The last few hundred years have seen the emergence of a variety of new methods of investigating the Sacred Scriptures. These methods have caused no small amount of controversy as they have gone through a continual process of refinement and criticism. The attitude of the Roman Catholic Church could also be described in similar terms. The refinement of the Church’s perspective on these matters has been motivated by its desire to hold fast to what is good and not deny legitimate results of historical inquiry but also to safeguard against misleading and harmful theories concerning the examination of historical documents, especially those upon which our faith rests, that tend to be motivated by philosophical presuppositions that are questionable at best.
The purpose of this paper is to set forth some of the issues that are necessary to intelligently evaluate the current uses of critical methodologies in the study of Scripture. It will be enough here to introduce the kinds of criticism and consider how such criticism is to be understood in relationship to the belief in the divine origin and inspiration of the Scripture. It is also a matter of special interest here to carefully note how presuppositions affect the application of critical methodologies. Since presuppositions function at the very base of our reasoning about a given matter, we will discuss this matter first. It is also our intention to show the need to balance our study of the text of Scripture with what remains from the ancient world that should have a bearing on our understanding of a text (“external evidence”), especially as it pertains to authorship, dating, and circumstances of the biblical books. This level of consideration will show the inherit limitations of the critical methodologies so that we will then be in a position to strike a balance between the “higher critical” methods developed in more recent times and the classical approach to Scripture based on taking the text as a finished product with an intrinsic unity and accuracy of message. We will save the treatment of the divine inspiration of Scripture and the spiritual interpretation of the text for a second part. Since the “literal” sense is the primary one and the others depend upon it, we will treat it first through our consideration of biblical “criticism.” As will become apparent, the presentation will largely center around the study of the canonical Gospels since they provide an easy and accessible example for learning about the critical methods of biblical study.

I. Presuppositions

The inventions and developments of the modern world have brought about a unique period of history in which there is a greater availability of information from all over the world to typical individual persons than has ever been the case. Just within the last few days I have been able to access documents from various church councils that I have never actually examined first-hand by merely clicking a button on a computer. On the same computer I can find headlines from all over the world concerning matters that are of concern to people in virtually every part of this world. The same computer is also a means for anyone with a few related skills to express his or her opinions on any given matter.
This widespread availability of valuable and not-so-valuable information has created a profound sense of the diversity that exists throughout our world. There is some level of disagreement on virtually every conceivable topic. The awareness of this pluralism has highlighted the role that presuppositions play in the thinking of human beings. We tend to function and make judgments about things based on our values that in turn arise from certain perspectives on the nature of the world around us and our place in it. If one believes, for example, that the universe is simply and only a great collection of atoms or quantum particles bouncing about randomly, such a perspective will, if the person has any consistency of thought at all, have some effects on a practical level.
If, on the other hand, one believes that there is a personal God Who is interested in the affairs of human beings and also that there is such a God before Whom we will eventually give an account of our lives, such a belief will definitely have some kind of effect on the decisions that are made in daily life.
Although our task here is not strictly philosophical, it is possible to continue examining these “presuppositions,” or ideas that underlie our more practical decisions and actions, to very basic levels. It will be necessary as we proceed to point out some of these more basic ideas. We call the network of ideas that underlie our perspective on life and the meaning of reality a world-view.
Modern forms of higher criticism of Scripture (Source, Form and Redaction Criticism) began primarily within and were largely motivated by the Enlightenment mentality of the 18th century as well as the Positivism of the 19th century. We may speak about both of these in our context by focusing on three principles that guided the research and analysis of these centuries in their most important forms.
Ernst Troeltsch summarized the three guiding principles of the historical criticism that emerged within this Enlightenment mentality as follows: (1) The Principle of Methodological Doubt. (2) The Principle of Analogy. (3) The Principle of Correlation. We shall then look at these principles both with an attempt to understand them and also to critique them as conflicting with our presuppositions as persons of faith.

