Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Biblical Criticism

  • Textual Issue: Deuteronomy 32:43

    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 gods.
    For he will avenge his servants’ blood . . .

    *his people also has a variant reading with him. The change is only to the vowel pointing and is quite likely. I did not consider this variant in listing the versions supporting each reading for “oh heavens.”

    There are two textual problems in this passage, and they tend to distinguish the most recent set of translations from those that went before. The key element in both variants is that the reading accepted by these versions is supported by the LXX along with a reading from the Dead Sea Scrolls.

    In the first line the Masoretic text reads “oh nations” rather than “oh heavens.” Modern versions that show each reading include:

    • Omit – JPS, HCSB, MSG, NASB, NCV, NIV, NKJV, TEV
      In support of omitting the line, we have the MT, supported by the Syriac and also the Vulgate. It is to be expected normally that those two versions will support the MT.
    • Worship him, all you gods – NRSV, REB, CEV, ESV, NLT (angels)
      In support of including this line we again have the LXX and 4QDt32. The LXX varies from 4QDt32 by reading sons of God rather than gods.

    (Note that the English text cited for each variant is mine. I include any translation in support of that text that translated the Hebrew text behind that variant. Each translation may still vary in its English rendering.)

    4QDt32 is a fragment from the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) that include this verse. The number of modern versions that have included this verse, from across the spectrum theologically, indicates the strength of the combination of any witness from the DSS with the LXX. There is still a certain conservatism, however, as indicated by those few versions that do not include the added line especially.

    In favor of including the added line is this strong testimony of the Greek LXX translation, along with a DSS fragment. In addition, it is plausible to suspect the removal of the line for theological reasons, though as the LXX shows, it is not necessary to interpret it as polytheistic. A scribe might nonetheless have intentionally dropped it.

    For more information on Bible translations see:

  • Genre and Canonical Criticism

    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 already encountered the term “genre” in discussing form criticism. Make sure to distinguish the way in which “genre” is used in “genre criticism” as opposed to the way it is used in form criticism. In the former, it is a category of short elements, normally of orally transmitted material, that takes certain forms due to that process of transmission. Here we are looking at the genre of a larger literary document.

    You may gather from that definition that we have shifted our focus away from the prehistory of the text and its development, to looking at the document as we have it now. At the same time we move from looking at smaller portions or even fragments of the text to looking at it as a whole document. Thus if we consider the book of Matthew, for example, form criticism is concerned with the individual sayings of Jesus and reports of his deeds, source criticism looks at how these were collected into documents which became sources for the author of Matthew, redaction criticism looked at how those sources were combined into the whole gospel in order to tell us what Matthew himself was trying to accomplish. Tradition criticism looked at this whole process. Genre criticism looks at the gospel of Matthew as a whole, asks what its genre “gospel” may be, what are its purposes, and how was it used by the community that saw it as a gospel. Canonical criticism looks at the whole of Matthew but looks at it as part of the canon of the bible and of the New Testament, and insofar as it is interested in a community, it would be the one that first saw this as authoritative for the church.

    Genre Criticism

    Recently I’ve been doing some study of the book of Daniel, in which genre criticism can be extremely important. Previously, I discussed the dating of Daniel, particularly from the point of view of Anthony Di Lella, author of the Anchor Bible commentary on the book. Di Lella believes that the book is pseudonymous, written in the 2nd century BCE, and also that its stories are not generally historical, but rather are edifying stories. (See Dating the Book of Daniel.) At the same time he maintains that this view does not conflict with inerrancy. How does he do that?

    The issue is simply one of genre. He believes that one of the characteristics of apocalyptic is that it is pseudonymous, and he determines on various grounds that the stories are edifying tales and not historical, but he also determines that the use of this genre was to encourage people in a particular time of persecution, looking at the community that first received the book as a whole, and the purposes for which they would use the book.

    On a much less radical note, genre criticism of the gospels asks just what type of literature the gospels are. Are they histories, and if so what type? Are they novels as some literary critics have proposed? For many, the answer is that there is a specific genre of “gospel” which is not identical to any other form of literature. Once we have determined the genre, we ask just what that genre was intended to do. It would appear that a presentation of a coherent chronological picture was not part of the plan, as the various gospels, even though they show signs that the authors were acquainted with certain of the others, do not present a consistent chronology. These are the types of questions that genre criticism is supposed to cover.

    Canonical Criticism

    Canonical criticism is concerned with where those gospels fit in that broader scheme. In studying the gospels one might ask why there are four, and just four, gospels, and just where Matthew fits into that scheme. How does this one gospel contribute to the function of the “gospel” genre (or whatever one may have determined that genre was)? Why do we have “gospels” in the canon at all?

    In the case of Daniel, there are also issues of canonical criticism. Where does this type of literature fit into the faith life of the church? Why would we value an apocalypse, whether we see its stories as historical or not? Daniel itself is placed in different positions in the Jewish canon and in the Christian canon. Is there a reason for this? Canonical criticism is not largely a matter of looking at the order of the books, of course, but rather looking at how the book functions as part of the community’s Bible as a whole. Nonetheless the fact that the Christian canon seems to put a higher value on Daniel than the Jewish canon is probably significant in the way each community sees that book.

