Historical Criticism

Definition and Meaning

Historical criticism is a method of study that analyzes the Bible in the same way as other ancient literature in order to determine the origin and formation of its texts. Here "criticism" does not mean disparaging the Bible; it is a scholarly term for weighing evidence and making judgments on that basis. The approach was formerly also called "higher criticism." Its principal subdisciplines are as follows.

• Source criticism: Seeks to identify the written sources underlying a text. A representative example is the documentary hypothesis of the Pentateuch.
• Form criticism: Examines the forms a text took in its oral stage, before it was written down, and the life settings in which those forms were used.
• Redaction criticism: Studies the intentions with which the final author or editor arranged the source material. It is widely used in the study of the Synoptic Problem.

Historical Background

Historical criticism arose during the Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as traditional views about the authorship and dating of the biblical books came to be questioned. It flourished in nineteenth-century German scholarship; among its best-known contributions are Julius Wellhausen's studies of the Pentateuch and, in the twentieth century, Rudolf Bultmann's form criticism of the Gospels.

Assessments of the method have been divided from the beginning. Supporters hold that by clarifying the historical context of the texts, it enables a more accurate understanding of their meaning. Critics hold that it rests on presuppositions that exclude miracles and prophecy from the outset and thereby undermines the authority of Scripture. In the early twentieth century, the American fundamentalist movement made historical criticism, together with liberal theology, one of its principal targets.

Practice in the Korean Church

In Korean Presbyterianism, the question of whether to accept historical criticism became bound up with the controversy over biblical inerrancy. In the 1950s, when Kim Jae-jun embraced the higher criticism of the Bible, conservatives such as Park Hyung-ryong opposed him. This controversy over the doctrine of Scripture is regarded as one of the main causes of the 1953 separation that produced the Presbyterian Church in the Republic of Korea (see Schisms in Korean Presbyterianism).

Today the tendencies among the denominations are broadly as follows.

• Progressive seminaries such as Hanshin University: Teach historical criticism as a basic method of biblical studies.
• Presbyterian University and Theological Seminary, Methodist Theological University, and others: Reportedly tend to treat historical criticism as a scholarly tool, using it alongside confessional interpretation.
• Conservative Reformed seminaries such as Chongshin University and Kosin University: Criticize the presuppositions of historical criticism and instead emphasize grammatical-historical interpretation.

Some evangelical scholars reject its antisupernaturalist presuppositions while selectively using certain of its tools, such as the study of historical background. Historical criticism is seldom addressed directly in preaching or Bible study in ordinary congregations; the subject arises mainly in seminary education and in denominational theological debates.