Methodological Doubt

The emphasis given to doubt in the modern study of Scripture is reminiscent of Rene Descartes’ 17th century approach to philosophy. In order to reconstruct a theory of reality, Descartes found it necessary to subject to rigorous doubt everything that could possibly be doubted. This process was supposed to yield some indubitable starting-point for philosophy from which further conclusions could be deduced. This was a conscious attempt to apply the mathematical use of logic and deduction to the whole of reality.
Although most have concluded that Descartes’ project failed, primarily based on criticizing what he thought was necessarily deduced from his first principle (“I think, therefore I am.”), many have continued to use his initial frame of mind as a helpful “key” to discovering “truth.” It is naïve, it is claimed, to approach any claim of history, including Scriptural claims, at face value. Instead, one should carefully scrutinize what is said and only accept what is beyond question as historically “established.” Further, our understanding of history even after such investigation is tentative at best since very little comes to us with such strong necessity and certainty that it cannot be explained or construed in some other way.
In reply, it must be admitted that one should not be credulous or naïve when it comes to historical claims. We should not simply accept assertions because they are made. Instead, we must consider the nature of the documents that have passed information to us and determine if they are credible. This is a reasonable endeavor that has always been taken into consideration not only concerning historical documents but also with persons testifying in courts of law. In order to accept one’s testimony, it is important to establish the reliability and credibility of a witness or the sources upon which he depends for his information. An “expert” witness would be one with sufficient experience and integrity that he could be expected to speak from this wealth of information to establish some important point in a case. We should expect similar supports for reliability in the case of historical documents.
Let us take, for example, the Gospel of Thomas over against the Gospel of Mark. The so-called Gospel of Thomas comes to us primarily in translated form from the Nag Hammadi documents discovered earlier in this century. These Gnostic writings were apparently buried in the fourth century and had been tampered with on a minimal scale over the centuries. Some of the documents were written or copied as late as shortly before their burial while others were apparently copied even earlier. The Gnostic movement, in its clearly defined form, emerged in the second century. Christian Gnostics claimed to have secret knowledge passed on from Jesus to various secret leaders of the Gnostic movement. Their teachings contradicted the public preaching of the Christian churches that could be traced back with unbroken succession to the Apostles themselves. For this reason, Christian apologists like St. Irenaeus wrote at length critiquing Gnostic ideas but also arguing against their claims of having secret teachings of Jesus.
Thomas is a work that reflects Gnostic concerns. There is much debate about the exact dating of the work but it appears that the earliest date seriously proposed is about 100 AD. Mark’s Gospel, on the other hand, is clearly well within the first century (mid 60’s most likely). It is also, according to early witnesses, a work based on the recollections of the life of Jesus by Peter, with whom Mark was associated at Rome until Peter’s death under Nero in the 60’s. One can see, then, that the primary difference between Thomas and Mark is that the former is clearly a document associated with a 2nd century movement and therefore removed from the life of Jesus by a substantial period of time. It is also inconsistent in various parts with the life of Jesus presented in writers like Mark who have connections with eyewitnesses of the events associated with Jesus and also stand in a closer historical relationship to the Gospel-events than Thomas.
A reasonable amount of “doubt” or investigation then establishes the superiority of Mark’s implicit claim to portray the life of Jesus in accurate terms. The nearness of time, association with witnesses, and lack of historical anachronisms are sufficient to demonstrate this claim.
What is meant in the context of Enlightenment criticism, however, is something more than our attempt to establish the integrity or basic reliability of a document’s author. Methodological Doubt means doubting the testimony itself unless it can be established to a high degree of certitude. Since historical events do not lend themselves normally to such a high degree of verification, at least in the mathematical and deductive sense, one must always remain skeptical of their reality.
As a Catholic Christian, this starting-point or presupposition as formulated is unacceptable. We cannot grant that we must remain suspended in doubt with respect to important moments of human history, the most important of which is the Christ-event. Granting the inductive nature of historical study, we proceed to gather up the evidences of the past available to us. We accept these documents, after establishing their historical roots and integrity of authorship, as giving a sound account of the past unless we have good reason to think otherwise. In other words, our approach is somewhat opposite to that of the Enlightenment biblical critic. We have an “openness” to truth as it comes to us through history but we also continue to be cautiously observant of frauds and hoaxes. For this reason we would tend to look for other lines of evidence or documentation that would support aspects of the story-line that are capable of verification. With respect to the New Testament, for example, we are pleased to find various features of the historical setting of the Gospels substantiated by contemporary historians like Josephus or archaeological finds like the ossuary of the high priest Ciaphas or the discovery of a monument to King David found at Tel Dan. Countless discoveries like these given silent testimony to the integrity of the biblical narratives.
Since what we can know of the origins of the biblical texts and also of the surrounding circumstances expressed in the writings and verified by outside sources tends to support the soundness and integrity of the historical features of the text, we have a general disposition of trust when approaching the Scriptures or any other source of information that comes to us with similar evidences.
When I make such suggestions as these I am saying no more than what is done every day of our lives. We live, for example, based on the trustworthiness of our parents’ testimony to us about our origin (place and time of birth, etc.) and rarely does a person discover that such testimony is false. We live based on trustworthy testimony concerning events that we cannot immediately access for verification. We do find, however, that such testimony is consistent (or, on rare occasions, inconsistent) with what is known by observation (e.g., hospital records, relatives, photographs, etc.). This is the normal process of accepting and passing on information about the past and my suggestion is that such an approach should also be the normal one when investigating the past. Otherwise we find ourselves as historical skeptics since little of history can pass the tests that do not properly belong to itself but rather belong in laboratories when considering repeatable, present observations.
It should be noted that we have not yet considered how our historical investigation of Scripture takes into account our belief in the divine origin of Scripture. The reason for this will become obvious as we proceed. For the moment it is sufficient to state, however, that if it does turn out that there is good reason to believe in the divine origin of Scripture, we would then have a decisive grounds upon which to have confidence in the trustworthiness of the biblical text.

