We’ll begin our discussion of specific tools within the historical-critical method by looking at form criticism. I’m going to try to present this in a way that will be useful to lay students of the Bible, so note that I will be ignoring the more obscure forms and some technicalities of the method. The general…
The following chart is designed to allow persons who are not skilled in Greek to work with the parallel accounts of the parable of the sower, Matthew 13:1-9, Mark 4:1-9, and Luke 8:4-8. Notes cover very basic cocepts of textual criticism, form criticism, source criticism, and redaction criticism. In future entries I will expand on…
Note: This is a second excursus in my series on Biblical criticism. When I begin my next entry, dealing with the parable of the sower, I will begin by discussing textual issues and applying these principles. I was encouraged to make a few notes on textual criticism after I read the collection of essays The…
Note: This is a small excursus in my series giving an overview of Biblical criticism. In this entry I want to apply some of the material I discussed about authorship and dating to the book of Daniel. Next, I will write an additional entry on methods of textual criticism in general, and then I will…
Mike Sangrey has an excellent post on translation and interpretation on the Better Bibles blog, entitled, appropriately, Interpretation versus Translation — Competition or Teamwork?.This can be a very contentious issue, but the bottom line is that a translator cannot function without interpretation. Normally we complain about interpretations that we don’t like. Formal equivalence advocates like…
This is a continuation of my series on Biblical criticism that started with my post Overview of Biblical Criticism – I. You might think I would now continue with Overview II, but I’m not nearly that consistent. My next post will continue that line, but first I want to look at some caveats, and a…
Previously I’ve discussed young earth creationism, old earth creationism, and ruin and restoration creationism. That brings us to theistic evolution, or I could say theistic evolutionary creationism. Though theistic evolutionists may have varying beliefs regard to the nature of God, in general, they see God as the source of all existence in one way or…
In two previous entries I’ve discussed young earth creationism and old earth creationism. Continuing with this series on how various groups of Christians understand origins, I will now discuss the ruin and restoration theory. I have previously mentioned this theory in the pmaphlet God the Creator and in my review of the book The Invisible…
Wayne Leman, on the Better Bibles blog, has posted a note about Ben Witherington’s apology for his remarks about the ESV (Ben Witherington apologizes for ESV comments). I’ve been pretty busy the latter half of this week, so I missed part of the action and had to review it through several blogs. I admire someone…
Ben Witherington seems to have started quite a stir yesterday with his post about the ESV entitled The Problem with the ESV. I like Ben Witherington’s work quite a lot, and respect him, but most of this post has to do with who translated the ESV and why, rather than with the quality of the…
