New Testament Scholarship- Different forms of Criticism in New Testament Studies

The academic field of New Testament study has developed into a discipline that encompasses different approaches and employs a variety of methods.

Text Criticism

Text critics analyze the various manuscripts of the New Testament that have been preserved over the centuries, comparing them, dating them, and employing various techniques to determine which are the most reliable. Their goal is to reconstruct what the original manuscripts probably said, noting also “variant readings” when one or more of the copies that have been made over the years say something different. Significant variant readings are sometimes noted in footnotes in English Bibles (e.g., see the footnote to Matt. 10:3 in the NRSV, which notes that the disciple of Jesus called “Thaddaeus” is referred to as “Lebbaeus” in some manuscripts).

Archaeology

Archaeologists excavate ancient cities and other sites important to the New Testament world, and they have uncovered an enormous amount of physical evidence that supplies background information for interpreting these texts. They have also discovered ancient documents from this period, the most important finds being the library of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which tells us a good deal about the diversity of first-century Jewish religion, and the Nag Hammadi gnostic library, which tells us a good deal about the diversity of early Christianity.

Sociological Criticism

Scholars examine the New Testament with perspectives and tools derived from the social sciences, including the field of sociology. They are attentive to a number of matters that characterized the social world of the Roman Empire during the New Testament era: the phenomenon of the Pax Romana; the Diaspora migrations of Jewish people; the military occupation of Palestine; and an economic system that virtually eliminated the middle class, leaving a few people rich and almost everyone else poor. New Testament scholars who are trained in sociology examine the New Testament writings to see how the effects of these social phenomena are addressed.

Cultural Anthropology

Derived from the social sciences, cultural anthropology seeks to understand what happens in a given culture by way of comparison with what is known about other cultures. Cultural anthropologists study matters such as kinship relations, power structures, gender roles, economic systems, and strategies for education. With regard to the New Testament, they have analyzed the purity codes that defined what most people considered to be “clean” and “unclean” and the social value system that led people to prize acquisition of honor above all else.

Historical Criticism

“Historical criticism” sometimes has been used in New Testament studies as an umbrella term for those approaches that focus on the circumstances of a text’s composition (e.g., source criticism, form criticism, redaction criticism [all discussed below]) as distinct from “literary criticism,” which encompasses approaches that focus on interpretation of the text that is now before us (e.g., narrative criticism, rhetorical criticism, reader-response criticism, ideological criticism [also discussed below]). In a strict sense, however, “historical criticism” refers to the ways in which a historian might use the New Testament to learn about  History.

Historians (whether they are Christian or not) view Jesus, Paul, and other figures of the New Testament as important and interesting people, and they understand the emergence of  Christianity to be one of the most significant developments in human history. Thus they use the New Testament as a resource for understanding the lives and circumstances of these people and for reconstructing the events that transpired concerning them.

Source Criticism

The discipline of source criticism attempts to move behind the New Testament texts to posit hypotheses regarding materials that the biblical authors might have used in composing their documents. Paul quotes from an early Christian liturgy in 1 Corinthians 11:23–26, and he appears to incorporate a Christian hymn into his letter to the Philippians (see Phil. 2:6–11). The authors of our four Gospels also appear to have possessed some written materials about Jesus that they drew on when writing their books (see Luke 1:1). Source critics try to identify these materials, and sometimes they even attempt to reconstruct them.

Form Criticism

The discipline of form criticism seeks to classify different materials found in the New Testament according to literary genre or type (“form”) and to draw conclusions relevant to interpretation based on these classifications. Different types of material can be discerned: genealogies, parables, miracle stories, speeches, hymns, creeds, proverbs, and many more.

Form critics usually are interested in identifying the Sitz im Leben (setting in life) that each of these types of literature would have served, which implies certain assumptions about purpose: a joke might be employed for the purpose of entertainment, while a prayer might be employed for the purpose of worship. Form critics often have practiced their discipline in tandem with source criticism but with a view to discerning oral sources that stand behind the New Testament texts.

Redaction Criticism

Used mainly in Gospel studies, redaction criticism tries to determine the particular intentions of New Testament authors by analyzing how they arranged and edited their source materials. The discipline typically involves two methods: (1) composition analysis looks at how various units are arranged within the particular book—the order or placement of individual units, the sequence of material, and the overall organization of the book; and (2) emendation analysis looks at alterations that the Gospel author probably made in the source material—additions, omissions, and other changes that reveal the author’s priorities and preferences. For summaries of redaction-critical analyses of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, see box 6.2 and box 8.2.

Narrative Criticism

Also used primarily with the Gospels (and the book of Acts), narrative criticism draws on the insights of modern literary analysis to determine the particular effects that the biblical stories are expected to have on their readers. Like redaction criticism, narrative criticism is interested in treating each book on its own and discerning what is distinctive about it, but whereas redaction criticism focuses on composition (how the author organized and edited the material), narrative criticism focuses on reception (how readers are expected to be impacted or affected by the work). Narrative critics often analyze a Gospel the way literary critics interpret a short story: they pay attention to how the plot is advanced, how characters are developed, how conflict is introduced or resolved, and how rhetorical features such as symbolism and irony affect the reader’s perception of what is happening.

