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125-518: Critical biblical scholars understand the two sets of laws to have different authorship. Early scholars, adopting a proposal of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , contrasted the "Ritual" Decalogue with the "Ethical" Decalogue of Exodus 20:2–17 and Deuteronomy 5:6–21 , which are the texts more generally known as the Ten Commandments. Believing that the Bible reflected a shift over time from an emphasis on

250-413: A broader spectrum of worldviews and perspectives into the field, and other academic disciplines, e.g. Near Eastern studies and philology , formed new methods of biblical criticism. Meanwhile, postmodern and post-critical interpretations began questioning whether biblical criticism even had a role or function at all. With these new methods came new goals, as biblical criticism moved from the historical to

375-579: A central role in their task of producing a standard version of the Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew text they produced stabilized by the end of the second century, and has come to be known as the Masoretic text . The two main processes of textual criticism are recension and emendation : Jerome McGann says these methods innately introduce a subjective factor into textual criticism despite its attempt at objective rules. Alan Cooper discusses this difficulty using

500-551: A covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you are going, or it will become a snare among you. 13 You shall tear down their altars, break their pillars, and cut down their sacred poles 14 (for you shall worship no other god, because the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God). 15 You shall not make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, for when they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to their gods, someone among them will invite you, and you will eat of

625-478: A fragmentary nature. ) These texts were all written by hand, by copying from another handwritten text, so they are not alike in the manner of printed works. The differences between them are called variants. A variant is simply any variation between two texts. Many variants are simple misspellings or mis-copying. For example, a scribe might drop one or more letters, skip a word or line, write one letter for another, transpose letters, and so on. Some variants represent

750-547: A long-term effect. They made a lasting change in the practice of biblical criticism by making it clear it could exist independently of theology and faith. His work also showed biblical criticism could serve its own ends, be governed solely by rational criteria, and reject deference to religious tradition. Reimarus's central question, "How political was Jesus?", continues to be debated by theologians and historians such as Wolfgang Stegemann  [ de ] , Gerd Theissen and Craig S. Keener . In addition to overseeing

875-576: A new set, with a set of commandments, the Ritual Decalogue, resembling the first. Under this reconstruction another writer, the Priestly source , later took offence at parts of JE, and rewrote it, dropping the story of the golden calf, and replacing the Ritual Decalogue with a new (ethical) decalogue initially based on it, but taking commandments from elsewhere as well, and replacing the Covenant Code with

1000-601: A number of works, mainly by the Rishonim , that attempt to enumerate 613 commandments. Probably the most famous of these is Sefer Hamitzvot by Maimonides . The Biblical mitzvot are referred to in the Talmud as mitzvot d'oraita , translated as commandments of the Law (Torah) . In addition, rabbis of later generations decreed a number of additional laws, which are known as rabbinic laws ( mitzvot derabbanan ). Types of rabbinic laws include

1125-440: A renewed interest in the quest for the historical Jesus which primarily involved writing versions of the life of Jesus. Important scholars of this quest included David Strauss (1808–1874), whose Life of Jesus used a mythical interpretation of the gospels to undermine their historicity. The book was culturally significant because it contributed to weakening church authority, and it was theologically significant because it challenged

1250-456: A response from Semler in 1779: Beantwortung der Fragmente eines Ungenannten (Answering the Fragments of an Unknown). Schweitzer records that Semler "rose up and slew Reimarus in the name of scientific theology". Respect for Semler temporarily repressed the dissemination and study of Reimarus's work, but Semler's response had no long-term effect. Reimarus's writings, on the other hand, did have

1375-450: A result, Semler is often called the father of historical-critical research. "Despite the difference in attitudes between the thinkers and the historians [of the German enlightenment], all viewed history as the key ... in their search for understanding". Communications scholar James A. Herrick (b. 1954) says that even though most scholars agree that biblical criticism evolved out of

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1500-466: A scribal attempt to simplify or harmonize, by changing a word or a phrase. The exact number of variants is disputed, but the more texts survive, the more likely there will be variants of some kind. Variants are not evenly distributed throughout any set of texts. Charting the variants in the New Testament shows it is 62.9 percent variant-free. The impact of variants on the reliability of a single text

1625-610: A vast new law code, placed after the Decalogue for narrative reasons, most of which forms the greater part of the mitzvot in Leviticus . The reconstruction then suggests that a century later yet another writer, the Deuteronomist , objected to the Priestly source, and rewrote it yet again, but in a different style: that of a series of flashbacks, producing a second slightly different copy of

1750-485: A year], and 248 positive commands, corresponding to the number of the members [bones covered with flesh] of a man's body. However, this opinion was not universally accepted. Abraham ibn Ezra observed that there were over a thousand divine commandments in the Bible, but fewer than 300 applied to his time. Nachmanides found that the number was in dispute and uncertain. The number 613 is a rabbinical tradition rather than an exact count. In rabbinic literature there are

1875-530: Is generally focused on identifying sources of a single text. For example, the seventeenth-century French priest Richard Simon (1638–1712) was an early proponent of the theory that Moses could not have been the single source of the entire Pentateuch. According to Simon, parts of the Old Testament were not written by individuals at all, but by scribes recording the community's oral tradition. The French physician Jean Astruc presumed in 1753 that Moses had written

2000-525: Is impossible to be certain about anything. Yet according to Sanders, "we know quite a lot" about Jesus. While scholars rarely agree about what is known or unknown about the historical Jesus, according to Witherington, scholars do agree that "the historic questions should not be dodged". Theologian David R. Law writes that biblical scholars usually employ textual , source , form , and redaction criticism together. The Old Testament (the Hebrew Bible), and

