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The higher criticism is a name given to critical studies of the Bible that treat it as a text created by human beings at a particular historical time and for various human motives, in contrast with the treatment of the Bible as the inerrant word of God. The phrase "lower criticism" was used for attempts to interpret Biblical tests based only on the internal evidence from the texts themselves. The Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus (1466? - 1536) is usually credited as the first to study the Bible in this light,[1] although many of his methods are also found in the much earlier writing of Saint Augustine (354 - 430). This Gutenberg Bible is displayed by the United States Library. ...
“Erasmus†redirects here. ...
“Augustinus†redirects here. ...
The higher criticism "studies the biblical text in the same fashion as it would study any other ancient text and comments upon it as an expression of human discourse".[2]
The phrase "the higher criticism" became popular in Europe from the mid-18th century to the early 20th century, to describe the work of such scholars as Jean Astruc (mid-18th cent.), Johann Salomo Semler (1725-91), Johann Gottfried Eichhorn (1752-1827), Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792-1860), and Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918).[3] In academic circles today, this is the body of work properly considered "the higher criticism", and the phrase is seldom applied to earlier or later work using similar methods. Jean Astruc (Sauves, Auvergne, March 19, 1684 - Paris, May 5, 1766) was a famous professor of medicine at Montpellier and Paris, who wrote the first great treatise on syphilis and venereal diseases, and with a small anonymously published book played a fundamental part in the origins of critical textual analysis...
Johann Selomo Semler (December 18, 1725 - March 14, 1791), was a German church historian and biblical commentator. ...
Johann Gottfried Eichhorn (October 16, 1752 - June 27, 1827), was a German theologian. ...
Ferdinand Christian Baur (June 21, 1792 - 1860), was a German theologian and leader of the Tübingen school of theology. ...
Julius Wellhausen (May 17, 1844 - January 17, 1918), was a German biblical scholar and Orientalist. ...
Lower criticism None of the original books of the New Testament has survived to modern times. All that exists are copies of the original documents. Lower criticism was developed in an attempt to find out what the original looked like. This article is about the Christian scriptures. ...
For example, Josephus employed scribes to copy his Antiquities of the Jews. As the scribes copied the Antiquities, they made mistakes. The copies of these copies also had the mistakes. Each generation of copies contained errors, but not necessarily more than the previous generation as errors would be fixed when caught by scribes. A fanciful representation of Flavius Josephus, in an engraving in William Whistons translation of his works Josephus (37 – sometime after 100 CE),[1] who became known, in his capacity as a Roman citizen, as Titus Flavius Josephus,[2] was a 1st-century Jewish historian and apologist of priestly and...
This is about scribe, the profession. ...
Antiquities of the Jews was a work published by the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus in the year A.D. 93. ...
When an error consists of something being left out, it is called a deletion. When something was added, it is called an interpolation.
Today, none of Josephus' original work survives, but different families of texts have survived. Lower Criticism studies these surviving families, particularly the differences among them. Scholars are then able to piece together a good idea of what the original looked like. The more surviving copies, the more accurately they deduce information about the original.
Higher criticism Once lower critics have done their job and we have a good idea of what the original text looked like, higher critics can then compare this text with the writing of other authors.
Scholars try to understand whether the author is an eyewitness, or whether he is basing his work on primary or even secondary sources. They also try to understand the bias of the writer, which will give us hints to why he focuses on one subject but omits another.
An example of higher criticism at work would be the study of the Synoptic problem. Higher critics noticed that the three Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, were very similar, indeed, at times identical. The dominant theory to account for the duplication is called the two-source hypothesis. It suggests that both Matthew and Luke relied on two different sources: Mark and the hypothetical sayings document Q. The synoptic problem concerns the literary relationship between and among the first three canonical gospels (the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke), known as the synoptic gospels. ...
The Gospel of Matthew (literally, according to Matthew; Greek, Κατά Μαθθαίον or Κατά Ματθαίον, Kata Maththaion or Kata Matthaion) is a synoptic gospel in the New Testament, one of four canonical gospels. ...
The Gospel of Mark (literally, according to Mark; Greek, Κατά ΜαÏκον, Kata Markon),(anonymous[1] but ascribed to Mark the Evangelist) is a Gospel of the New Testament. ...
The Gospel of Luke (literally, according to Luke; Greek, Κατά Λουκαν, Kata Loukan) is a synoptic Gospel, and the third and longest of the four canonical Gospels of the New Testament. ...
The Two-Source Hypothesis is the most commonly accepted solution to the synoptic problem among biblical scholars, which posits that there are two sources to Gospel of Matthew and Gospel of Luke: the Gospel of Mark and a lost, hypothetical sayings collection called Q. The Two-Source Hypothesis was first...
The Q document or Q (from the German Quelle, source) is a postulated lost textual source for the Gospel of Matthew and Gospel of Luke. ...
Today, most higher critical scholars believe that Luke edited three sources: Mark, the Q document, and Proto-Luke, into the Canonical Lukean Gospel. They do not agree on the nature of Proto-Luke The Q document or Q (from the German Quelle, source) is a postulated lost textual source for the Gospel of Matthew and Gospel of Luke. ...