Rhetorical Criticism

The focus of rhetorical criticism is on the strategies employed by biblical authors to achieve particular purposes. Rhetorical critics are interested not only in the point that a work wishes to make but also in the basis on which that point is established (the types of arguments or proofs that are used): sometimes external evidence or documentation is cited; sometimes the trustworthy character of the writer is invoked; at other times an appeal is made to the readers’ emotions or sense of logic.

Reader-Response Criticism

The approach to New Testament texts known as reader-response criticism focuses on how texts have been understood and might be understood by readers who engage them in different ways and in various contexts. Reader-response critics are typically interested in “polyvalence”—that is, the capacity for any text to mean different things to different people. Most reader-response critics are interested in exploring how readers contribute to the process of interpretation, bringing their own perspectives and presuppositions to texts and reading them in light of these. For example, they analyze how factors of social location (age, gender, nationality, economic status, etc.) inevitably affect the ways readers engage texts and help to determine what they think those texts mean. One type of reader-response criticism known as Wirkungsgeschichte (“history of influence”) seeks to document and explain how given texts have been read throughout history—how they have been used in theological discussions, liturgy, preaching, art, and other modes of both scholarly and popular reception.

Ideological Criticism

Somewhat related to reader-response criticism are a number of approaches to the New Testament that seek to explore how these writings might be interpreted when they are read from particular ideological perspectives. Varieties of feminist criticism expound what different books or passages mean when read from a feminist point of view. A related field called “womanist criticism” interprets texts from the specific perspective of African American women, and a developing field called “mujerista criticism” does the same from the perspective of Latin American women. “Postcolonial criticism” brings to the fore interpretations from the perspectives of marginalized and oppressed peoples of the world, especially those in Asia, Africa, or Latin America. These approaches and others like them (Marxist, Jungian, etc.) seek to put forward interpretations that other scholars may have missed due to the limitations of their own, usually unacknowledged, ideological perspectives. They also ask questions about the ideological perspectives of the biblical authors themselves, and they seek to expose ideological assumptions that may be inherent in texts produced in particular cultures and contexts.

Deconstruction

The approach to texts called “deconstruction” is a rather extreme mode of interpretation that arose in the late twentieth century and became popular with scholars influenced by postmodern philosophy. It attempts to demonstrate that all proposed interpretations are ideological constructs that have no objective claim to legitimacy. The process of interpretation inevitably privileges certain possibilities at the expense of others. Thus postmodern scholars often claim that interpretation reveals more about the interpreter than it does about the text, and they employ the method of deconstruction to demonstrate that proposed interpretations of any given text depend on subjective criteria: they may be correct interpretations from a particular point of view, but any number of other interpretations would have to be considered equally valid. From the postmodern perspective, meaning in any absolute sense is unobtainable. Still, interpreters can “play”with texts, and this might be worthwhile if they learn things about themselves and about other interpreters in the process. Positively, deconstruction often brings to the fore neglected possibilities for biblical meaning and raises questions regarding why those avenues have not been more thoroughly explored.

Exegesis and Hermeneutics

Biblical scholars sometimes make a distinction between exegesis and hermeneutics. The first term, exegesis, refers to scholarly study of the Bible with an emphasis on the actual explication of texts; the academic approaches described above involve the use of exegetical methods. The second term, hermeneutics, refers more broadly to philosophical reflection on the process of interpretation, including consideration of questions regarding what the goal of interpretation should be, and of the various ways in which biblical passages might be regarded as meaningful or authoritative. Should the New Testament be studied as a collection of historical documents to determine what they reveal about the origins of Christian religion? Should it be analyzed and evaluated for its aesthetic and artistic qualities? Should it be approached as a resource for the development of religious dogma? Should it be studied (academically) as Scripture, as a book that reveals the very thoughts of God, and if so, what does that mean? One person might believe that the New Testament is the inerrant word of God; another might regard it as containing books that retain the marks of both divine inspiration and human fallibility. Clearly, interpretation of the New Testament can be affected by the different hermeneutical assumptions that interpreters make regarding these writings.

One of the most common mistakes that students make when they are new to the field of academic biblical studies is to associate particular exegetical methods with specific hermeneutical stances. Here are some examples: (1) a student reads a book by an archaeologist who claims to provide evidence that certain biblical

stories are factual and correct, so the student concludes that archaeology typically is used by scholars who want to prove the accuracy of biblical narratives; (2) a student reads a book by a redaction critic who claims that the Gospel authors edited their source material in ways that reveal they had inconsistent and competing agendas, so the student concludes that redaction criticism typically is used by scholars who want to emphasize contradictory points in Scripture; (3) a student reads a book by a rhetorical critic who maintains that Paul’s argument in a particular letter is so persuasive it should be accepted by everyone today, so the student concludes that rhetorical criticism typically is used by scholars who want to encourage readers to accept what the biblical authors taught as being valid for our time; and (4) a student reads a book by a narrative critic who regards the Gospels as fictional tales, so the student concludes that narrative criticism typically is used by scholars who do not think that the Gospels offer historically accurate accounts of first-century events.

All of these conclusions are false. All the exegetical methods and academic disciplines described above are used by people who operate with different hermeneutical assumptions and interests. The methods themselves are simply tools that are employed for very different purposes by people with different attitudes and goals. The beginning student must be careful not to evaluate the legitimacy or value of a method based on limited exposure to its employment. Furthermore, most scholars use these methods in combination with one another; they examine a text with one approach to answer one set of questions and with another approach to answer a different set of questions.