2125-444: Is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, 6 but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments. 7 You shall not make wrongful use of

2250-563: Is most often attributed by scholars to the German Enlightenment ( c.  1650  – c.  1800 ), but some trace its roots back further, to the Reformation . Its principal scholarly influences were rationalist and Protestant in orientation; German pietism played a role in its development, as did British deism . Against the backdrop of Enlightenment-era skepticism of biblical and church authority, scholars began to study

2375-552: Is no biblical source for the obligation to keep rabbinic mitzvot. In addition, many of the specific details of the Biblical mitzvot are only derived via rabbinical application of the Oral Torah (Mishna/Gemarah); for example, the three daily prayers in any language and the recitation of the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-7) twice a day in any language, the binding of the tefillin and the fixing of

2500-417: Is their highest inner purpose, while for others, religion is a more exterior practice – a tool to accomplish other purposes more important to the individual, such as political or economic goals. Recognition of this distinction now forms part of the modern field of cognitive science of religion . Semler argued for an end to all doctrinal assumptions, giving historical criticism its nonsectarian character. As

2625-508: Is usually tested by comparing it to a manuscript whose reliability has been long established. Though many new early manuscripts have been discovered since 1881, there are critical editions of the Greek New Testament , such as NA28 and UBS5, that "have gone virtually unchanged" from these discoveries. "It also means that the fourth century 'best texts', the 'Alexandrian' codices Vaticanus and Sinaiticus , have roots extending throughout

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2750-465: The takkanah and the gezeirah . Medieval rabbis discussed the question of why a Jew should be required to follow rabbinic mitzvot, as they were not commanded by God, but rather by the rabbis. According to Maimonides , one who keeps rabbinic mitzvot is in fact following a Biblical commandment to obey the decisions of the Jewish religious authorities ( Deut. 17:11 , 32:7 ) According to Nahmanides , there

2875-497: The 613 Biblical commandments , form a total of 620, corresponding to the numerical value of the phrase Keter Torah ("The Crown of the Torah"). The commandments have been divided also into three general categories: mishpatim; edot; and chukim. Mishpatim ("laws") include commandments that are deemed to be self-evident, such as not to murder and not to steal. Edot ("testimonies") commemorate important events in Jewish history. For example,

3000-491: The Hebrew word mitzvah ( / ˈ m ɪ t s v ə / ; Hebrew : מִצְוָה , mīṣvā [mit͡sˈva] , plural מִצְווֹת mīṣvōt [mit͡sˈvot] ; "commandment") refers to a commandment from God to be performed as a religious duty. Jewish law ( halakha ) in large part consists of discussion of these commandments. According to religious tradition, there are 613 such commandments . In its secondary meaning,

3125-462: The Hebrew Bible . The tradition that the number is 613 is first recorded in the 3rd century CE, when Rabbi Simlai claimed it in a sermon, perhaps to make the point that a person should observe the Torah every day with his whole body. Rabbi Simlai gave as a sermon ( darash Rabi Simlai ): 613 commandments were communicated to Moses, 365 negative commands, corresponding to the number of solar days [in

3250-491: The Sefer Hachinuch calls "constant mitzvot": "We have six mitzvot which are perpetual and constant, applicable at all times, all the days of our lives". In rabbinic thought, the commandments are usually divided into two major groups, positive commandments (obligations) – mitzvot aseh [ מצות עשה ‎] and negative commandments (prohibitions) – mitzvot lo ta'aseh [ מצות לא תעשה ‎]. The system describing

3375-610: The Septuagint (the ancient Greek version of the Hebrew texts) and still others are closer to the Samaritan Pentateuch . This has raised the question of whether or not there is such a thing as an "original text". If there is no original text, the entire purpose of textual criticism is called into question. New Testament scholar Joachim Jeremias (1900–1979) used linguistics, and Jesus's first-century Jewish environment, to interpret

3500-499: The Shabbat is said to testify to the story that Hashem created the world in six days and rested on the seventh day and declared it holy. Chukim ("decrees") are commandments with no known rationale, and are perceived as pure manifestations of the Divine will. The commandments are divided into positive ("thou shalt") and negative ("thou shalt not") commandments. According to Jewish tradition,

3625-541: The Tent of Meeting . Rabbi Akiva , on the other hand, was of the opinion that they were all given on Mount Sinai, repeated in the Tent of Meeting, and declared a third time by Moses before his death. According to the Midrash , all divine commandments were given on Mount Sinai, and no prophet could add any new ones. Out of the 613 Mitzvot mentioned in the Torah, there are six mitzvot which

3750-570: The Wolfenbüttel Fragments. Reimarus distinguished between what Jesus taught and how he is portrayed in the New Testament. According to Reimarus, Jesus was a political Messiah who failed at creating political change and was executed by the Roman state as a dissident. His disciples then stole the body and invented the story of the resurrection for personal gain. Albert Schweitzer in The Quest of

3875-403: The book of Genesis , using the hereditary accounts of the Hebrew people. Biblical criticism is often said to have begun when Astruc borrowed methods of textual criticism (used to investigate Greek and Roman texts) and applied them to the Bible in search of those original accounts. Astruc believed that, through this approach, he had identified the separate sources that were edited together into