Analogy

The Principle of Analogy is simply the claim that the present resembles the past and the past resembles the present. This, of course, does not mean that there is no room for inventions or increase in understanding, or the like. No, both the past and the present show that human beings tend to be innovative and like to invent things. Just because the past did not contain all the inventions of the present does not mean the Principle of Analogy is false. Rather, Analogy is the claim that qualitatively history is the same. I have never seen food multiplied miraculously from small amounts to great quantities enough to feed a multitude of people. This fact, so it is said, leads me to suppose that the same has been the case throughout history. When I read, then, of Jesus multiplying the loaves and the fish in the Gospels, my immediately response is to doubt that such events ever really happened simply because such events are not present in my experience today and therefore my assumption is that they were not present in the past either.
At first glance this principle seems to be quite compelling. There are several problems, however. First, it seems somewhat presumptuous to think that my experience, limited as it is, is sufficient to serve as a standard of analogy for all history. It may be that there are good observational reasons to believe that miracles occasionally happen but they simply lie outside of my experience. In teaching, I find myself mildly rebuking students who presume things are true or false based exclusively on the extent of their experience. My constant criticism and suggestion is that they learn some “humility” and soften the absoluteness of their positions. This should certainly be the case for those who have done little to investigate a matter. There have been many fine works written on contemporary instances of events that are unexplainable to science at its present stage of development. One cannot then rule out the possibility of the miraculous based on limited experience since it may be the case that contemporary evidence for the miraculous is available to the diligent student.
Second, it seems the observation that miracles are not normally a part of our experience and therefore we should expect the same in the past is nothing but a truism. In other words, miracles, by their very nature, are unique events. In the context of Scripture, it appears that miracles are somewhat rare and accompany new epochs or eras of divine revelation. Miracles accompany Moses and then the Law is given. The Monarchy is established in ancient Israel and then God sends various Prophets in connection with whom some periods of the miraculous stand out (e.g., Elijah). Jesus Christ appears and we find a great concentration of the miraculous along with similar miracles at the beginning of the Church as recorded in the book of Acts. The question of the rarity of miracles is not an issue, then. The possibility for unique instances of miracles that authenticate periods of divine revelation appears to be a matter outside the domain of judgments of what would be expected based on analogy and is more a matter of consideration on the level of reasons to believe in a God Who would reveal Himself in such a fashion. In other words, analogy is too limited whenever one factors in God and the possibility of divine revelation, both matters that are not addressed by analogy as a principle for historical criticism.
Third, it seems rather strange that we would think of history as made up of events that are primarily of the same kind. More consideration seems to make it evident that history is really made up of a great deal of extremely unique occurrences. Think of yourself, for example, no one in all of history has been exactly like you. Furthermore, it would have probably been impossible for anyone a hundred years ago to have predicted every major choice or action you have taken in your life. You are truly a historical peculiarity or unique instance. Additionally, there have been historical developments on a more general level that probably would have been impossible to predict based on analogy. Who would have predicted that the world would move beyond the need of slavery if one lived in cultures of the past (or present?) that depended on that institution? The future is not simply a repeat of the present or past and that is shown by the many unexpected developments that take place in history, some of them clearly revolutionary on an ideological and practical level. Additionally, if the future is not a necessary repeat of the present, we should not assume that the past is simply a repeat of the present. The Principle of Analogy may be of value when considering how people under normal circumstances may have thought or acted but it is powerless to make a sound final judgment on historical peculiarities that come to us with strong reasons to believe in their reliability.

