The term Biblical Criticism refers to a set of scholarly tools that are used to think about the Bible. They can be thought of as lenses to view scripture through – depending on which lens you look through you will see something slightly different. Different approaches ask different questions of the text and, logically, come to different conclusions. Some of these lenses will give a big picture, others break the text down into tiny parts.
Criticism doesn’t make many direct comments about the Bible’s truth-claims, although each approach will have its inherent bias. To discuss the (in-)accuracy or inerrancy of the Bible see The Bible and the question of truth (here).
I’ve used the following books (in addition to others) to research these posts, but I’d better take responsibility for the content.
Biblical Exegesis: A Beginners
Handbook, Hayes and Holladay.
SCM Press Ltd, 1982.
To each its own meaning: An
introduction to Biblical Criticisms and their application,
McKenzie and Haynes, eds. Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993.
What’s the value for OST?
As I’ve been compiling these notes I’ve been considering what value it has for the Open Source Theology (OST) community, and I can think of a few reasons why we might want to be thinking about these issues.
Firstly, most Christian theologians would give the Bible the highest priority in answering questions of God’s character/being. It’s helpful to consider how we think of and read the Bible; becoming aware of the assumptions we bring to the text. There is an old axiom:
‘The Bible says…’ answers every question except, ‘What does the Bible actually say?’.
Hopefully these ideas will (a) help us to come to some formulative conclusions as to what particular passages are communicating, and (b) help us see other people’s points of view by opening our thought patterns to new questions and new ways of reading.
Secondly, as a mix of academic and popular contributors, this is an attempt to de-mystify some popular jargon used in theological writing (and Biblical Studies writing in particular). Using these as starting points, please add comments or questions, definitions, examples and times when these ideas have been useful for unlocking something. These posts, like everything here, are tentative and incomplete: please disagree with these definitions and add other types of criticism that are not mentioned here.
Thirdly, in regards to dialogue with ‘the world’, the Bible can only begin to have relevancy when those communities stop perceiving it as fairy tales that adults read as fact. Knowledge of academic views can (a) ground our faith community in reality, and (b) help outreach by presenting our texts in a believable, rather than hagiographical, manner
Lastly, insights we gain from this can be added into the Commentary (here). This was the reason that motivated me to move my notes into this article format!
Can we create an OST Criticism? Any ideas?
Latest comments