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4000-483: The doctrine of justification . Albrecht Ritschl 's challenge to orthodox atonement theory continues to influence Christian thought. Nineteenth-century biblical critics "thought of themselves as continuing the aims of the Protestant Reformation". According to Robert M. Grant and David Tracy , "One of the most striking features of the development of biblical interpretation during the nineteenth century

4125-512: The festival of weeks , the first fruits of wheat harvest, and the festival of ingathering at the turn of the year. 23 Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Lord God, the God of Israel. 24 For I will cast out nations before you, and enlarge your borders; no one shall covet your land when you go up to appear before the Lord your God three times in the year. 25 You shall not offer

4250-420: The mezuzah (Deuteronomy 6:8-9), and the saying of Grace After Meals (Deuteronomy 8:10). Seven notable mitzvot d'rabbanan are as follows: These seven rabbinical commandments are treated like Biblical commandments insofar as, prior to the performance of each, a benediction is recited ("Blessed are You, O L ORD our God, King of the universe, Who has commanded us ..."). In gematria , these seven, added to

4375-659: The "process of the emancipation of reason from the Bible ... runs parallel with the emancipation of Christianity from the Jews". In the previous century, Semler had been the first Enlightenment Protestant to call for the "de-Judaizing" of Christianity. While taking a stand against discrimination in society, Semler also wrote theology that was strongly negative toward the Jews and Judaism. He saw Christianity as something that 'superseded' all that came before it. This stark contrast between Judaism and Christianity produced increasingly antisemitic sentiments. Supersessionism , instead of

4500-554: The 1970s. N. T. Wright asserts that the third quest began with the Jesus Seminar in 1988. By then, it became necessary to acknowledge that "the upshot of the first two quests   ... was to reveal the frustrating limitations of the historical study of any ancient person". According to Ben Witherington , probability is all that is possible in this pursuit. Paul Montgomery in The New York Times writes that "Through

4625-614: The 613 commandments contain 365 negative commandments and 248 positive commandments. Many commandments concern only special classes of people – such as kings, Kohanim (the priesthood), Levites , or Nazarites  – or are conditioned by local or temporary circumstances of the Jewish nation, as, for instance, the agricultural, sacrificial, and Levitical laws. Some are sex-dependent: for example, women are exempt from certain time-related commandments (such as shofar , sukkah , lulav , tzitzit and tefillin ). Three types of negative commandments fall under

4750-423: The Bible can be rationally interpreted from many different perspectives. In turn, this awareness changed biblical criticism's central concept from the criteria of neutral judgment to that of beginning from a recognition of the various biases the reader brings to the study of the texts. There is no general agreement among scholars on how to periodize the various quests for the historical Jesus. Most scholars agree

4875-445: The Bible where the phrase Ten Commandments identifies an explicit set of commandments. While Orthodox Judaism and Christianity hold that both sets of tablets contained the same ten commandments, some scholars identify verses 11-26 as an alternate "ten commandments" which they call the "ritual" decalogue. For these scholars, the terms "ritual decalogue" and "ethical decalogue" are a way of distinguishing between alternate inscriptions of

5000-427: The Bible's theological relevance began. Karl Barth (1886–1968), Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976), and others moved away from concern over the historical Jesus and concentrated instead on the kerygma : the message of the New Testament. Most scholars agree that Bultmann is one of the "most influential theologians of the twentieth-century", but that he also had a "notorious reputation for his de-mythologizing" which

5125-475: The Bible. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, biblical criticism was influenced by a wide range of additional academic disciplines and theoretical perspectives which led to its transformation. Having long been dominated by white male Protestant academics, the twentieth century saw others such as non-white scholars, women, and those from the Jewish and Catholic traditions become prominent voices in biblical criticism. Globalization introduced

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5250-502: The Church later changed into its own dogmatic form. Tindal's view of Christianity as a "mere confirmation of natural religion and his resolute denial of the supernatural" led him to conclude that "revealed religion is superfluous". British deism was also an influence on the philosopher and writer Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) in developing his criticism of revelation. The biblical scholar Johann David Michaelis (1717–1791) advocated

5375-522: The Ethical Decalogue inscribed for a second time. The documentary hypothesis claims that the Jahwist and Elohist texts were first combined by a redactor, producing a text referred to simply as JE , in such a way that it now reads that God dictated the Covenant Code, which was written onto stone, Moses subsequently smashing these stones at the incident of the golden calf, and thus having to go back and get

5500-481: The Ethical Decalogue, and re-introducing the golden calf. Presented with such divergent versions of the same event, a later redactor is thought to have combined all three versions – JE, the Priestly source, and Deuteronomist, together. JE and the Priestly source were interleaved together, altering JE so that it was now the Ethical Decalogue which was written on the first set of tablets and subsequently destroyed. The alteration, by careful juxtaposition, subtly implied that

5625-497: The German Enlightenment, there are some historians of biblical criticism that have found "strong direct links" with British deism . Herrick references the German theologian Henning Graf Reventlow (1929–2010) as linking deism with the humanist world view , which has been significant in biblical criticism. Matthew Tindal (1657–1733), as part of British deism, asserted that Jesus taught an undogmatic natural religion that

5750-451: The Greek name for the Ten Commandments, δέκα λόγοι ( déka lógoi ; "ten terms"), a translation of the Hebrew עשרת הדברים ( aseret ha-dvarîm "the ten items/terms"). The Ritual Decalogue is framed in the context of God making a covenant with Israel: Assuming that Moses is being commanded to write down the content of verses 15-26 on the new tablets, this would be the only place in

