Biblical criticism, narrative criticism and the contribution of scholarship

Overview

Biblical criticism, textual criticism and form criticism.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What is meant by biblical criticism?

   Model answer

   Biblical criticism is the disciplined study of a text using historical and literary methods to ask how it came to be, what kind of writing it is, and what it means.

2. 2

   What is textual criticism, and give one example of its importance for the Synoptic Gospels.

   Model answer

   Textual criticism compares surviving manuscripts to establish the wording of a text, and it is what shows that the last twelve verses of Mark are missing from the oldest copies.

3. 3

   What is form criticism?

   Model answer

   Form criticism classifies the small units of the gospel tradition by their literary form, such as pronouncement stories, miracle stories, parables and sayings, and asks what use each form had in the life of the early Church.

4. 4

   Name three scholars associated with form criticism.

   Model answer

   Karl Ludwig Schmidt, Martin Dibelius and Rudolf Bultmann are the scholars most associated with the rise of form criticism.

5. 5

   What is meant by the Sitz im Leben of a unit of tradition?

   Model answer

   The Sitz im Leben is the setting in the life of the community, such as preaching, catechesis, worship or controversy, in which a unit of tradition was used and by which its form was shaped.

6. 6

   Give two criticisms of form criticism.

   Model answer

   Form critics have been charged with assuming that the community created material rather than preserved it, and with reasoning in a circle by dating a passage from a form whose history is itself reconstructed from those passages.

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