Previously I listed a couple of doubtful translation choices in the Hebrew Bible and gave my preferences on them. Here are a couple more that I regard as much more certain. I also gave an extremely brief introduction to textual criticism in Textual Criticism – Briefly. Praise, oh heavens, his people*, Worship him, all you…
Continuing my discussion of Biblical criticism and the tools that make up that method, let’s look at genre and canonical criticism together. I do that, because they look generally at the same point in the production of the text as we have it, but look in different ways at that point in time. We have…
Tradition criticism is an overview method that encompasses all four of the critical tools I have discussed previously, textual, form, source, and redaction criticism. Tradition criticism differs in that it is an overview process of studying the entire history of the text, looking for ways in which the expressed tradition has changed, and the circumstances…
After discussing Form Criticism and Source Criticism, Redaction Criticism is really quite easy to deal with. Redaction is simply another term for editing. It is the study of how an editor works the sources he has into a final document, the document that we would commonly refer to as the autograph. Again, it is important…
I was doing my morning reading a couple of days ago from the book of Hebrews. One of the verses that caught my eye this time was Hebrews 2:6-9, and particularly verse 7, quoted from Psalm 8:5 (all verse numbers from the English Bible, Psalm 8:5 is 8:6 in Hebrew). Now this quotation is an…
[Note, 3/25/06 — the original post was truncated due to a syntax error I made in the HTML. This is the corrected version.] (Continuing my series on Biblical criticism, from my last post From Criticism.) If Form Criticism can properly be called a “tree method” rather than a forest view, Source Criticism might be said…
One issue that is commonly neglected in comparing Bible translations is the text used. Translators are well aware that differences in translation can be the result of differences in the text used, but in modern times, the approach to the text used by most translations has been very similar, and thus tends to be ignored…
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…