    One can continue by asking what role Revelation plays in the New Testament canon. Many people didn’t think it should be there, and even some moderns don’t feel the right choice was made. When they say that Revelation should not be canonical, are they commenting on its usefulness in the church, its potential use, or the way in which it has been used or abused? These are questions that the canonical critic applies in study.

    Putting things Together

    Though this is not my last entry, the introduction of these two tools of Biblical criticism provides an opportunity for me to comment on the use of the tools in general. Too often Bible students who do start to use critical methods get tied up on one or two methods. These tools provide different ways of looking at the text, but in order to understand both the text itself and how it applies to the modern church or community, one needs to look at it in a variety of ways. Commentaries that focus solely on one aspect can be quite hard to use practically. A form critical commentary, for example, will look heavily at the prehistory of the text, paying much attention to hypothetical material while passing over the text as we have it. On the other hand, a canonical critic can be tempted to ignore the fact that a text does have a prehistory and act as though it dropped from heaven whole.

    The Bible student who wants to get the most from the text will use a balance of tools as they are appropriate to the particular text he is studying.

  • Tradition Criticism

    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 that were involved in that change. It assumes an oral stage of the text, and is again not very effective in studying something that was originated in written form without a prehistory.

    In order to put tradition criticism into action, one normally begins with textual criticism, in order to have a good text from which to start the process. In some cases, such as the oracles against the nations in the book of Jeremiah that I referenced previously in my post on form criticism, textual criticism can give us some insights into the history of the tradition as well as helping us accurately discover the final text. Form, source, and redaction criticism each deal with an aspect of the history of the text, but they tend to rather arbitrarily divide the process into discrete stages, each of which is studied by a different method. Tradition criticism tries to bring these stages together, and ask questions such as what was important to the people who told these stories, why did they tell these stories and not others, and how this reflects on their culture and their understanding of history.

    In doing so, tradition critics identify motifs, such as the successful foreign courtier in the Joseph story, the threatened ancestral figure, such Sarah barren or taken by a foreign ruler, or particular types of prophetic oracles. These often combine into themes, such as the overall protection God gives to the ancestral line.

    In understanding how the culture saw its own history, we can come to understand the final product better. For example, in modern eyes, the story of the flight into Egypt (Matthew 2:13-15) is either predicted by Hosea 11:1, or Matthew made an error. Now it is clear from context that Hosea 11:1 is not Messianic, and in no way intends to predict anything about the Messiah. But by understanding how traditions were shaped in telling and retelling, such as the exodus from Egypt and the exile to Babylon and return, we can add the option that Christians, in developing this tradition about Jesus, were tying their story into the continuing story of Israel’s experience. Notice here that tradition history is not concerned with determining historicity; it is only concerned with the way in which the story is told and passed on.

    Thus tradition criticism is one of those “forest” types of tools that looks at a broader picture. There is a danger in tradition criticism, just as with form, source, and redaction criticism, that one builds too much on too little evidence. A few conjectures are necessary in historical study, but when conjecture is built on conjecture, the final result can be improbable indeed! Tradition critics must be careful to admit they don’t know when they don’t know.

  • Redaction Criticism

    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 to remember that there is no necessity to assume that the final copy of a document as we have it in scripture went through a stage of redaction. The epistles of the New Testament are good examples of documents that would require either no redaction, or would only involve minimal redaction.

    In the Parable of the Sower, elements introduced by the redactor–in this case the gospel writer–include the setting of the parable, the place where Jesus is said to have related the parable, and possibly the interpretation. It is commonly thought that Jesus did not include interpretations with his parables. I would suggest that the form of the parables gives some support to this theory. They are best suited to use in stimulating thinking, without long explanations. But in my opinion that doesn’t mean that Jesus and his disciples never discussed the meaning. Thus multiple applications of a parable could legitimately have arisen during the lifetime of Jesus. The placement of all the interpretations, and some of the interpretations themselves then would be redactional elements. It is unlikely that Jesus immediately followed parable with interpretation in his normal style of teaching.

    Another example comes from Matthew 5:3 and Luke 6:20. Luke 6 reads “Blessed are the poor . . . ” but Matthew reads “Blessed are the poor in spirit . . .” Because of the form of this saying in the Gospel of Thomas, v. 54, which also reads just “poor” it is likely that Luke’s is the more common, and possibly more original form of the saying. Thus the addition of “in spirit” by Matthew (as redactor) indicates something about his theology and his intention in writing his gospel. (Note that use of the Gospel of Thomas is controversial here, because there is some debate on its date and whether it constitutes an independent witness to the sayings of Jesus.)

    To look at an example of sources and redaction, see my essays The Two Flood Stories and Genesis Creation Stories – Form, Structure, and Relationship.

  • The Locus of Biblical Inspiration

    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 excellent example of a couple of translation problems, and though that is not my purpose here, I need to outline them in support of my major point.

    First, there is the issue of translation in Psalm 8:5. Translations split between reading “a little lower than the angels/heavenly beings” or “a little lower than God/the gods/a god.” It’s interesting that mainstream to liberal translations such as the NRSV and REB find themselves in at least partial agreement with the very conservative NASB on this issue. (The NASB’s “than God” is a little less jarring to Christian ears than the REB’s “little less than a god,” perhaps, but both tend in the same direction.)