Correlation

The Principle of Correlation claims that history is made up of a “closed” system of cause and effect relationships. For this reason, effects in history must have a natural explanation to account for them. There is the assumption that one cannot appeal to divine intervention in this world but must look for explanations that are consistent with our normal sense and awareness of causality.
This belief in a “closed” system should remind us of the dominant religious conviction of the Enlightenment: Deism. In Deism, God’s existence is necessary only to account for the origin of the great machine we call the universe. The universe operates itself, much like a clock that is wound and runs itself by its own internal ordering and motions. The existence of God is then only necessary for the origin of the machine and not its continued operation. One may take this self-operation of the universe as evidence that God has no immediate interest in the affairs of our lives and therefore we are free and perhaps even obligated to devote our energies towards the improvement of our lives in this world but should not act as those of the “superstitious” Dark Ages who thought that God was the immediate cause of everything happening in this world. If we assume that there are natural causes of everything in this world then we may begin the work of harnessing these causes and making life better for everyone through inventions and advances in medicine, etc.
The classical Catholic and Christian response to this principle is to first identify it as an expression of a more basic world-view: Deism. If one refuses to grant that God is not interested in the affairs of humans in this world or affirms that there is nothing contradictory or inappropriate with God’s use of His power to act in ways that are above the normal actions of causality in this world, he will find this principle unconvincing.
Indeed, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, there is good reason to believe that the God Who is needed as Creator of this world is also needed as Sustainer of it. If we need God to account for the origin of the “matter” comprising this world we also need Him to explain its order and its continuance in existence. That a thing is simultaneously a cause of another thing or event and yet a dependent effect of another thing or event suggests that the history of the cosmos is one of a series or chain of causes and effects, none of which account for their own actuality in the fullest sense of the term. There must then be a present Sustaining Cause of all that presently exists. Additionally, the desire for happiness in human experience that appears to be unquenchable and therefore infinite in possibility suggests that we are made for the experience of God. If this fact suggests that we were made by God and for God, we would naturally suppose that God has both an interest in human persons as well as a desire to reveal what is necessary to attain God as the end or goal of human existence.