Roman Catholic view The arch-conservative Pope Leo XIII (1810 - 1903) condemned secular biblical scholarship in his encyclical Providentissimus Deus;[4]. but in 1945 Pope Pius XII gave license to the new scholarship in his encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu: "[T]extual criticism ... [is] quite rightly employed in the case of the Sacred Books ... Let the interpreter then, with all care and without neglecting any light derived from recent research, endeavor to determine the peculiar character and circumstances of the sacred writer, the age in which he lived, the sources written or oral to which he had recourse and the forms of expression he employed." Encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu, 1943.</ref> Today the modern Catechism states: "#110 In order to discover the sacred authors' intention, the reader must take into account the conditions of their time and culture, the literary genres in use at that time, and the modes of feeling, speaking and narrating then current. For the fact is that truth is differently presented and expressed in the various types of historical writing, in prophetical and poetical texts, and in other forms of literary expression." Pope Leo XIII (March 2, 1810—July 20, 1903), born Vincenzo Gioacchino Raffaele Luigi Pecci, was the 256th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, reigning from 1878 to 1903, succeeding Pope Pius IX. Reigning until the age of 93, he was the oldest pope, and had the third longest pontificate...
Pope Pius XII (Latin: ), born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli (March 2, 1876 – October 9, 1958), reigned as the 260th pope, the head of the Roman Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City, from March 2, 1939 until his death. ...
Divino Afflante Spiritu was an encyclical letter issued by Pope Pius XII on September 30, 1943. ...
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, or CCC, is an official exposition of the teachings of the Catholic Church, first published in French in 1992 by the authority of Pope John Paul II.[1] Subsequently, in 1997, a Latin text was issued which is now the official text of reference...
Protestant Christian view Some protestants have opposed the methods of the higher criticism. Martin Luther taught that faith and reason were antithetical, and that man must reject reason and accept faith. He wrote, "All the articles of our Christian faith, which God has revealed to us in His Word, are in presence of reason sheerly impossible, absurd, and false."[5] and "Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has."[6] Luther taught that the Bible is the infallible word of God, and many protestant Christians have followed him in that fundamentalist belief. Martin Luther (November 10, 1483 – February 18, 1546) was a German monk,[1] priest, professor, theologian, and church reformer. ...
Response to the higher criticism Many Christians reacted toward the so called "higher criticism" with hostility, and there are a number of Christian books still in print today designed to refute the claims of higher critics.[7] However, most serious Christian scholars accept many of the methods and conclusions that were so shocking when they were first introduced.
As an example, consider the treatment of Noah's Ark in various editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica. In the first edition, in 1771, the story of Noah and the Ark is treated as essentially factual, and the following scientific evidence is offered, "...Buteo and Kircher have proved geometrically, that, taking the common cubit as a foot and a half, the ark was abundantly sufficient for all the animals supposed to be lodged in it..., the number of species of animals will be found much less than is generally imagined, not amounting to an hundred species of quadrupeds... ." By the eighth edition, however, the encyclopedia says of the Noah story, "The insuperable difficulties connected with the belief that all other existing species of animals were provided for in the ark are obviated by adopting the suggestion of Bishop Stillingfleet, approved by Matthew Poole...and others, that the Deluge did not extend beyond the region of the earth then inhabited..." By the ninth edition, in 1875, there is no attempt to reconcile the Noah story with scientific fact, and it is presented without comment. In the 1960 edition, in the article Ark, we find the following, "Before the days of "higher criticism" and the rise of the modern scientific views as to the origin of the species, there was much discussion among the learned, and many ingenious and curious theories were advanced, as to the number of animals on the ark..."[8] A painting by the American Edward Hicks (1780–1849), showing the animals boarding Noahs Ark two by two. ...
1913 advertisement for the 11th edition, with the slogan When in doubt — look it up in the Encyclopædia Britannica The Encyclopædia Britannica (properly spelled with æ, the ae-ligature) was first published in 1768–1771 as The Britannica was an important early English-language general encyclopedia and is still...
See also Carmina Cantabrigiensia, Manuscript C, folio 436v, 11th century Textual criticism or lower criticism is a branch of philology or bibliography that is concerned with the identification and removal of errors from texts and manuscripts. ...
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Footnotes - ^ Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, p. 125, Touchstone, 1961, ISBN 0-671-20159-X,
- ^ Interpretation of the Bible
- ^ The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2007
- ^ Fogarty, page 40.
- ^ Martin Luther, Werke, VIII
- ^ Martin Luther, Table Talk.
- ^ Gary North, The Hoax of Higher Criticism, Dominion Press, 1990, ISBN 0930464303, ISBN-13 978-0930464301.
- ^ All quotations from the article "Ark" in the 1960 Encyclopedia Britannica
References - Gerald P. Fogarty, S.J. American Catholic Biblical Scholarship: A History from the Early Republic to Vatican II, Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1989, ISBN 0-06-062666-6. Nihil obstat by Raymond E. Brown, S.S., and Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J.
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