methodologies

• 2.2 OT Text Criticism
• Emanuel Tov. Textual Criticism of the Hebrew
  Bible, (Minneapolis Fortress Press, 1992)?
• Würthwein, E. The Text of the OT, 2d edition.
  (Grand Rapids, 1979)?

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Critical Methodologies

• 2.3 NT Text Criticism
• Aland, Kurt Barbara Aland. The Text of the New
  Testament An Introduction to the Critical
  Editions and to the Theory and Practice of Modern
  Textual Criticism.
• Metzger, Bruce M. Bart Erhman. The Text of the
  New Testament Its Transmission, Corruption, and
  Restoration.
• Parker, David C. The Living Text of the Gospels.

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3. Historical-Critical Method

• 3.1 First, the method is used to elucidate the
  meaning of the text.
• 3.2 Second, the text is evaluated in terms of its
  historical accuracy.

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Krentz puts it this way . . . .

• "It is a method for collecting all possible
  witnesses to an era or event, evaluating what
  they say, relating the findings to one another in
  a coherent structure, and presenting the
  conclusion with the evidence." Krentz utilizes
  Lucey

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Harrisville Sundberg

• "Historical-critical study of the Bible is a
  necessary component of responsible theology. To
  employ historical-critical method is to subject
  the putatively factual material and literary
  structure of the Bible to independent
  investigation in order to test their truthfulness
  and to discern their original historical meaning."

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Limitations

• 1. "It is no secret that serious tension exists
  between historical criticism and the church. The
  problem goes much deeper than the issue of
  scholarly independence to pursue facts wherever
  they lead. The relationship of historical
  criticism and the church is characterized by
  deep-seated theological and doctrinal conflict
  over fundamental presuppositions of thought."
• 2. An atomistic treatment of the text that
  conflicts a theological unity approach.

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Limitations

• 3. ". . . another problem arises the Bible is
  seen primarily as an ancient document under the
  control of specialists and therefore remote from
  the concerns of contemporary life."

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Historical Criticism

• 1. History of Religions (Religiongeschichte)
• ". . . 'history of religion' is concerned with
  all the forms and aspects of all human religions,
  while theology tends to be concerned with the
  truth-claims of one religion and especially with
  its authoritative texts and traditions and their
  interpretation." Barr
• Johannes Weiss late Jewish apocalyptic religion
• Wilhelm Bousset apocalypticism from Babylonian
  mythology

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History of Religions

• Julius Wellhausen Hermann Gunkel
• William Wrede NT not a Systematic Theology
  document religious life and experience of early
  Christians
• F. M. Cross

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Critical Methodologies

• 2. Form Criticism (Formgeschichte)
• Hermann Gunkel
• Sigmund Mowinckel
• Albrecht Alt
• A. R. Johnson H. Graf Reventlow prophets as
  cultic functionaries

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Form Criticism

• David Friedrich Strauss Das Leben Jesu
• Martin Dibelius 6 kinds of material in the
  Gospels sermons, paradigms, tales, legends,
  passion story, and myth
• Rudolf Bultmann sociological setting

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Form Criticism

• Vincent Taylor pronouncement story stories
  about Jesus
• C. H. Dodd - parables
• Joachim Jeremias
• H. C. Kee

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Critical Methodologies

• 3. Tradition History
• Martin Noth
• Gerhard von Rad

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Critical Methodologies

• 4. Social Sciences (Anthropology Sociology)
• W. Robertson Smith
• Max Weber
• Norman Gottwald

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Critical Methodologies

• R. Wilson
• David Petersen
• Paul Hanson
• Wayne Meeks
• G. Theissen
• Robert Grant

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Literary Criticism

• 1. Source Criticism
• de Wette
• Karl-Heinz Graf
• A. Kuenen
• Julius Wellhausen
• Bernhard Duhm
• H. H. Schmidt
• John Van Seters

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Critical Methodologies

• Two-Source theory (Mk Q)?
• Griesbach Hypothesis Mk after Mt and Lk, Lk
  dependant on Mt.
• Sign Source
• 2. Redaction Criticism
• Willi Marxsen
• Gerhard von Rad

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Critical Methodologies

• 3. New Literary Criticism
• D. Robertson
• R. Alter
• R. Polzin
• M. Sternberg
• 4. Rhetorical Criticism
• James Muilenburg
• Bernhard Anderson
• H. D. Betz

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Critical Methodologies

• 5. Canonical Criticism
• B. Childs
• James Sanders
• Paul House

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6. Precritical Movement

• David C. Steinmetz Theology Exegesis Ten
  Theses
• 1. The meaning of a biblical text is not
  exhausted by the original intention of the
  author.
• 2. The most primitive layer of biblical tradition
  is not necessarily the most authoritative.
• 3. The importance of the Old Testament for the
  church is predicated upon the continuity of the
  people of God in history, a continuity which
  persists in spite of discontinuity between Israel
  the the church.

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6. Precritical Movement

• 4. The Old Testament is the hermeneutical key
  which unlocks the meaning of the New Testament
  and apart from which it will be misunderstood.
• 5. The church and not human experience as such is
  the middle term between the Christian interpreter
  and the biblical text.
• 6. The gospel and not the law is the central
  message of the biblical text.
• 7. One cannot lose the tension between the the
  gospel and the law without losing both law and
  gospel.

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6. Precritical Movement

• 8. The church which is restricted in its
  preaching to the original intention of the author
  is a church which must reject the Old Testament
  as an exclusively Jewish book.
• 9. The church which is restricted in its
  preaching to the most primitive layer of biblical
  tradition as the most authoritative is a church
  which can no longer preach from the New
  Testament.
• 10. Knowledge of the exegetical tradition of the
  church is an indispensable aid for the
  interpretation of Scripture.

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7. Postcritical Movement

• Ochs, Peter. "An Introduction to Postcritical
  Scriptural Interpretation." in The Return to
  Scripture in Judaism and Christianity Essays in
  Postcritical Scriptural Interpretation.
• 1. Representative of this "movement" Moshe
  Greenberg Hans Frei George Lindbeck David
  Weiss Halivni

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7. Postcritical Movement

• 1. ". . . an emergent tendency among Jewish and
  Christian text scholars and theologians to give
  rabbinic and ecclesial traditions of
  interpretation both the benefit of the doubt and
  the benefit of doubt the former, by assuming
  that there are dimensions of scriptural meaning
  which are disclosed only by way of the
  hermeneutical practices of believing communities
  and believing traditions of Jews or Christians
  the latter by assuming, in the spirit of
  post-Spinozistic criticism, that these dimensions
  may be clarified through the disciplined practice
  of philological, historical and
  textual/rhetorical criticism."

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7. Postcritical Movement

• 2. ". . . semiotic philosopher Charles Peirce
  would call a three-part hermeneutic claiming
  that the text (the first part) has its meaning
  (the second) for a normative community (the
  third), rather than identifying the meaning of
  the text with some historical or cognitive
  "sense" that is available to any educated
  reader."

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7. Postcritical Movement

• 3. "Summarized in a sentence, the argument of
  both Jewish and Christian postcritical
  interpreters is that modern scholars have reduced
  biblical interpretation to the terms of a dyadic
  semiotic that lacks warrant in the biblical
  texts. The postcritical scholars claim that, as
  read in the primordial communities of rabbinic or
  of Christian interpreters, these texts, recommend
  a triadic semiotic, according to which the texts
  displays its performative meanings with respect
  to its community of biblical interpreters."