Reworking Our Presuppositions

We have traveled quickly through the three main presuppositions that have been identified as prime motivations in the original development of the higher critical theories that we will shortly discuss. We have noted, what we think are, errors or limitations in these principles. It remains to be seen if the methods of biblical criticism are necessarily tied to such presuppositions. If they are, it would appear as if we would be obligated to avoid them altogether. If they are not, it may be possible to take the findings of such methodologies and place them in a context consistent with a Catholic/Christian setting.
In opposition to the three points discussed above, let us reformulate them in view of our concerns and beliefs:

1. Principle of Critical Openness. We carefully analyze historical sources both internally and externally with a view towards establishing a strong basis for historical testimony. We do not hold historical texts to unreasonable tests that are more fitting for other disciplines since they tend to yield results that promote skepticism when such is unnecessary and harmful both to faith and historical investigation.
2. Principle of Historical Uniqueness. We recognize history as a series of unique events on an important level. At the same time, we do not deny that there are “normal” ways in which things tend to proceed. This level of normalcy does not eliminate the possibility of the unique or unexpected. If miracles and revelation from God have taken place in history, we should examine the evidence for such claims without philosophically excluding their possibility. It is readily granted that the burden of proof for such claims lies with the one who makes them. This is different, however, from excluding the miraculous in principle (a priori).
3. Principle of Divine Immanence and Sovereignty. Classical Christian Theology affirms that God is both above and distinct from His creation as well as present in it. Furthermore, God is the origin of the regularity of the universe and, as the Cause of its order, is free to act in ways that are not what we normally expect. In other words, while granting a normal relationship of causality on the natural level, we simultaneously affirm that God is not “below” this causality but is above it and is not bound by it. We do not see claims of the miraculous as then illogical or fundamentally incompatible with our world-view.
Our approach to the study of Scripture must then be one that is preceded by a careful examination of our own presuppositions. It is clear that the Catholic Church’s initial reaction to the higher critical methodologies was shaped by the conclusions of these theories that were generated not by objective biblical study but more by a use and development of methodologies guided along by principles like those discussed above. We then can continue to affirm the wise evaluaton of Pope Leo XIII:

But first it must be clearly understood whom we have to oppose and content against, and what are their tactics and their arms. In earlier times the contest was chiefly with those who, relying on private judgment and repudiating the divine traditions and teaching office of the Church, held the Scriptures to be the one source of revelation and the final appeal in matters of faith. Now we have to meet the rationalists, true children and inheritors of the older heretics, who, trusting in their turn to their own way of thinking, have rejected even the scraps and remnants of Christian belief which have been handed down to them. They deny that there is any such thing as revelation or inspiration, or Holy Scripture at all; they see, instead, only the forgeries and falsehoods of men; they set down the Scripture narratives as stupid fables and lying stories: the prophecies and oracles of God are to them either predictions made up after the event or forecasts formed by the light of nature; the miracles and wonders of God’s power are not what they are said to be, but the startling effects of natural law, or else mere tricks and myths…

It is not hard to see that the Pope had in mind here an approach to Scripture guided by presuppositions that do not allow for miraculous, divine involvement in human affairs. This is devastating to Christian faith and therefore any real analysis of an approach to Scripture or critical methodologies must take seriously such issues at the very start. All who love and appreciate the historical tradition of Christianity must be concerned about adopting principles that do not allow for the continuance of that faith as it is rooted in history.
The famous Protestant theologian at Princeton sometime after Leo XIII’s address, Benjamin Warfield, expressed similar concerns in an essay entitled, The Latest Phase of Historical Rationalism. Instead of addressing primarily the application of Enlightenment rationalistic principles to the study of Scripture, Warfield shows how they have been applied to the history of Christianity. All of this is done, not in purely objective historical analysis, but in an attempt to satisfy the modern craving for, what he called, “comprehension.” This is much like what we now call “pluralism.” By “pluralism” I mean the belief that mutually contradictory theories may be considered simultaneously true. This is motivated, according to Warfield, by laziness. “Men are tired of thinking. They are tired of defending the truth. Let us all stop thinking, stop believing, they cry, and what a happy family we shall be!” In other words, it is easier to go with the prevailing attitude or presuppositions of our time than to stand against them. Instead of accepting a biblical form of Christianity, those of Leo XIII’s and Warfield’s day sought to conform the biblical testimony to their presuppositions in order that it may become a support to an ideology that may in fact be far from the original intention of the biblical writers and of Christ Himself.
We today must continue to make ourselves aware of similar presuppositions which, it turns out, are not hard to find. The story is not all bad, however, according to the verdict of Catholic Theology. There may yet remain a sound and valid use of the critical methodologies as applied to the Sacred Scriptures and therefore to the methods themselves we must now turn.