    In Hebrews, you will find the quotation consistently translated as “lower than the angels” or something quite close to that. The reason for the consistency in Hebrews is quite simple. The quotation is from the LXX (Septuagint), which translated this passage as “angels.”

    The other translation issue of note is whether to translate the Greek “brachu” as “for a little while” or “a little.” The Greek word could possibly handle either interpretation, but the context and grammar tends to suggest “a little while.” Some translations, such as the NIV, try to accommodate the two translations, using “a little lower” in Hebrews 2:7, and keeping the translation as consistent as possible with Psalm 8:5, but adding a footnote to the alternate translation. Others, such as the NASB and the NRSV again simply translate the text of Hebrews without concern for consistency with Psalm 8:5.

    Note here that I’m justing making note of these translation choices, not criticizing any of them. With very little work I could justify the actions of each translation team, and considering that alternatives are indicated in footnotes in many cases, I have no problem. What I do what you to see is that there are a couple of differences between the LXX text as quoted by the author of Hebrews, and the Hebrew text as we have in our Old Testaments. And that’s why this particular verse caught my eye this time through.

    I’ve been writing about Biblical criticism in a number of recent posts. (This isn’t part of that series, but it does relate.) One of the things that got me thinking when I first started looking at the tools of Biblical criticism, especially form and source criticism, was that an author would grab hold of his favorite tool and apply it to every scripture in sight willy-nilly, and with interesting results. Many times the main objections to the use of a critical tool could be eliminated by carefully defining the tool itself and the types of texts on which it could be effective, and then carefully applying that tool only in those places.

    But there was a further problem. Even in the case of texts in which a particular tool applied, many students would use just the one tool and then be done with it. For example, in studying Isaiah, one might use form criticism to define the boundaries and structure of a prophetic oracle, then define it down to a subcategory of oracle, place it in the appropriate setting, and come up with a plausible (hopefully!) understanding of what Isaiah intended when presenting that oracle orally to its original audience. A person dedicated to form criticism as a method of interpretation would stop there. The study of the book of Isaiah was simply a study of a series of oracles. The book of Isaiah itself tended to disappear.

    Another example comes from Genesis 1 & 2, which have some contradictions or apparent contradictions (I don’t care which for the moment) in terms of the chronology of creation. (I mentioned these in my previous post on source criticism.) A source critic may simply respond to these problems by stating that the two chapters come from different sources, and consider the question answered. But we are left with the question of why an apparently intelligent person (and anyone who has studied the literary structure of Genesis must concede that its author is intelligent) would put the two chapters together with such obviously (to us) contradictory content. The fact that he did put the two chapters together suggests that to him they are not contradictory, and that if we understand them as contradictory, perhaps we are missing the point. That doesn’t mean that he may not have had two creation story sources or traditions in front of him as he wrote. It does mean that he understood those sources as compatible and thought that each had a necessary message.

    Many of these problems have been alleviated considerably by the use of such methods as canonical and genre criticism. A good example of the use of canonical criticism is Brevard Childs’s commentary on Isaiah (OTL). This is one I’m studying right now, and it has grown on me as I use it. Childs is really a remarkably good commentator. I would note, however, that this canonical approach to criticism has by no means won the field. Much of the work on the historical Jesus, especially that of the Jesus Seminar, is heavily based on the approach of form criticism, whether that is admitted or not. The starting point for Jesus Seminar material is in breaking the text into blocks on which the analysis is performed to determine just how authentic that saying is. As oral material–Jesus himself didn’t write it down–the sayings of Jesus are well suited to study through form criticism. My topic here, however, is whether such study is all we need to do here. Compare The Five Gospels with Darrell Bock’s Jesus According to Scripture to see both methods in action clearly.

    But back to Hebrews 2:6-9. I think it is clear that the author of Hebrews is getting a somewhat different point from Psalm 8 than was actually intended. Psalm 8 celebrates God, and the position of humanity in God’s creation. Hebrews 2 uses that passage either as a prophecy or a type of Jesus, who is made lower than the angels for his earthly ministry, and then crowned with glory and honor afterward. My modern mind can get a little twisted with that. After all, the author is not doing exegesis, at least not such as would get an ‘A’ grade in seminary. He’s using the wording of the text in a slightly different way than it was intended. What’s more, assuming that since he seems to translate loosely himself in some places, and may well have had the Hebrew text available to him, he is cherry picking his translation to suit his message! What gives?

    In my view, what gives is that he was inspired. We are heavily trained both by a modern worldview to look for the source, for the original meaning, for the oldest form. (However much we talk about postmodern, most of the public still has more “modern,” I believe.) Because of this bias we are quite susceptible to the claims of certain critical methods. Form and source criticism will get us closer to the original. Who wouldn’t want that? The methods are challenged primarily on the basis of results–they didn’t get us to where we thought they would–but not on the goal itself.

    Where did God act?

    I think that’s the wrong question. Perhaps we should more be asking “Where didn’t God act?”