5875-564: The Historic Biblical Christ . It critiqued the quest's methodology, with a reminder of the limits of historical inquiry, saying it is impossible to separate the historical Jesus from the Jesus of faith, since Jesus is only known through documents about him as Christ the Messiah. The Old Quest was not considered closed until Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) wrote Von Reimarus zu Wrede which

6000-480: The Historical Jesus , acknowledges that Reimarus's work "is a polemic, not an objective historical study", while also referring to it as "a masterpiece of world literature." According to Schweitzer, Reimarus was wrong in his assumption that Jesus's end-of-world eschatology was "earthly and political in character" but was right in viewing Jesus as an apocalyptic preacher, as evidenced by his repeated warnings about

6125-752: The Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it. 12 Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. 13 You shall not murder. 14 You shall not commit adultery. 15 You shall not steal. 16 You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. 17 You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. 7 you shall have no other gods before me. 8 You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in

6250-403: The New Testament textual families were Alexandrian (also called the "Neutral text"), Western (Latin translations), and Eastern (used by churches centred on Antioch and Constantinople ). Forerunners of modern textual criticism can be found in both early Rabbinic Judaism and in the early church . Rabbis addressed variants in the Hebrew texts as early as 100CE. Tradition played

6375-453: The New Testament, as distinct bodies of literature, each raise their own problems of interpretation - the two are therefore generally studied separately. For purposes of discussion, these individual methods are separated here and the Bible is addressed as a whole, but this is an artificial approach that is used only for the purpose of description, and is not how biblical criticism is actually practiced. Textual criticism involves examination of

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6500-518: The New Testament. The biblical theology movement of the 1950s produced debate between Old Testament and New Testament scholars over the unity of the Bible. The rise of redaction criticism closed this debate by bringing about a greater emphasis on diversity. The New quest for the historical Jesus began in 1953 and was so-named in 1959 by James M. Robinson. After 1970, biblical criticism began to change radically and pervasively. New criticism , which developed as an adjunct to literary criticism,

6625-567: The Ritual Decalogue and Covenant Code. There are essentially two positions, neither of which is decisively supported, either by evidence, or by number of scholars: The documentary hypothesis identifies the Ritual Decalogue as the work of the Jahwist , from the Kingdom of Judah , and the Covenant Code as that of the Elohist , from the Kingdom of Israel , both writing independently. It does not however answer

6750-410: The ages scholars and laymen have taken various positions on the life of Jesus, ranging from total acceptance of the Bible to assertions that Jesus of Nazareth is a creature of myth and never lived." Sanders explains that, because of the desire to know everything about Jesus, including his thoughts and motivations, and because there are such varied conclusions about him, it seems to many scholars that it

6875-400: The blood of my sacrifice with leaven, and the sacrifice of the festival of the passover shall not be left until the morning. 26 The best of the first fruits of your ground you shall bring to the house of the Lord your God. You shall not boil a kid in its mother's milk. 3 Do not have any other gods before me. 4 You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that

7000-542: The book of Genesis (the first book of the Pentateuch) using ancient documents; he attempted to identify these original sources and to separate them again. He did this by identifying repetitions of certain events, such as parts of the flood story that are repeated three times, indicating the possibility of three sources. He discovered that the alternation of two different names for God occurs in Genesis and up to Exodus 3 but not in

7125-499: The book of Genesis. The existence of separate sources explained the inconsistent style and vocabulary of Genesis, discrepancies in the narrative, differing accounts and chronological difficulties, while still allowing for Mosaic authorship. Astruc's work was the genesis of biblical criticism, and because it has become the template for all who followed, he is often called the "Father of Biblical criticism". The questioning of religious authority common to German Pietism contributed to

7250-461: The destruction of Jerusalem and the end of time. This eschatological approach to understanding Jesus has since become universal in modern biblical criticism. Schweitzer also comments that, since Reimarus was a historian and not a theologian or a biblical scholar, he "had not the slightest inkling" that source criticism would provide the solution to the problems of literary consistency that Reimarus had raised. Reimarus's controversial work garnered

7375-400: The divinity of Christ . In The Essence of Christianity (1900), Adolf Von Harnack (1851–1930) described Jesus as a reformer. William Wrede (1859–1906) rejected all the theological aspects of Jesus and asserted that the "messianic secret" of Jesus as Messiah emerged only in the early community and did not come from Jesus himself. Ernst Renan (1823–1892) promoted the critical method and

7500-486: The early twentieth century. George Ricker Berry says the term "higher criticism", which is sometimes used as an alternate name for historical criticism, was first used by Eichhorn in his three-volume work Einleitung ins Alte Testament (Introduction to the Old Testament) published between 1780 and 1783. The term was originally used to differentiate higher criticism, the term for historical criticism, from lower, which

7625-446: The entire third century and even into the second". Variants are classified into families . Say scribe 'A' makes a mistake and scribe 'B' does not. Copies of scribe 'A's text with the mistake will thereafter contain that same mistake. Over time the texts descended from 'A' that share the error, and those from 'B' that do not share it, will diverge further, but later texts will still be identifiable as descended from one or

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7750-446: The example of Amos 6.12 which reads: "Does one plough with oxen?" The obvious answer is "yes", but the context of the passage seems to demand a "no". Cooper explains that a recombination of the consonants allows it to be read "Does one plough the sea with oxen?" The amendment has a basis in the text, which is believed to be corrupted, but is nevertheless a matter of personal judgment. This contributes to textual criticism being one of