2. Kinds of Criticism

Keeping in mind the controlling influence of presuppositions in the conclusions one may draw from the study of Scripture (or any document), we now will turn our attention to the matter of the kinds of criticism used when approaching Scripture primarily in order to understand them and then ponder the implications and assumptions at work in the types of higher criticism.
Before doing so, we should at least offer a tentative definition of “criticism.” By criticism, we mean a rigorous or careful analysis of a matter. We do not mean what is intended in the popular use of the term. We have no desire or intention to unjustly attack or “criticize” Scripture. Instead, we want to carefully analyze its contents on every meaningful level in accord with our recognition that Scripture has come to us through a historical process and through the minds and pens of human beings using language and thoughts that would have been understood by their original audiences. This does not exclude divine inspiration as a factor in interpretation but is a recognition that Scripture has both God and man as authors. The way in which we should conceive of this distinction will be discussed later. For now, we are interested in understanding the ways that Scripture is understood as a human work in history.


Textual Criticism

Textual Criticism or the so-called “Lower Criticism” of the Bible focuses on the establishment and integrity of the text itself without particular concern about the meaning of the text. What is presupposed in this discipline is the fact that we do not have the original manuscripts of the biblical books. We have copies of the original texts. Some of these are very ancient and others are more recent but are nonetheless to be respected as copies that have a long tradition in the Church.
The need for such a science as this is caused by the fact that there are numerous ancient copies of the biblical books that have survived to our day and they tend to have minor and sometimes major variations between them. In other words, the copies of biblical books are not identical in every respect.
The textual critic is concerned with sorting out these variations. Most of the differences are of such a minor nature that they do not affect in any way the meaning of Christian faith. These are usually misspelled words, changed word ordering, conflated descriptions, etc. There are a few instances, though, of substantial problems involving whole verses or even pericopes. Most of these are well-known and have been considered at length (e.g., 1 John 5:7, Mark 16:9-20, John 8:1-11). Scholars involved in textual criticism carefully examine such various differences of all the possible types and attempt to develop “rules” that will guide them into a valid reconstruction of the biblical text.
Our task here is not to look very far into these matters. It should be noted, however, that the reliability and corresponding confidence that we may have in the text of the Bible is extremely high and is rather remarkable when compared with other texts from antiquity. Wescott and Hort, two pioneers in this field, described the situation as follows in their ground-breaking work:

The proportion of words virtually accepted on all hands as raised above doubt is very great, not less, on a rough computation, than seven eighths of the whole. The remaining eighth therefore, formed in great part by changes of order and other comparative trivialities, constitutes the whole area of criticism. If the principles followed in the present edition are sound, this area may be very greatly reduced. Recognizing to the full the duty of abstinence from peremptory decision in cases where the evidence leaves the judgment in suspense between two or more readings, we find that, setting aside differences of orthography, the words in our opinion still subject to doubt only make up about one sixtieth of the whole New Testament. In the second estimate the proportion of comparatively trivial variations is beyond measure larger than in the former, so that the amount of what can in any sense be called substantial variation is but a small fraction of the whole residuary variation, and can hardly form more than a thousandth part of the entire text.