    I’m confident that Isaiah made prophetic utterances orally. I’m confident that they were later written down and collected, and that they were finally shaped into the book as we have it today. As authority in the church, we accept the book of Isaiah, because that is canonical, i.e. that is what we have officially made authoritative. But from the historical point of view, and also based on my interest in knowing how God has worked with people throughout history, I’m interested in the whole process, because that tells me something about God.

    I don’t mind the search for the historical Jesus. I’m interested in precisely what Jesus said. But from the practical point of view isn’t it somewhat odd to try to filter out the voices of the first century Christians who wrote down and collected what Jesus said, and those who shaped the result into gospels, in favor of filtering purely through my own mind? While I do want to know precisely what Jesus said (though I’ll have to wait until the kingdom to actually know), I suspect the filter of the early Christians is actually more reliable than my own. It’s interesting to hear people claim that the early Christians quickly corrupted the teachings of Jesus and at the same time assume that they can extract the true story.

    I think it’s perfectly valid for the author of Psalm 8 to make one point, and the author of Hebrews to use his words to make another. In fact, I think those points are typologically related. Where did God speak? Well, he spoke in Genesis, which was probably in the mind of the Psalmist as he wrote. He spoke in Psalms 8, which is a wonderfully encouraging passage. He spoke again through both the words and deeds of Jesus, especially his death, resurrection, and exaltation at the side of the Father. He spoke again through the author of Hebrews who points us to the change of status that Jesus accepted, and who provides an interpretation of those actions for us.

    I believe God speaks in all these things, and that we can get valuable insights from the whole experience of God’s action in the world. Hebrews 2:6-9 gives us a snapshot of inspiration in action.

    (I ran across this text again because I’m preparing to teach a series on the book of Hebrews from my study guide, To The Hebrews: A Participatory Study Guide. One of the 13 lessons in that volume invites students to look at the use of Old Testament passages in the book of Hebrews.)

  • Source Criticism

    [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 to be a “grove method.” It looks at a broader swath of the text than Form Criticism, but still is not looking at the passage as a whole. To see the relationship between these various forms, look at my chart in the pamphlet What is Biblical Criticism?.

    Again, I must emphasize that this tool assumes certain stages of the text, that is a point in time when various literary elements were gathered together into larger documents, which were in turn gathered into the larger document that we have before us. In many cases this textual history will not be true. In a prophetic book such as Isaiah, for example, the prophet made certain proclamations of God’s word. These proclamations were then gathered into a larger document. It’s possible that there were a number of larger documents that were smaller than the final book of Isaiah (1-35, 36-39, 40-55, 56-66, for example), though in the case of Isaiah we discover these documents through literary study of the text itself.

    In Jeremiah, on the other hand, we have direct internal and external evidence of a process such as would be expected by Source Criticism, and so would be studied by this tool. In Jeremiah 36:4ff, Baruch receives some of Jeremiah’s prophetic oracles and writes them into a book. Note, in addition, that this copy of Jeremiah’s work was destroyed, and then was recreated (Jeremiah 36:32). The individual oracles that Jeremiah dictated would be of the general form of “prophetic oracles” (there are many types of prophetic oracle), and the document that Baruch wrote would constitute one of the source documents of the book of Jeremiah. How do I know this was not the actual book of Jeremiah as we have it today? Because Jeremiah ministered for some years after this incident (see 36:1-3 for dating), and we have a record of those incidents.

    Further evidence of sources in Jeremiah comes from the differences between the Septuagint and Masoretic text of the book. I’m not here discussing the differences in length between the two texts, but rather the position of the oracles about foreign nations, which is chapters 46-51 in the Masoretic Text, but is instead located at chapter 26 and following in the LXX. This is not proof that this is a source, but it strongly suggests that we have at least two sources in the book of Jeremiah, one the Baruch scroll, and the second a document containing prophetic oracles against the nations.

    In an earlier post I used the parable of the sower as an example of a parable that is attested in three gospels. Having the same form (parable) in three different larger documents helps us to study the nature of the form. The gospels are even more useful as an example of forms in action. There are blocks of text in Matthew, Mark, and Luke that show very close verbal parallels, suggesting some form of copying one from another. The question is what was copied, and who copied whom.

    These blocks involve text that is in all three synoptic gospels, some that is in Matthew and Luke, but not Mark, and some that is in Matthew or Luke, but not in any other gospel. The most common explanation for this phenomenon is known as the two source or two document hypothesis. This suggests that Matthew and Luke copied from Mark and an unknown source known as ‘Q’ for ‘Quelle’ which is German for ‘source.’

    You can identify various elements in this system using a gospel parallel. Where you find all three gospels in agreement, you are generally dealing with Markan material. When Luke and Matthew agree but Mark does not, you are dealing with Q material, when Matthew or Luke are alone in a reading, they are dealing either with their own independent material, or with further hypothetical sources ‘M’ or ‘L’. There are cases in which this loose equation doesn’t work, for example there are some elements of Q that appear in Mark, or there can be cases where only Luke or Matthew copy Mark. Note also that this is not the only theory of how the gospels were composed. (For related information see Understanding the Search for the Historical Jesus.)

    Careful source criticism is useful in understanding the history of the text and how it was composed. It can tell us about the people who were involved in creating the text. It is also a necessary adjunct to redaction criticism, which I will discuss in my next entry on this topic.