7875-501: The first concerning the origins of the Pentateuch in the Old Testament ( Wellhausen's hypothesis ); and the second tracing the sources of the four gospels of the New Testament ( two-source hypothesis ). Source criticism's most influential work is Julius Wellhausen 's Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels ( Prologue to the History of Israel , 1878) which sought to establish the sources of

8000-702: The first five books of the Old Testament - collectively known as the Pentateuch. Wellhausen correlated the history and development of those five books with the development of the Jewish faith. The Wellhausen hypothesis (also known as the JEDP theory, or the Documentary hypothesis , or the Graf–Wellhausen hypothesis) proposes that the Pentateuch was combined out of four separate and coherent (unified single) sources (not fragments). Mitzvah In its primary meaning,

8125-497: The first listing of the chronological order of the New Testament texts based on critical scholarship. Many insights in understanding the Bible that began in the nineteenth century continue to be discussed in the twenty-first; in some areas of study, such as linguistic tools, scholars merely appropriate earlier work, while in others they "continue to suppose they can produce something new and better". For example, some modern histories of Israel include historical biblical research from

8250-423: The first quest began with Reimarus and ended with Schweitzer, that there was a "no-quest" period in the first half of the twentieth century, and that there was a second quest, known as the "New" quest that began in 1953 and lasted until 1988 when a third began. However, Stanley E. Porter (b. 1956) calls this periodization "untenable and belied by all of the pertinent facts", arguing that people were searching for

8375-468: The form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 9 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me, 10 but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments. 11 You shall not make wrongful use of

8500-519: The historical Jesus before Reimarus, and that there never has been a period when scholars were not doing so. In 1953, Ernst Käsemann (1906–1998), gave a famous lecture before the Old Marburgers, his former colleagues at the University of Marburg , where he had studied under Bultmann. In this stronghold of support for Bultmann, Käsemann claimed "Bultmann's skepticism about what could be known about

8625-509: The historical Jesus began in 1988. By 1990, biblical criticism as a primarily historical discipline changed into a group of disciplines with often conflicting interests. New perspectives from different ethnicities, feminist theology , Catholicism and Judaism offered insights previously overlooked by the majority of white male Protestants who had dominated biblical criticism from its beginnings. Globalization also introduced different worldviews ; these new points-of-view created awareness that

8750-512: The historical Jesus had been too extreme". Bultmann had claimed that, since the gospel writers wrote theology, their writings could not be considered history, but Käsemann reasoned that one does not necessarily preclude the other. James M. Robinson named this the New quest in his 1959 essay "The New Quest for the Historical Jesus". This quest focused largely on the teachings of Jesus as interpreted by existentialist philosophy. Interest waned again by

8875-613: The historical Jesus is also sometimes referred to as the Old Quest. It began with the publication of Hermann Samuel Reimarus 's work after his death. G. E. Lessing (1729–1781) claimed to have discovered copies of Reimarus's writings in the library at Wolfenbüttel when he was the librarian there. Reimarus had left permission for his work to be published after his death, and Lessing did so between 1774 and 1778, publishing them as Die Fragmente eines unbekannten Autors ( The Fragments of an Unknown Author ). Over time, they came to be known as

9000-410: The historical context of the biblical texts was important to Joachim Camerarius (1500–1574) who wrote a philological study of figures of speech in the biblical texts using their context to understand them. Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) paved the way for comparative religion studies by analyzing New Testament texts in the light of Classical, Jewish and early Christian writings. The first quest for

9125-500: The historical events behind the text as well as the history of how the texts themselves developed. So much biblical criticism has been done as history, and not theology, that it is sometimes called the " historical-critical method " or historical-biblical criticism (or sometimes higher criticism ) instead of just biblical criticism. Biblical critics used the same scientific methods and approaches to history as their secular counterparts and emphasized reason and objectivity. Neutrality

9250-602: The introduction of printing in Germany in the fifteenth century. There are also approximately a million direct New Testament quotations in the collected writings of the Church Fathers of the first four centuries. (As a comparison, the next best-sourced ancient text is the Iliad , presumably written by the ancient Greek Homer in the late eighth or early seventh century BCE, which survives in more than 1,900 manuscripts, though many are of

9375-643: The larger literary units instead. The discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls at Qumran in 1948 renewed interest in archaeology's potential contributions to biblical studies, but it also posed challenges to biblical criticism. For example, the majority of the Dead Sea texts are closely related to the Masoretic Text that the Christian Old Testament is based upon, while other texts bear a closer resemblance to

9500-552: The life of Jesus through a historical lens, breaking with the traditional theological focus on the nature and interpretation of his divinity. This historical turn marked the beginning of the quest for the historical Jesus , which would remain an area of scholarly interest for over 200 years. Historical-biblical criticism includes a wide range of approaches and questions within four major methodologies: textual , source , form , and literary criticism . Textual criticism examines biblical manuscripts and their content to identify what

9625-494: The literary, and its basic premise changed from neutral judgment to a recognition of the various biases the reader brings to the study of the texts. Daniel J. Harrington defines biblical criticism as "the effort at using scientific criteria (historical and literary) and human reason to understand and explain, as objectively as possible, the meaning intended by the biblical writers." The original biblical criticism has been mostly defined by its historical concerns. Critics focused on

9750-400: The midcentury point the denominational composition of biblical critics began to change. This was due to a shift in perception of the critical effort as being possible on the basis of premises other than liberal Protestantism. Redaction criticism also began in the mid-twentieth century. While form criticism had divided the text into small units, redaction emphasized the literary integrity of

