biblical criticism
Biblical criticism is the use of critical analysis to understand and explain the Bible. During the eighteenth century, when it began as ''historical-biblical criticism,'' it was based on two distinguishing characteristics: (1) the concern to ...
, refers to the attempt to establish the sources used by the authors and
redactor
Redaction is a form of editing in which multiple sources of texts are combined and altered slightly to make a single document. Often this is a method of collecting a series of writings on a similar theme and creating a definitive and coherent wo ...
s of a biblical text. It originated in the 18th century with the work of
Jean Astruc
Jean Astruc (19 March 1684, in Sauve, France – 5 May 1766, in Paris) was a professor of medicine in France at Montpellier and Paris, who wrote the first great treatise on syphilis and venereal diseases, and also, with a small anonymously pub ...
, who adapted the methods already developed for investigating the texts of
classical antiquity
Classical antiquity (also the classical era, classical period or classical age) is the period of cultural history between the 8th century BC and the 5th century AD centred on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ...
(in particular,
Homer
Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the ...
's
Iliad
The ''Iliad'' (; grc, Ἰλιάς, Iliás, ; "a poem about Ilium") is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the ''Odysse ...
) to his own investigation into the sources of the
Book of Genesis
The Book of Genesis (from Greek ; Hebrew: בְּרֵאשִׁית ''Bəreʾšīt'', "In hebeginning") is the first book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. Its Hebrew name is the same as its first word, ( "In the beginning") ...
. It was subsequently considerably developed by German scholars in what was known as "the
higher criticism
Historical criticism, also known as the historical-critical method or higher criticism, is a branch of criticism that investigates the origins of ancient texts in order to understand "the world behind the text". While often discussed in terms of ...
", a term no longer in widespread use. The ultimate aim of these scholars was to reconstruct the history of the biblical text and also the religious history of
ancient Israel
The history of ancient Israel and Judah begins in the Southern Levant during the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age. "Israel" as a people or tribal confederation (see Israelites) appears for the first time in the Merneptah Stele, an inscripti ...
.
Principles
In general, the closer a source is to the event which it purports to describe, the more one can trust it to give an accurate description of what really happened. In the Bible where a variety of earlier sources have been quoted, the historian seeks to identify and date those sources used by biblical writers as the first step in evaluating their historical reliability.
In other cases, Bible scholars use the way a text is written (changes in style, vocabulary, repetitions, and the like) to determine what sources may have been used by a biblical author. With some reasonable guesswork it is possible to deduce sources not identified as such (e.g., genealogies). Some inter-biblical sources can be determined by virtue of the fact that the source is still extant, for example, where the
Books of Chronicles
The Book of Chronicles ( he, דִּבְרֵי־הַיָּמִים ) is a book in the Hebrew Bible, found as two books (1–2 Chronicles) in the Christian Old Testament. Chronicles is the final book of the Hebrew Bible, concluding the third sect ...
quotes or retells the accounts of the books of
Samuel
Samuel ''Šəmūʾēl'', Tiberian: ''Šămūʾēl''; ar, شموئيل or صموئيل '; el, Σαμουήλ ''Samouḗl''; la, Samūēl is a figure who, in the narratives of the Hebrew Bible, plays a key role in the transition from the bibl ...
and
Kings
Kings or King's may refer to:
*Monarchs: The sovereign heads of states and/or nations, with the male being kings
*One of several works known as the "Book of Kings":
**The Books of Kings part of the Bible, divided into two parts
**The ''Shahnameh'' ...
.
Tanakh
Source criticism has been applied to several parts of the
Pentateuch
The Torah (; hbo, ''Tōrā'', "Instruction", "Teaching" or "Law") is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. In that sense, Torah means the sa ...
(the first five books of the Bible), claiming that it derives from four separate sources: the
Yahwist
The Jahwist, or Yahwist, often abbreviated J, is one of the most widely recognized sources of the Pentateuch (Torah), together with the Deuteronomist, the Priestly source and the Elohist. The existence of the Jahwist is somewhat controversial, ...
,
Elohist
According to the documentary hypothesis, the Elohist (or simply E) is one of four source documents underlying the Torah,McDermott, John J., ''Reading the Pentateuch: A Historical Introduction'' (Pauline Press, 2002) p. 21. Via Books.google.com.a ...
,
Deuteronomist
The Deuteronomist, abbreviated as either Dtr or simply D, may refer either to the source document underlying the core chapters (12–26) of the Book of Deuteronomy, or to the broader "school" that produced all of Deuteronomy as well as the Deutero ...
, and
Priestly
Priestly is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
* Miranda Priestly, a character in ''The Devil Wears Prada''
* Paul Priestly, a character in ''EastEnders''
See also
* Priestley (disambiguation)
* Priestly source, one of the propose ...
:
* The Jahwist (J) source is characterized by calling God "YHWH", depicts him as human-like, and is especially concerned with the kingdom of Judah. It is thought to have been written c. 950 BCE.
* The Elohist (E) source is characterized by calling God "Elohim", and deals more with the kingdom of Israel. It is thought to have been written c. 850 BCE.
* The Deuteronomic (D) source is characterized by a sermon-like style mostly concerned with law. It is thought to have been written c. 721–621 BCE.
* The Priestly (P) is characterized by a formal style that is mostly concerned with priestly matters. It is thought to have been written c. 550 BCE.
For example, of the two creation stories at the start of Genesis, the first is ascribed to P, while the second (the creation of Adam and Eve in chapter 2) is ascribed to J.
While the documentary hypothesis has widespread support among biblical scholars, other hypotheses such as the "fragmentary" and "supplementary" have also been proposed.
