Biblical Higher Criticism

Some Definitions

Historical criticism or Higher criticism is a branch of literary analysis that investigates the origins of a text: as applied in biblical studies it naturally investigates foremost the books of the Bible.

In contrast with the Higher criticism the Lower criticism is a branch of philology or bibliography that is concerned with the identification and removal of errors from texts and manuscripts. Ancient manuscripts often have errors or alterations made by scribes, who copied the manuscripts by hand. The textual critic seeks to determine the original text of a document or a collection of documents, which the critic believes to come as close as possible to a lost original (called the archetype), or some other version of a text as it existed—or was intended to exist—in the past. This term is used in contrast with higher criticism, which is the endeavor to establish the authorship, date and place of composition of the text. Higher criticism is used in contrast with Lower criticism (or textual criticism), the endeavor to determine what a text originally said before it was altered (through error or intent). Once lower critics have done their job and we have a good idea of what the original text looked like, higher critics can then compare this text with the writing of other authors.  

 Higher criticism treats the Bible as a text created by human beings at a particular historical time and for various human motives, in contrast with the treatment of the Bible as the inerrant word of God. Lower criticism is used for attempts to interpret Biblical texts based only on the internal evidence from the texts themselves. As an example, consider the treatment of Noah’s Ark in various editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica. In the first edition, in 1771, the story of Noah and the Ark is treated as essentially factual, and the following scientific evidence is offered, “…Buteo and Kircher have proved geometrically, that, taking the common cubit as a foot and a half, the ark was abundantly sufficient for all the animals supposed to be lodged in it…, the number of species of animals will be found much less than is generally imagined, not amounting to an hundred species of quadrupeds… .”  By the eighth edition, however, the encyclopedia says of the Noah story, “The insuperable difficulties connected with the belief that all other existing species of animals were provided for in the ark are obviated by adopting the suggestion of Bishop Stillingfleet, approved by Matthew Poole…and others, that the Deluge did not extend beyond the region of the earth then inhabited…” By the ninth edition, in 1875, there is no attempt to reconcile the Noah story with scientific fact, and it is presented without comment. In the 1960 edition, in the article Ark, we find the following, “Before the days of “higher criticism” and the rise of the modern scientific views as to the origin of the species, there was much discussion among the learned, and many ingenious and curious theories were advanced, as to the number of animals on the ark…” [1]

History of Higher criticism. The phrase “the higher criticism” became popular in Europe from the mid-18th century to the early 20th century, to describe the work of such scholars as Jean Astruc (mid-18th cent.), Johann Salomo Semler (1725-91), Johann Gottfried Eichhorn (1752-1827), Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792-1860), and Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918). [2]  In academic circles today, this is the body of work properly considered “the higher criticism“, though the phrase is sometimes applied to earlier or later work using similar methods. Higher criticism originally referred to the work of German Biblical scholars, of the Tübingen School. After the path-breaking work on the New Testament by Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), the next generation which included scholars such as David Friedrich Strauss (1808–74) and Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–72) in the mid-nineteenth century analyzed the historical records of the Middle East from Christian and Old Testament times in search of independent confirmation of events related in the Bible. These latter scholars built on the tradition of Enlightenment and Rationalist thinkers such as John Locke, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Gotthold Lessing, Gottlieb Fichte, Georg Hegel and the French rationalists.

The questions of higher criticism are widely recognized by Orthodox Jews and many traditional Christians as legitimate questions, yet they often find the answers given by the higher critics unsatisfactory or even heretical. In particular, religious conservatives object to the rationalistic and naturalistic presuppositions of a large number of practitioners of higher criticism that lead to conclusions that conservative religionists find unacceptable.

Nonetheless, conservative Bible scholars practice their own form of higher criticism within their supernaturalist and confessional frameworks. In contrast, other biblical scholars believe that the evidence uncovered by higher criticism undermines such confessional frameworks. In addition, religiously liberal Christians and religiously liberal Jews typically maintain that belief in God has nothing to do with the authorship of the Torah (Pentateuch).

Findings of Higher Criticism versus My Position

Torah (Pentateuch – The Law). The Torah (Hebrew: ????; translated: doctrine, teaching) has been revered as the inspired word(s) of God, as it is said by tradition to have been revealed to Moses by Him. The Torah is sometimes referred to as the (written) Law or written Torah. The Torah is the first part of the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, and is made up of five books. For that reason it is also called the Chumash, or “the Five Books of Moses”.

NOTES:

[1]  All quotations from the article “Ark” in the 1960 Encyclopedia Britannica
[2]  cited from The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2007