Biblical Criticism: Beyond the Basics
Biblical criticism is an umbrella term covering various techniques for applying literary historical-critical methods in analyzing and studying the Bible and its textual content. Biblical criticism is also known as higher criticism, literary criticism, and historical criticism. Biblical criticism has done nothing more than weaken and demoralize people's assurance in the Bible as being the inspired and fully inerrant Word of God and is destructive in its very nature. Historical criticism is made up of many forms of biblical criticism that are harmful to the authoritative Word of God: historical criticism, source criticism, form criticism, redaction criticism, social-science criticism, canonical criticism, rhetorical criticism, structural criticism, narrative criticism, reader-response criticism, and feminist criticism. Not just liberal scholarship, but many moderate, even some "conservative" scholars have adopted historical criticism at some level. The authors herein show how adopting any level of biblical criticism by pastors, biblical teachers, students, and scholars, will only diminish the trustworthiness of God's Word, e.g., inerrancy. Biblical criticism is extremely flawed, and its attack on the Bible has failed to demonstrate that the Bible is not the Word of God. On this Dr. Robert L. Thomas writes, "Someone needs to sound the alarm when evangelical leaders mislead the body of Christ. A mass evangelical exodus from this time-honored principle of interpreting Scripture is jeopardizing the church's access to the truths taught therein. Whether interpreters have forsaken the principle intentionally or have subconsciously ignored it, the damage is the same."—Robert L. Thomas. Evangelical Hermeneutics: The New Versus the Old (p. 160).
Top Highlights
“Another instance would be found in Matthew 23 wherein Jesus excoriated the Pharisees of his day in what is now considered ‘politically incorrect’ and shocking terms. In light of holocaustic hermeneutics, i.e. the post-World War II prevalent thinking of the day even evangelical critics are dismissive of this chapter as being historically inaccurate. Jesus’ words are dismissed as not spoken by him since one might the accusation of being ‘anti-semitic’ through acceptance of the chapter as genuine. Instead, the cause of these tensions between Jesus and the Pharisees is attributed to an alleged conflict between Matthew’s assumed community and the Jews of Matthew’s day in the synagogue.” (source)
“a communicative act includes an intentional use of language, a response, and a rhetorical situation” (source)
“Historical criticism was the dominant form of criticism until the late 20th century when biblical critics became interested in questions aimed more at the meaning of the text than its origins and sought out methods used in mainstream literary criticism of the day.” (source)
“Rhetorical criticism seeks to ascertain how the text functions for its audience, including its original audience: to teach, persuade, guide, exhort, reproach, or inspire.” (source)
“Rhetoric is the study of effective speaking and writing. Rhetoric is the art of persuasion” (source)
Product Details
- Title : BIBLICAL CRITICISM: Beyond the Basics
- Authors:
- Andrews, Edward D.
- Farnell, F. David
- Howe, Thomas
- Marshall, Thomas
- Newman, Diane
- Publisher: Christian Publishing House
- Publication Date: 2017
- ISBN: 9781945757716
Reviews
1 rating
Jason Coke
1/17/2023
Regarding the FORM of this book: I don't know about the paper version, but this Faithlife e-book desperately needs an editor. Typos everywhere, random changes in font size from paragraph to paragraph (like, triple the size), repeated paragraphs (copy and pasted?), duplicate words, major grammatical errors. There's so much of this that it is distracting to the read. (Probably these aren't due to the original authors, but rather to whoever digitized the manuscript for Faithlife). Regarding the CONTENT of the book: Really appreciate the overview of all the critical methods and their historical, philosophical, and presuppositional underpinnings, and comparing those to the reformational historical-grammatical hermeneutic. Also, some clear examples how critical methods are being embraced in conservative evangelicalism. Ch. 3 and Ch. 9 (both by the same author) seemed very similar - perhaps a good editor needs to carefully review these. Got the sense in ch. 9 that I was re-reading previous material from earlier chapters.