Other cases
The writers of the Tanakh sometimes mention sources they use. These include
Acts of Solomon :''The similarly named Biblical book is located at Song of Solomon.''
The ook of theActs of Solomon is a lost text referred to in , which reads:
:''And the rest of the acts of Solomon, and all that he did, and his wisdom, are they not written in ...
(1 Kings 11:41),
Chronicles of the Kings of Judah :''The similarly named Biblical books are located at Books of Chronicles.''
The Chronicles of the Kings of Judah is a Lost work that gives a more detailed account of the reigns of the kings of the ancient Kingdom of Judah that appears in the Hebr ...
(1 Kings 14:29 and in a number of other places),
Chronicles of the Kings of Israel
The Chronicles of the Kings of Israel is a book that gives a more detailed account of the reigns of the kings of ancient Kingdom of Israel than that presented in the Hebrew Bible, and may have been the source from which parts of the biblical ac ...
(1 Kings 14:19 and in a number of other places), the
Book of Jashar
The Book of Jasher (also spelled Jashar; he, סֵפֶר הַיׇּשׇׁר ), which means the Book of the Upright or the Book of the Just Man, is a book mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, often interpreted as a lost non-canonical book. Numerous forg ...
(Josh 10:12–14, 2 Sam 1:18–27, and possibly to be restored via textual criticism to 1 Kings 8:12), and
Book of the Wars of the Lord
The Book of the Wars of the Lord () is one of several non-canonical books referenced in the Bible which have now been completely lost. It is mentioned in Numbers 21:13–14, which reads:
David Rosenberg suggests in ''The Book of David'' that ...
(Num 21:14).
A more complicated and speculative form of source criticism results from critical evaluation of style, vocabulary, reduplication, and discrepancies. An example of this kind of source criticism is found in the book of
Ezra–Nehemiah
Ezra–Nehemiah ( he, עזרא נחמיה , ) is a book in the Hebrew Bible found in the Ketuvim section, originally with the Hebrew title of Ezra ( he, עזרא, links=no, ). The book covers the period from the fall of Babylon in 539 BCE t ...
(typically treated by biblical scholars as one book) where scholars identify four types of source material: letters to and from Persian officials, lists of things, the Ezra memoir (where Ezra speaks in first person), and the Nehemiah memoir (where Nehemiah speaks in first person). It is thus deduced that the writer of Ezra–Nehemiah had access to these four kinds of source material in putting together his book.
Source criticism also leads many scholars towards redaction of the
book of Isaiah
The Book of Isaiah ( he, ספר ישעיהו, ) is the first of the Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible and the first of the Major Prophets in the Christian Old Testament. It is identified by a superscription as the words of the 8th-century BC ...
from original multiple authorship.
New Testament
In the study of the
New Testament
The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christ ...
, an example of source criticism is the study of the
Synoptic problem
The gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are referred to as the synoptic Gospels because they include many of the same stories, often in a similar sequence and in similar or sometimes identical wording. They stand in contrast to John, whose con ...
. Critics noticed that the three Synoptic Gospels,
Matthew
Matthew may refer to:
* Matthew (given name)
* Matthew (surname)
* ''Matthew'' (ship), the replica of the ship sailed by John Cabot in 1497
* ''Matthew'' (album), a 2000 album by rapper Kool Keith
* Matthew (elm cultivar), a cultivar of the Ch ...
,
Mark
Mark may refer to:
Currency
* Bosnia and Herzegovina convertible mark, the currency of Bosnia and Herzegovina
* East German mark, the currency of the German Democratic Republic
* Estonian mark, the currency of Estonia between 1918 and 1927
* Fi ...
and
Luke
People
*Luke (given name), a masculine given name (including a list of people and characters with the name)
*Luke (surname) (including a list of people and characters with the name)
*Luke the Evangelist, author of the Gospel of Luke. Also known as ...
, were very similar, indeed, at times identical. The dominant theory to account for the duplication is called the
two-source hypothesis
The two-source hypothesis (or 2SH) is an explanation for the synoptic problem, the pattern of similarities and differences between the three Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It posits that the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke were bas ...
. This suggests that Mark was the first gospel to be written, and that it was probably based on a combination of early oral and written material. Matthew and Luke were written at a later time, and relied primarily on two different sources: Mark and a written collection of Jesus's sayings, which has been given the name Q by scholars. This latter document has now been lost, but at least some of its material can be deduced indirectly, namely through the material that is common in Matthew and Luke but absent in Mark. In addition to Mark and Q, the writers of Matthew and Luke made some use of additional sources, which would account for the material that is unique to each of them.
There is less of a consensus that the writers of the
Gospel of John
The Gospel of John ( grc, Εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Ἰωάννην, translit=Euangélion katà Iōánnēn) is the fourth of the four canonical gospels. It contains a highly schematic account of the ministry of Jesus, with seven "sig ...
may have used a hypothetical
Signs Gospel
The Signs Gospel or the ''semeia'' source is a hypothetical gospel account of the life of Jesus Christ which some scholars have suggested could have been a primary source document for the Gospel of John. This theory has its basis in source critic ...
.
See also
*
Historical criticism in Bible studies
Historical criticism, also known as the historical-critical method or higher criticism, is a branch of criticism that investigates the origins of ancient texts in order to understand "the world behind the text". While often discussed in terms of ...
Further reading
* Viviano, Pauline A. "Source Criticism." ''To Each Its Own Meaning: An Introduction to Biblical Criticisms and their Application.'' Steven L. McKenzie and Stephen R. Haynes, eds. Westerville John Knox Press, 1999. pp 35–57.