    There are a couple of dangers in source criticism, however. First, like all critical methods, it often must be based on limited evidence. Speculation added to speculation can get very doubtful. Second, there are cases in which Bible students conclude that they have solved a problem because they have identified the sources.

    As an example, Genesis 1:1-2:4a and Genesis 2:4b-25 are normally regarded as coming from two separate sources. There are differences in the way creation is described, and some potential issues in the order of creation. One response is simply to assume that they are different sources, and thus it’s no big deal that they tell a different story. But that is to miss an important element of interpretation. Even if you believe that the two passages come from different sources, someone seems to have thought they fit together. An interpreter must consider also what they mean when combined. Source criticism shouldn’t be used to shortcut a full exegesis of a passage.

  • Examples of Textual Issues in Translation

    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 by non-professionals. One major distinction is between those translations that follow the Textus Receptus, and those that use a more modern, eclectic text in the New Testament. The NKJV is a good example of a modern translation that follows that text.

    But in discussing the RSV, ESV, and NRSV, I was reminded of another textual difference that is less well known: The attitude of the translators toward conjectural readings and readings in supported only by an ancient version or one of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Typically, in translating the Hebrew scriptures, Christian translators have followed the Masoretic Text, the text printed in the vast majority of Hebrew Bibles, unless they find it impossible to translate the MT intelligibly. In that case they will look to the versions, the scrolls, or even to a conjectural emendation in some translations. The tendency in New Testament textual criticism, because a large amount of external evidence is available, is to study each variant and determine the best text, but this procedure has not yet carried over into Old Testament studies.

    (More conservative translations tend to produce more of a “conjectural translation” as opposed to a conjectural emendation. By “conjectural translation” I mean a translation that is simply one’s best guess at what a text may mean. In many cases, I find these translations no less questionable than a conjectural emendation. I will try to write a blog entry sometime soon on some examples of difficult texts in the Hebrew scriptures and how they are handled by various versions.)

    So a significant difference between translations may be their handling of the text, in particular the text of the Hebrew scriptures. I’m going to look at two examples, from two different translations. In each case, the particular text accepted is accepted only by the version cited amongst modern versions.

    The first is an added paragraph between 1 Samuel 10:27 and 11:1. In this case we have an explanatory paragraph that comes between Saul becoming king and the situation in Jabesh Gilead which is Saul’s first problem as the leader of Israel. The NRSV alone among the modern translations includes this paragraph as part of the text. It is noted in a footnote in both the NLT and the CEV.

    The paragraph reads:

    Now Nahash, king of the Ammonites, had been grievously oppressing the Gadites and the Reubenites. He would gouge out the right eye of each of them and would not grant Israel a deliverer. No one was left of the Israelites across the Jordan whose right eye Nahash, king of the Ammonites, had not gouged out. But there were seven thousand men who had escaped from the Ammonites and had entered Jabesh-gilead. (NRSV)

    In favor of adding this paragraph to our current text are the following:

    1. It is contained in 4QSama
    2. It could easily have been left out by haplography, with the scribe’s eye scanning from the first Nahash here to the second at the beginning of 11:1
    3. Its use by Josephus indicates that it was likely in the Greek text he was using
    4. Compared to 4QSama the MT is very short. Using both the LXX and this evidence, it is likely that there has been a considerable amount of haplography in the MT.

    Against adding this paragraph are the following:

    1. The external evidence for this reading is extremely weak
    2. The explanatory paragraph could well have been a marginal comment that was later incorporated into the text.
    3. The MT is generally the more carefully copied text type. (But note that it was probably not under that type of control when 4QSama was created.

    The NRSV shows its tendency here to be nearer the leading edge of modern scholarship than are other versions. I think in this case they made the correct choice, though I’m sympathetic to the considerations that probably led the NLT and CEV teams to place this additional text as a footnote.

    A second case involves the text of Isaiah in the Revised English Bible (REB) and the New American Bible (NAB). Isaiah 41:6-7 are transposed in that version to follow Isaiah 40:20. This is a correction supported by no external textual evidence at all. Presumably the change is based on a copying error involving miscopying part of a column, but the mechanism by which the change could occur is a bit obscure. It would have had to occur very early in the text.

    In favor of this change:

    1. The apparent logical structure of both chapters is corrected
    2. The presumption that an early error might have been made in copying columns

    Against the change:

    1. Complete absence of external evidence to support it
    2. Though the chapter logic is made smoother, it is a common style in Isaiah 40 and following chapters to intrude diatribes against idols into the flow. Following the author’s style, then, would seem to suggest that the passage would be acceptable in its current location.
    3. The process of copying that would result in the present text when starting with the presumed text is somewhat obscure.

    Here, though I like the REB generally, I think that the translators’ choice was not the best one.

  • Form Criticism

    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 outline I provide should help in the use of various critical commentaries. The key is to read critical judgments critically. (I would note that form criticism generally becomes less certain and therefore less useful in my view as it tries for greater and greater detail.)

    In my previous overview entry, I looked at the different phases of the production and transmission of a text, and showed that form criticism referred to the oral transmission stage. There was a time when I would have said that form criticism applied only when there was an oral stage of transmission, but more recent studies have shown that it can be applied to some texts that did not have an oral stage, such as epistles. There is a danger, however, of finding special oral forms everywhere just because one wants to apply form criticism. Watch out for this when you use critical commentaries.

