This document provides an overview of biblical hermeneutics and various methods of biblical criticism including form criticism, source criticism, redaction criticism, and newer approaches like narrative criticism and reader-response criticism. It discusses how these methods seek to understand the Bible from historical, source, and reader-oriented perspectives. The document also notes how understandings of the book of Ezekiel have changed from viewing it as the product of a single author to acknowledging various sources and now focusing on its literary unity and relationship between text and reader.

1. REL404 Exploring Faith
Introduction to the Old Testament
Session 2
Dr Clint Heacock
www.preachersforum.org

2. Learning Outcomes
1.Explore various critical views
of biblical studies.
2.Understand the aims behind
these various methods.
3.Evaluate them for your own
studies and preaching where
and when appropriate.

3. What are you attempting to
accomplish when you read the
Bible?
• Does the answer to that
question change if you are
reading the Bible for...
• the preparation of a sermon?
• devotional reading for
yourself?
• preparing to teach it to a
class?
• writing an exegesis of a
passage?

4. Bible Study Methods
•What is meant by the term
‘hermeneutics’?
•“Hermeneutics explores how we
read, understand, and handle
texts, especially those written
in another time or in a context
of life different than our own.
•Biblical hermeneutics
investigates more specifically
how we read, understand, apply,
and respond to biblical texts.”
(Thiselton, Hermeneutics: An Introduction, 1).

5. • Should hermeneutics be thought
of as applying rigid ‘rules of
interpretation’ to the Bible?
• What does this notion of
‘rules’ do for those
Christians who are committed
to a notion of an inerrant
text, yet who admit that
biblical authors (and
Christian interpreters!) are
fallible humans?

6. Biblical
Text
the Bible a ‘flat’ text or more 3-dimension
How can we explore those other dimensions?

7. Historical Criticism
• What is meant by the term
‘historical biblical
criticism’?
• Should we approach historical
criticism as a negative or a
positive?
• We will briefly examine 3
types of historical criticism:
form, source and redaction
criticism.

8. •
Form Criticism the
Form criticism is associated with
German scholar Hermann Gunkel (1862-
1932).
• Gunkel sought to analyze biblical
literary forms in order to rediscover
the history of their development.
• It explores how the various stories from
eyewitness (oral) accounts were passed
on and shaped in the time period prior
to when the books were committed to
writing.
• Each literary type or genre emerges from
a specific setting in the life of a
people (Sitz Im Leben).

9. • Appeared in the 17-18th centuries
Source Criticism
when scholars began reading the
Bible from an Enlightenment (more
secular) perspective.
• Alleged contradictions,
repetitions, doublets and apparent
changes in the text were explained
by the presence of written sources
that lay behind--and pre-dated--the
OT texts.
• This discipline seeks to
reconstruct the historical context
of the written sources used by OT
authors, as well as tracing the
history of ancient Israel and its

10. Redaction Criticism
• Served as a needed corrective to
some of the imbalances and
speculations of form criticism.
• Explores the theology and values of
the actual writer/editors as they
put their own unique account
together utilizing both written and
oral sources in the editing
process.
• Seeks to understand how and why the
biblical authors/editors put the
final text together in the ways
they did, and treats them as

11. Newer Approaches
• Narrative Criticism
• Rhetorical Criticism
• Reader-Response Criticism
• Feminist Criticism
• Marxist Criticism
• Post-Colonial Readings
• Etc.

12. Where is meaning located?
In?
Behind? Front?
•Feminist
•Source •Feminist
•Marxist
•Source
•Form •Marxist
•Form •Reader-
•Redaction •Reader-
response
•Redaction
Criticism •Narrative response
Criticism •Narrative
•Rhetorical
•Rhetorical
Criticism
Criticism

13. • The history of Ezekiel studies roughly
Ezekiel Studies
correlates to these three possible
‘worlds of meaning.’
• Pre-and turn of the century, the book
was read uncritically as ‘the product of
a single mind’: Ezekiel the prophet.
• Turn of the century to the mid-1950s,
scholars applied increasingly radical
historical criticism to the text of
Ezekiel (behind the text).
• Post 1950s-present has resulted in a
more balanced view: while not
discounting its various sources,
scholars are viewing the text as a
literary unity and also are exploring
the dynamics between the text and the

14. Reflection
1.How does this information
impact the ways in which you
view and read Scripture?
2.Does this information change
your perspective on the
‘single author’ view of OT
texts?
3.What does the potential impact
of differing critical methods
have on your preaching of OT
texts?