Knowra Historical-critical method Historical-critical method The historical-critical method studies texts by investigating their historical settings, sources, composition, and transmission. It is especially associated with the critical study of biblical texts.
Textual criticism : The study of textual variants to reconstruct or understand a text’s transmission. It compares surviving manuscripts to examine how a text changed during copying.
Baruch Spinoza : A Dutch philosopher whose 1670 Theological-Political Treatise argued for interpreting scripture through its language and historical context. His account helped establish historical inquiry into scripture as an alternative to relying on revelation alone.
Historical context : The political, social, cultural, and intellectual conditions surrounding an event or text. Reconstructing a text’s setting helps explain its language, concerns, and intended audience.
Documentary hypothesis : A family of theories that explains the Pentateuch as a compilation of sources composed and edited over time. It applies source criticism to explain repetitions, tensions, and shifts in the Torah.
Canonical criticism : An approach that studies how texts function within the shape and authority of a religious canon. It emphasizes the received canonical form, rather than primarily reconstructing earlier compositional stages.
Source criticism : The analysis of a text’s sources and the materials from which it was composed. It asks which earlier documents or traditions a text’s authors used.
Hermann Samuel Reimarus : An eighteenth-century German scholar whose writings questioned traditional accounts of Jesus and Christian origins. His posthumously published work became an early landmark in critical inquiry into the New Testament.
Textual transmission : The copying, editing, translation, and circulation through which a text reaches later readers. Its history is the evidence textual critics use to study a text’s surviving forms.
Synoptic problem : The question of how the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are literarily related. Comparing parallel passages uses source-critical reasoning to propose patterns of dependence.
Narrative criticism : The analysis of a narrative’s plot, characterization, point of view, and other literary features. It treats the text’s final narrative form as its main object of study.
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