    Form criticism is possible because in oral transmission and in some types of written transmission, particular types of material tend to take specific, repetitive forms. This is best illustrated in the beginning for children’s stories, “once upon a time.” Because these materials tend to take particular forms, we can discover something about their intended meaning and use from identifying the forms, and then comparing them to other material that displays the same form.

    In discussing the Parable of the Sower I mentioned the form only briefly, but now let’s look at some of the forms in the material that Jesus used. Parables, for example, could come in at least two types, the short, pithy comparison, or the illustrative story. The parable of the sower is of the second variety. So we would compare it in terms of form to parables such as the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, or other similar longer stories. This may not seem terribly profound, but it does lead us to ask just what differences there might be in interpretation of the two types of parables. For example, many interpreters (I’m one of them) will tell you to look for the one main point of a parable, and be very careful when trying to assign meaning to the details. But would there not be a difference in how one might understand the simple comparison and the longer illustrative story? Certainly there should be. The details of the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32; note that this is a good example on which to study the boundaries of the passage to be studied) are far more important to interpretation than the Pearl of Great Price (Matthew 13:45-46), for example.

    Most interpretation can be reduced to finding good questions to ask, and then looking for the answers. Often we look for answers in Bible study before we have considered our questions carefully. So what are the questions of form criticism?

    There are basically four three things we look for:

    1. The structural elements of the passage we are studying, which also involves finding the correct boundaries of the passage
    2. What type or genre is it?
    3. What is its setting and purpose?
    4. Compare and contrast to other similar passages.

    You may need to go through these elements a number of times. It’s convenient to start with someone else’s divisions of the text and someone else’s division of the forms into named types, but I would suggest trying to practice this yourself before simply accepting someone else’s division. You will find it especially helpful to reconsider your division of the text into individual passages after you have compared it to other similar passages.

    In the case of parables, I’ve already made some suggestions of types. But let’s look at another form–the proverb. This is a good early example to work with, because with the book of Proverbs we have many examples already laid out for us. Note, however, that not all of Proverbs consists of proverbs. Especially in the early chapters there are some other forms, such as the hymn to wisdom in chapter 8. But now consider some other examples of proverbs elsewhere in scripture.

    Ezekiel uses a proverb in Ezekiel 18:2, “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are dull from grinding.”

    Now it’s very much in the form of a proverb. It’s a short, pithy saying that illustrates a point of common wisdom. What would it’s original setting be? We can imagine a situation in which children suffer for their parents’ actions, something that is not all that uncommon. This one is fairly easy. Ezekiel, on the other hand, is using it in another setting. He is using the form of a prophetic oracle. How do I know that? Well, the first clue is in verse one, when he says, “The word of YHWH came to me.” In his case, he’s using the proverb that was probably originally about the general human condition to discuss God’s action; God’s judgment is not going to fall on the children for what the parents did, but rather, God’s judgment will fall on the person who has committed the wrong. We can gain some understanding of the passage by realizing that this proverb was first an expression of an aspect of the human condition. It was probably first used by the Israelites to express how they felt that God was dealing with them, and then is reused in this oracle in Ezekiel to express how God was going to reverse that. The use of this one form in another can be considered an element of redaction, which I’ll discuss later.
    Now consider an instance in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. There he uses what is probably a proverb, “Nothing beyond what is written” (1 Corinthians 4:6). Now there is some question about the meaning here. Some would suggest that this is a call to use nothing outside of scripture. But considering when Paul wrote this, is it likely that Paul is saying to stick to written scripture? He’s still dealing with an oral form of the gospel message itself. So we can ask what might this parable have meant in its original setting. I’m going to suggest that there was a possibility that this is used as a statement about someone who is working entirely on material that has been passed on. It is not a compliment to someone who is sticking with the letter; it’s a criticism of someone who has nothing original to contribute.

    Paul is now bringing this to the Corinthians. Is it a criticism in his use? In one sense. He’s saying that the Corinthians have not (yet?) contributed anything to the message of the gospel, and yet they are acting as though they had created an original contribution and attained spiritual superiority. It would be like a student who presented a research paper consisting entirely of quotations, and then claimed to have accomplished original research.

    Let me conclude by listing some benefits of form criticism and some potential problems.

    Benefits:

    1. Gets us to look closely and in detail at a small portion of the text
    2. Encourages us to ask certain questions of the text
    3. Helps us discover other passages that we can use effectively in comparison
    4. Encourages us to discover, if possible, how a text has been used in various settings
    5. Helps us block off a subsection of text and to find its function in a larger passage

    Dangers:

    1. It’s a tree method rather than a forest method, i.e. it gets you to focus on a small portion of the text, and then often you won’t look more broadly. Avoid this by first surveying a larging scripture portion before looking at the individual passage.
    2. It tends to focus us back on the original setting and purpose of a passage. For example, the form critic is first interested in why a proverb or parable would have originated in oral use. It’s final use, such as by Ezekiel or Paul can be ignored. Avoid this by continuing your study after identifying and working with an individual passage as a form using other methods, especially using redaction, literary, and canonical criticism.