9875-540: The modern period". The height of biblical criticism's influence is represented by the history of religions school a group of German Protestant theologians associated with the University of Göttingen . In the late nineteenth century, they sought to understand Judaism and Christianity within the overall history of religion. Other Bible scholars outside the Göttingen school, such as Heinrich Julius Holtzmann (1832–1910), also used biblical criticism. Holtzmann developed

10000-509: The month of Abib you came out from Egypt. 19 All that first opens the womb is mine, all your male livestock, the firstborn of cow and sheep. 20 The firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it you shall break its neck. All the firstborn of your sons you shall redeem. No one shall appear before me empty-handed. 21 For six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even in ploughing time and in harvest time you shall rest. 22 You shall observe

10125-568: The more traditional millennialism , became a common theme in Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette (1780–1849), Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860), David Strauss (1808–1874), Albrecht Ritschl (1822–1889), the history of religions school of the 1890s, and on into the form critics of the twentieth century until World War II . The late-nineteenth century saw

10250-524: The most contentious areas of biblical criticism, as well as the largest, with scholars such as Arthur Verrall referring to it as the "fine and contentious art". It uses specialized methodologies, enough specialized terms to create its own lexicon, and is guided by a number of principles. Yet any of these principles—and their conclusions—can be contested. For example, in the late 1700s, textual critic Johann Jacob Griesbach (1745 – 1812) developed fifteen critical principles for determining which texts are likely

10375-416: The name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name. 12 Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. 13 For six days you shall labour and do all your work. Biblical criticism Modern Biblical criticism (as opposed to pre-Modern criticism) is the use of critical analysis to understand and explain the Bible without appealing to

10500-410: The name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name. 8 Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. 9 For six days you shall labour and do all your work. 10 But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. 11 For in six days

10625-413: The nineteenth century. In 1835, and again in 1845, theologian Ferdinand Christian Baur postulated the apostles Peter and Paul had an argument that led to a split between them thereby influencing the mode of Christianity that followed. This still occasions widespread debate within topics such as Pauline studies, New Testament Studies, early-church studies, Jewish Law, the theology of grace , and

10750-432: The oldest and closest to the original. One of Griesbach's rules is lectio brevior praeferenda : "the shorter reading is to be preferred". This was based on the assumption that scribes were more likely to add to a text than omit from it, making shorter texts more likely to be older. Latin scholar Albert C. Clark challenged Griesbach's view of shorter texts in 1914. Based on his study of Cicero , Clark argued omission

10875-454: The opinions of the Talmudic rabbis are divided between those who seek the purpose of the mitzvot and those who do not question them. The former believe that if people were to understand the reason for each mitzvah , it would help them to observe and perform the mitzvah . The latter argue that if the purpose for each mitzvah could be determined, people might try to achieve what they see as

11000-441: The original text probably said. Source criticism searches the text for evidence of their original sources. Form criticism identifies short units of text seeking the setting of their origination. Redaction criticism later developed as a derivative of both source and form criticism. Each of these methods was primarily historical and focused on what went on before the texts were in their present form. Literary criticism, which emerged in

11125-440: The other because of the presence or absence of that original mistake. The multiple generations of texts that follow, containing the error, are referred to as a "family" of texts. Textual critics study the differences between these families to piece together what the original looked like. Sorting out the wealth of source material is complex, so textual families were sorted into categories tied to geographical areas. The divisions of

11250-402: The past by relating it to our present); and mutual inter-dependence (every event is related to events that proceeded it). Biblical criticism's focus on pure reason produced a paradigm shift that profoundly changed Christian theology concerning the Jews. Anders Gerdmar  [ de ] uses the legal meaning of emancipation, as in free to be an adult on their own recognizance, when he says

11375-640: The practical application of the commandments is known as Halakha . Halakha is the development of the mitzvot as contained in the Written Law (Torah), via discussion and debate in the Oral Law , as recorded in the rabbinic literature of the classical era, especially the Mishnah and the Talmud . The halakha dictates and influences a wide variety of behavior of traditionalist Jews . The majority view of classical rabbis

11500-409: The publication of Reimarus's work, Lessing made contributions of his own, arguing that the proper study of biblical texts requires knowing the context in which they were written. This is now the accepted scholarly view. Professors Richard Soulen and Kendall Soulen write that biblical criticism reached "full flower" in the nineteenth century, becoming the "major transforming fact of biblical studies in

11625-412: The quest's pursuit of the apocalyptic Jesus. Schweitzer concluded that any future research on the historical Jesus was pointless. In the early twentieth century, biblical criticism was shaped by two main factors and the clash between them. First, form criticism arose and turned the focus of biblical criticism from author to genre, and from individual to community. Next, a scholarly effort to reclaim

11750-497: The question of how these texts were related, merely that the Ritual Decalogue circulated in Judah, and the Covenant Code in Israel. What the documentary hypothesis does partly explain is the relationship of the Ritual Decalogue to the Ethical Decalogue, and why, instead of the Ethical Decalogue, it is the Ritual Decalogue which is written on the two tablets when Moses ascends the mountain to have

11875-554: The reader brings to the study of the texts. Newer forms of biblical criticism are primarily literary: no longer focused on the historical, they attend to the text as it exists now. In the Enlightenment era of the European West, philosophers and theologians such as Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), Benedict Spinoza (1632–1677), and Richard Simon (1638–1712) began to question the long-established Judeo-Christian tradition that Moses

