Critical Methods

What do you understand about modern scholarship's "critical" methods?

Critical methods are the tools that modern scholars can use to read and deeply study scripture in a way that helps us to interpret what the original authors meant when they wrote the passages, how that was influenced by their cultures, sources, genre, and context. Critical methods provide a multifaceted means of understanding the scripture.

How can these methods help us in our biblical interpretation?

Each different critical method can provide a different perspective to understand the scripture.  Form criticism examines the genre of the text and the ideas important to the early church. Care must be taken when using this type of criticism to not loose sight of the fact that the passages were written to an eyewitness story about Jesus and not necessarily to respond to a current church issue.  Source criticism examines the sources of the scripture; did one Gospel serve as the source for another one? Redaction criticism examines the role of the writer as editor – how did the “editor” strengthen his message about Jesus through what was included in the Gospel and in what order it was presented. Literary criticism focuses on the Gospels as literature – either as only literature or as literature in the gith of history or canon. Reception criticism focuses on how the texts were read in the past. For example, I can imagine that knowing how a person in Corinth read and understood Paul’s letter to the Corinthians would help us to understand what Paul was trying to convey in the letter.  An in-depth study of Scripture should include more than one method if criticism so that a fuller and more accurate understanding (from different perspectives) is found.  (Source of information is Chapter Five of the Text)