    The best way to build your skills with this type of criticism is to get good commentaries that include use of this methodology (most commentaries in the Old Testament Library or the Anchor Bible series do so, see my reader’s guides on Bible Study, Old Testament, New Testament, and Biblical criticism), then do your own work, and then compare that work to the results in the commentary.

  • Criticism Example: The Parable of the Sower

    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 these issues and also discuss literary, tradition, genre and canonical criticism.

    As background, consult my pamphlet What is Biblical Criticism? which provides an extremely basic overview of the method. To that discussion, I need to add that not every portion of the general history of a document takes place with each document. For example, in the case of one of Paul’s letters, for example, there is no oral stage. In general, there are no sources, or sources provide only a very limited portion of the text. There are also no further redactions or editions of the text. Paul writes or dictates the letter, and then it is delivered. In this case form, source, and redaction criticism have very little to say. Sometimes scholars try to make use of these techniques on literature to which they are not well suited, and the results are not terribly helpful.

    If we limit ourselves to the limits of this single pericope (or short, defined scriptural passage), then most of our questions relate to form criticism. We are asking what the form of the parable is. A good way to think of this is to ask yourself what it was about this that told you it was a parable. In this case, it is labeled “parable.” But what if you just heard the starting point: “A sower went out to sow.” Would you still recognize it as a parable? Did Jesus very likely say, “I’m going to use a parable now?” So the phrase that introduces the parable, as well as the setting is part of the redaction, or a result of editing the text.

    To deal with sources we would have to look at more text. Within this parable, we can ask whether it is more likely that Mark was first, and Matthew and Luke copied from him, or was Matthew first? It would be a rather odd view these days, but logically one must consider whether Luke was first, and the others copied him. But in the passage in question, we see very little indication of who copied whom. Mark’s vocabulary and style is a little simpler, and Luke’s is more complex, but those changes could be made by any of the three.

    There’s a likely reason for this. On the assumption that Mark is first (which I might argue with, but I want to work with the consensus for right now), this parable is probably part of the ‘Q’ source. (Q is an abbreviation for German “Quelle” which means “source.”) This parable is also repeated in the Gospel of Thomas, verse 9, which provides support for the possibility that it was part of a sayings source. Note also that Thomas does not include either the setting (one would expect it not to) nor does it include the final “He who has ears, let him hear.”

    One major benefit of this sort of study is that it forces you to look in detail at every word and ask precisely how it fits into the intent of the author. Whether you agree with the work of any critical or scholar or not, that study cannot help but benefit you.

    The Parable of the Sower
    Matthew 13:1-9 Mark 4:1-9 Luke 8:4-8 Notes
    1On that day, when Jesus had gone out of the house, he sat beside the sea,2and large crowds came together to him,so that he into a boat embarked
    to sit.
    And all the crowd stood on the shore.    		 1And again he began to teach beside the sea,and a large crowd was coming to him,so that into a boat he embarked
    to sit on [in] the sea,
    and the whole crowd by the sea on the land were.    		 4Now a large crowd gathering, and people from various towns came together to him, Note that the setting of the story differs in Luke. One of the functions of form criticism is to find the boundaries of the orally transmitted unit. In the gospels, we are aided in this process by having the units embedded in three different documents that we can compare. In this case, Matthew and Mark place this parable in the context of Jesus teaching in a boat by the sea. Luke uses the same setting (Luke 5:1-3) but with different teaching.Redaction criticism then deals with the way in which the parable is used to express the theme of the particular book or document, while the individual differences in the story itself aid us in source criticism, as we ask the question of who, if anyone, copied from whom.In Matthew, compare verses 1 & 2 to verse 1 in Mark. There are manuscripts of Matthew and Mark that make them read alike in each of the cases. Why do we not accept the variants that make the two passages more similar? Besides the fact that they do not have the best text, scribes had a tendency to accommodate texts rather than differentiate them. See further discussion of textual criticism at my previous entry, Textual Criticism – Briefly.
    3And he spoke to them
    many things in parables saying,
    Look, one who sows went out to sow.
    4And while he was sowing,
    some [of the seeds] fell by the path,
    and when the birds came they consumed them [the seeds].    		 2And he taught them
    in parables many things and said to them in his teaching,3Listen! Look! Went out one who sows to sow.4And it happened in the sowing that some [seed] fell beside the path,and came the birds and ate it.    		 he said by means of a parable,
    5“Went out one who sows to sow his seed. Some feel beside the path and was trampled, and the birds of heaven ate it.    		 Now we get to the start of the parable. Just like “once upon a time” at the start of a children’s story “he spoke a parable” or something very similar begins the actual parable. There are frequent textual variants that accommodate the various passages.
    5But some, fell on the rocky grounds, where they did not have much dirt, and immediately sprouted leaves because they didn’t have deep dirt. 6But after the sun rose, they were scorched and because they did not have root, they withered.
    7But some others fell among the thorns, and when the thorns grew up they choked them.    		 5and other [seed] fell on the rocky where it did not have much dirt, and immediately it sprouted because it didn’t have deep dirt. 6And when the sun rose, it was scorched, and because it didn’t have root, it withered.
    7And other [seed] fell in the thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and fruit it didn’t bear.    		 6and other [seed] fell on the rock, and when it grew, it withered, because it didn’t have moisture. 7And other [seed] fell among the thorns, and the thorns grew together and choked it. Note that Luke has the shortest version and that there are minor grammatical differences between all three stories. These differences are to be expected in orally transmitted material.
    8But others fell on the good ground and bore fruit,
    some a hundredfold, some sixtyfold, and others thirtyfold.
    9Let the one who has ears hear.    		 8And other [seeds] fell into the good ground, and it gave fruit when it grew up, and got larger and bore one thirtyfold, and one sixtyfold, and one a hundredfold.9And he said, whoever has ears to hear, let him hear. 8And other [seed] fell into the good ground and when it grew it produced fruit a hundredfold.Having said these things, he called out: “Let the one who has ears to hear, hear!” All three parables end with the command for those with ears to listen, though Matthew leaves out “to hear.”Note that I do not include the interpretation of the parable as part of the unit. The parable itself is a unit used in teaching, and Jesus did not include the explanation in the original statement for it. In the gospels, the explanation is given very shortly afterward to the disciples. Many scholars believe that these longer explanations are the product of the early church, and were not part of the explicit teaching of Jesus.