12000-496: The relationship between Pauline Christianity and Jewish Christianity in the Pauline epistles . Sanders also advanced study of the historical Jesus by putting Jesus's life in the context of first-century Second-Temple Judaism . In 1974, the theologian Hans Frei published The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative , which became a landmark work leading to the development of post-critical interpretation. The third period of focused study on

12125-426: The rest of the Pentateuch, and he also found apparent anachronisms: statements seemingly from a later time than that in which Genesis was set. This and similar evidence led Astruc to hypothesize that the sources of Genesis were originally separate materials that were later fused into a single unit that became the book of Genesis. Examples of source criticism include its two most influential and well-known theories,

12250-424: The rise of biblical criticism. Rationalism also became a significant influence: Swiss theologian Jean Alphonse Turretin (1671–1737) is an example of the "moderate rationalism" of the era. Turretin believed that the Bible was divine revelation, but insisted that revelation must be consistent with nature and in harmony with reason, "For God who is the author of revelation is likewise the author of reason". What

12375-402: The ritual to the ethical, they argued that the Ritual Decalogue was composed earlier than the Ethical Decalogue. Later scholars have held that they were actually parallel developments, with the Ethical Decalogue a late addition to Exodus copied from Deuteronomy, or that the Ritual Decalogue was the later of the two, a conservative reaction to the secular Ethical Decalogue. A few Bible scholars call

12500-417: The sacrifice. 16 And you will take wives from among their daughters for your sons, and their daughters who prostitute themselves to their gods will make your sons also prostitute themselves to their gods. 17 You shall not make cast idols. 18 You shall keep the festival of unleavened bread . For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, as I commanded you, at the time appointed in the month of Abib; for in

12625-683: The second set of tablets also received the Ethical rather than Ritual Decalogue, despite the text saying, immediately after the Ritual Decalogue, Besides its appearance in Exodus 34:28 , where "[t]raditionally, it is taken as a reference back to the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20", the phrase aseret ha-dvarîm also appears in Deuteronomy 4:13 , where it is associated with the Ten Commandments of Deuteronomy 5, and in Deuteronomy 10:4 . 12 Take care not to make

12750-421: The self-sacrificial principle yehareg ve'al ya'avor , meaning "One should let oneself be killed rather than violate it". These are murder , idolatry , and forbidden sexual relations . For all other commandments, one must violate the commandment if the only alternative is to be killed. According to Rabbi Ishmael , only the principal commandments were given on Mount Sinai , the remainder having been given in

12875-414: The supernatural. During the eighteenth century, when it began as historical-biblical criticism, it was based on two distinguishing characteristics: (1) the scientific concern to avoid dogma and bias by applying a neutral, non-sectarian , reason-based judgment to the study of the Bible, and (2) the belief that the reconstruction of the historical events behind the texts, as well as the history of how

13000-520: The ten commandments. The commandments in the Ritual Decalogue are expanded upon in the Covenant Code , which occurs prior to it in the Torah, and thus have the impression of being a summary of the important points in the Code. The Covenant Code is believed by most scholars of biblical criticism as having originally been a separate text to the Torah, and thus there is much debate as to the relationship between

13125-400: The testimony, and the context of the whole story lead to the plain conclusion that these books were written by another, and not by Moses in person". Jean Astruc (1684–1766), a French physician, believed these critics were wrong about Mosaic authorship . According to Old Testament scholar Edward Young (1907–1968), Astruc believed that Moses assembled the first book of the Pentateuch,

13250-825: The text itself and all associated manuscripts with the aim of determining the original text. It is one of the largest areas of biblical criticism in terms of the sheer amount of information it addresses. The roughly 900 manuscripts found at Qumran include the oldest extant manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible. They represent every book except Esther, though most books appear only in fragmentary form. The New Testament has been preserved in more manuscripts than any other ancient work, having over 5,800 complete or fragmented Greek manuscripts, 10,000 Latin manuscripts and 9,300 manuscripts in various other ancient languages including Syriac , Slavic , Gothic , Ethiopic , Coptic , and Armenian texts. The dates of these manuscripts are generally accepted to range from c.110–125 (the 𝔓 papyrus) to

13375-485: The texts themselves developed, would lead to a correct understanding of the Bible. This sets it apart from earlier, pre-critical methods; from the anti-critical methods of those who oppose criticism-based study; from the post-critical orientation of later scholarship; and from the multiple distinct schools of criticism into which it evolved in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The emergence of biblical criticism

13500-432: The twentieth century, differed from these earlier methods. It focused on the literary structure of the texts as they currently exist, determining, where possible, the author's purpose, and discerning the reader's response to the text through methods such as rhetorical criticism , canonical criticism , and narrative criticism . All together, these various methods of biblical criticism permanently changed how people understood

13625-447: The ultimate purpose of the mitzvah , while rejecting the mitzvah itself. The feminine noun mitzvah ( מִצְוָה ) occurs over 180 times in the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible . The first use is in Genesis 26:5 where God says that Abraham has "obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments ( מִצְוֹתַי mitzvotai ), my statutes, and my laws". In the Septuagint

13750-487: The use of other Semitic languages in addition to Hebrew to understand the Old Testament, and in 1750, wrote the first modern critical introduction to the New Testament. Instead of interpreting the Bible historically, Johann Gottfried Eichhorn (1752–1827), Johann Philipp Gabler (1753–1826), and Georg Lorenz Bauer (1755–1806) used the concept of myth as a tool for interpreting the Bible. Rudolf Bultmann later used this approach, and it became particularly influential in

