Template:Source criticism

Source Criticism, as the term is used in biblical criticism, and its synonym literary criticism, refers to the attempt to establish the sources used by the author and/or redactor of the final text.

Biblical source criticism originated in the 18th century with the work of Jean Astruc, who adapted the methods already developed for investigating the texts of Classical antiquity (Homer's Iliad in particular) to his own investigation into the sources of the book of Genesis. It was subsequently considerably developed by German scholars in what was known as "the Higher Criticism", a term no longer in widespread use. The ultimate aim of these scholars was to reconstruct the history of the biblical text, as well as the religious history of ancient Israel.

In general, the closer a source is to the event which it purports to describe, the more one can trust it to give an accurate description of what really happened. In the Bible where a variety of earlier sources have been quoted, the historian seeks to identify and date those sources used by biblical writers as the first step in evaluating their historical reliability.

In other cases, Bible scholars use the way a text is written (changes in style, vocabulary, repetitions, and the like) to determine what sources may have been used by a biblical author. With some reasonable guesswork it is possible to deduce sources not identified as such (e.g., genealogies). Some inter-biblical sources can be determined by virtue of the fact that the source is still extant; e.g., where Chronicles quotes or retells the accounts of the books of Samuel and Kings.

Related to Source Criticism is Redaction Criticism which seeks to determine how and why the redactor (editor) put the sources together the way he did. Also related is form criticism and tradition history which try to reconstruct the oral prehistory behind the identified written sources.

Famous examples

Tanakh

Also known as the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament.

• The Documentary Hypothesis that posits that the narratives of the Torah consists primarily four sources labeled J, E, D, and P
• The division of the book of Isaiah into original Isaiah, Deutero-Isaiah, and Trito-Isaiah

An example of source criticism is found in the book of Ezra-Nehemiah (typically treated by biblical scholars as one book) where scholars identify four types of source material: letters to and from Persian officials, lists of things, the Ezra memoir (where Ezra speaks in first person), and the Nehemiah Memoir (where Nehemiah speaks in first person). It is thus deduced that the writer of Ezra-Nehemiah had access to these four kinds of source material in putting together his book.

Biblical writers at times mention the sources they used. Among the sources mentioned in the Hebrew Bible are: "The Book of the Acts of Solomon" (1 Kings 11:41), "The Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah" (1 Kings 14:29 and in a number of other places), "The Book of the Chronicles of the kings of Israel." (I Kings 14:19 and in a number of other places), "The Book of Jashar" (Josh 10:12-14, 2 Sam 1:18-27, and possibly to be restored via textual criticism to 1 Kings 8:12), and "The Book of the Wars of the LORD" (Num 21:14).

New Testament

The Synoptic Gospels almost certainly used a lost Q Document. That the Gospel of John used a hypothetical Signs Gospel is possible, but less agreed upon.

Other works

• Codex Junius
• Gospel Book (British Library, MS Royal 1. B. VII)
• Joshua Roll said to be a reduced version of the Septuagint version of the Book of Joshua
• Morgan Beatus
• Codex Calixtinus
• Gospel of Peter