    In future entries I will discuss the methods further and also bring examples from other texts, then eventually take a look at Isaiah 24-27 as a passage that can benefit from the work of form, source, redaction, and canonical criticism.

  • Textual Criticism – Briefly

    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 Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research. This reminded me of some of the issues of textual criticism that tend to give non-scholars problems in reading the Bible.

    Non-scholars usually encounter textual criticism when there is a note in their Bible that says something like, “Other ancient authorities read . . .” or “mss . . .” followed by an alternate reading for a passage. Sometimes this starts with brackets being put around a block of text. John 7:53 through 8:11, for example, is bracketed in my NRSV Bible with the note “The most ancient authorities lack 7:53-8:11; . . .” The question many laypeople have is what are these ancient authorities, and why should they care?

    Textual criticism is simply the study of the various manuscripts, or witnesses, to the text of the Bible in order to determine the text that is closest to the autograph. “Manuscripts” here may include Greek manuscripts, lectionaries, quotes in church fathers, or versions in other ancient languages. For textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible, some of the witnesses are different, as are some of the details of practice, but in general they are quite similar. In addition, many scholars are also interested in other stages of the text. They recognize that while we use the manuscripts to determine the original text, for the person who made the manuscript, and those who used it, that was their Bible. It wasn’t a stage leading to something else. They would use it as their scripture. We can learn something about them from the way that manuscript was made and copied.

    But for this entry, I’m focusing on how we work to discover the text closest to the autograph. First, no two ancient manuscripts are completely alike. Thus we must do textual criticism in some sense before we can have a Bible. We might just decide to grab one manuscript, presuming it’s complete, and use that one, but even that is a decision about the text. In practice, translators depend on textual critics, who produce editions of the text. An edition is basically a text produced by the editors’ best conclusions about the text of each passage. Usually, it will have a critical apparatus, which is simply a listing of the other variants, or options that could have been chosen.

    The textual critic is presented with two types of evidence:

    1. External evidence – the manuscripts, quotations, and so forth, that are available to him. From these he can get a picture of all the different readings for the passage he is working on.

    2. Internal evidence – the things that are likely to have happened in copying. We know from observing how people copy that certain errors are more likely. If copying is done by ear, with one person reading a manuscript, and the other writing down what he hears, similar sounding words may be confused. Letters that look similar can be confused when copying by eye, or the eye can skip over from one word to anther that looks much like it. This can result either in duplicating part of the text or in omitting part of it.

    There are some simple rules for this. In general, in evaluating external evidence, an older manuscript is better than a newer one, simply because it is likely that it has not been through as many generations of copying. You can see that a more precise rule would be to look for how many times a manuscript has been copied, i.e. how many generations it has been through. Unfortunately, we don’t usually know that for sure. On average, however, an older manuscript will have been through less generations.

    Internal evidence is more slippery. Here are some of the basic rules:

    a. Choose the more difficult reading, provided it is not nonsense. Basically, if a scribe corrected a passage, it was probably from something he did not understand to something he did.

    b. Choose the shorter reading. This is based on the notion that scribes generally tending to add rather than to omit. This has been called into question, however, by James R. Royse, “Scribal Tendencies in the Transmission of the Text of the New Testament” in The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research. He cites studies that have found that scribes tended to leave out more than they added. It would be easy to think this is more important than it is, but remember that each of these rules is simply one piece of evidence in the whole puzzle.

    c. Choose a reading that agrees with an author’s style. We know something about how Paul wrote. If a reading is substantially different, it might be an error.

    d. Choose the reading that best explains the others. One reading may create an error that another one corrects. The one that motivates the correction must be earlier than the correction.

    You can see that internal evidence is much more subjective, but it is often the only way to choose various readings.

    This is a very short introduction. I will comment further as I examine textual issues in the passages I use for examples in this series.

    For more information see my book What’s in a Version?. For more information specifically on textual criticism, see my review of The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research. In that review I link to some more basic volumes as well.

    [Updated January 18, 2015 to correct links to my book review of The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research.]