13875-460: The verses in Exodus 34 the "small Covenant code", as it appears to be a compact version of the Covenant Code in Exodus 20:19 – 23:33 ; they argue the small Covenant code was composed around the same time as the Decalogue of Exodus 20, but either served different functions within Israelite religion, or reflects the influence of other Ancient Near Eastern religious texts. The word decalogue comes from

14000-413: The word mitzvah refers to a deed performed in order to fulfill such a commandment. As such, the term mitzvah has also come to express an individual act of human kindness in keeping with the law. The expression includes a sense of heartfelt sentiment beyond mere legal duty, as "you shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18). For some mitzvot , the purpose is specified in the Torah; though,

14125-491: The word is usually translated with entolē ( ἐντολή ). In Second Temple period funeral inscriptions the epithet phil-entolos , "lover of the commandments", was sometimes inscribed on Jewish tombs. Other words are also used in Hebrew for commands and statutes; the Ten Commandments (עשרת הדיברות), for example, are the "Ten Words". Jewish tradition states that there exist 613 commandments. This number does not appear in

14250-436: Was a more common scribal error than addition, saying "A text is like a traveler who goes from one inn to another losing an article of luggage at each halt". Clark's claims were criticized by those who supported Griesbach's principles. Clark responded, but disagreement continued. Nearly eighty years later, the theologian and priest James Royse took up the case. After close study of multiple New Testament papyri, he concluded Clark

14375-533: Was concerned with the particulars of style. New historicism , a literary theory that views history through literature, also developed. Biblical criticism began to apply new literary approaches such as structuralism and rhetorical criticism , which concentrated less on history and more on the texts themselves. In the 1970s, the New Testament scholar E. P. Sanders (1937–2022) advanced the New Perspective on Paul , which has greatly influenced scholarly views on

14500-484: Was debated around the world. Demythologizing refers to the reinterpretation of the biblical myths (stories) in terms of the existential philosophy of Martin Heidegger (1889–1976). Bultmann claimed myths are "true" anthropologically and existentially but not cosmologically. As a major proponent of form criticism , Bultmann "set the agenda for a subsequent generation of leading NT [New Testament] scholars". Around

14625-582: Was opposed to orthodoxy. Wilhelm Bousset (1865–1920) attained honors in the history of religions school by contrasting what he called the joyful teachings of Jesus's new righteousness and what Bousset saw as the gloomy call to repentance made by John the Baptist . While at Göttingen, Johannes Weiss (1863–1914) wrote his most influential work on the apocalyptic proclamations of Jesus. In 1896, Martin Kähler (1835–1912) wrote The So-called Historical Jesus and

14750-544: Was published in English as The Quest of the Historical Jesus in 1910. In it, Schweitzer scathingly critiqued the various books on the life of Jesus that had been written in the late-nineteenth century as reflecting more of the lives of the authors than Jesus. Schweitzer revolutionized New Testament scholarship at the turn of the century by proving to most of that scholarly world that the teachings and actions of Jesus were determined by his eschatological outlook; he thereby finished

14875-412: Was right, and Griesbach's rule of measure was wrong. Some twenty-first century scholars have advocated abandoning these older approaches to textual criticism in favor of new computer-assisted methods for determining manuscript relationships in a more reliable way. Source criticism is the search for the original sources that form the basis of biblical texts. In Old Testament studies, source criticism

15000-404: Was seen as a defining requirement. By 1990, new perspectives, globalization and input from different academic fields expanded biblical criticism, moving it beyond its original criteria, and changing it into a group of disciplines with different, often conflicting, interests. Biblical criticism's central concept changed from neutral judgment to beginning from a recognition of the various biases

15125-465: Was seen as extreme rationalism followed in the work of Heinrich Paulus (1761–1851) who denied the existence of miracles. Johann Salomo Semler (1725–1791) had attempted in his work to navigate between divine revelation and extreme rationalism by supporting the view that revelation was "divine disclosure of the truth perceived through the depth of human experience". He distinguished between "inward" and "outward" religion: for some people, their religion

15250-645: Was that the commandments will still be applicable and in force during the Messianic Age . However, a significant minority of rabbis held that most of the commandments will be nullified by, or in, the messianic era. Examples of such rabbinic views include: There is no accepted authoritative answer within Judaism as to which mitzvot , if any, would be annulled in the Messianic era. This is a subject of theoretical debate and, not being viewed as an immediately practical question,

15375-520: Was the author of the first five books of the Bible known as the Pentateuch . Spinoza wrote that Moses could not have written the preface to the fifth book, Deuteronomy , since he never crossed the Jordan River into the Promised Land . There were also other problems such as Deuteronomy 31:9 which references Moses in the third person. According to Spinoza: "All these details, the manner of narration,

15500-550: Was the term commonly used for textual criticism at the time. The importance of textual criticism means that the term 'lower criticism' is no longer used much in twenty-first century studies. A twenty–first century view of biblical criticism's origins, that traces it to the Reformation, is a minority position, but the Reformation is the source of biblical criticism's advocacy of freedom from external authority imposing its views on biblical interpretation. Long before Richard Simon,

15625-593: Was the way in which philosophical presuppositions implicitly guided it". Michael Joseph Brown points out that biblical criticism operated according to principles grounded in a distinctively European rationalism. By the end of the nineteenth century, these principles were recognized by Ernst Troeltsch in an essay, Historical and Dogmatic Method in Theology, where he described three principles of biblical criticism: methodological doubt (a way of searching for certainty by doubting everything); analogy (the idea that we understand

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