With respect to the attitude of the faithful to this kind of “lower” criticism, there should be a great deal of admiration for those who have devoted so much energy to purifying the textual tradition of corruption caused, no doubt, by human error during the greater part of Church history when there were no printing presses or computers to easily reproduce identical texts. It seems safe to conclude, then, that the richness of the textual tradition and the extremely high confidence we can have in the wording of Scripture as a reproduction of the original form of the texts is evidence of God’s providential protection of the Sacred texts so that we may have them in confidence.



Genre/Literary Criticism

Since the biblical books were written by human beings, at least secondarily, and were also written in a particular historical setting, it follows that the authors made use of the forms of communication available to them.
We do not have to think identify some of the various different ways used to communicate ideas. If one were to look at today’s newspaper it would be possible to find many different “genres” or literary types. The articles of the front news section differ in purpose and orientation from the sales ads. The editorial section and its cartoons take on different characteristics when contrasted with articles intending to communicate more objective news items. We might even take a glance at the obituaries and find that they tend to take on certain features that are shared with other similar news items.
If one were unconcerned about literary genres and simply approached every text the same, confusion would inevitably result. If I were to take the political cartoons during election seasons that portray warring elephants and donkeys as indicating a real conflict between such animals in our country, I would be mistaken. Instead, elephants and donkeys serve as symbols of other realities (i.e., political parties).
The Bible consists of numerous literary genres and special care must be taken to identify these or else one’s interpretation may be seriously flawed. We call the tendency to disregard or not treat seriously such matters, Fundamentalism. It is rather ironic that this term, one that originally was applied to serious students of the Bible that sought to react to the extremes of Protestant Liberalism and emphasize fundamental Christian commitments, has come to be identified with those who lack seriousness and care when it comes to the identification of literary forms.
Both Old and New Testaments contain distinct kinds of literature. According to Ronald L. Giese, Jr., the Old Testament has both Prose and Poetry and each of these may be further subdivided into several other categories. Additionally, we also find a third major kind of literature that appears to be a combination of Prose and Poetry, Prophecy. There are several sub-categories under Prophecy as well. Since many of the sub-categories are not used in our culture, it is easy to assume that they should be understood as we would understand other kinds of literature. This would be a big mistake and will lead to great errors of interpretation.
The bulk of the New Testament contains Epistles (Letters) and Gospels. Both of these are literary forms that must be carefully studied. The Gospel genre is especially challenging because it does not entirely fit with any other ancient literature and for this reason we must carefully consider how the authors arranged their material and what their stated and implied purpose(s) might be. Too many have thought of the Gospels in terms of 20th century biographies and have been disappointed to find that many of their expectations were not fulfilled when examining the texts.
Some of the greatest interpretive problems in the world of biblical studies today center around texts about which it is difficult to determine a literary genre. Genesis 1-11, for example, is especially problematic since there is a whole range of interpretations from those who identify the text as “history,” pure and simple, to those who want to claim the chapters are “mythological” in a sense that is entirely disassociated from history or historical realities.
The official teaching of the Catholic Church seems to chart a middle course between these two extremes. Pope Pius XII in his famous encyclical, Humani Generis (1950) affirmed that Genesis chapters 1-11 truly pertain to history but suggested that more work needed to be done in discovering the exact mode through which historical truth was communicated. He further reaffirmed the necessity of holding to “monogenism,” or that the human family has descended from a single set of original ancestors (Adam and Eve).

For the faithful cannot lend support to a theory which involves either the existence on this earth, after Adam, of true men who would not originate form him, as the ancestor of all, by natural generation, or that ‘Adam’ stands for a plurality of ancestors. For, it is not at all apparent how such a view can be reconciled with the data which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Church propose concerning original sin, namely, that it originates from a sin truly committed by one Adam, is transmitted to all through generation and is in each, proper to him.

The same document addresses the concerns of evolutionary theory pointing out that if one accepts some theory of evolution to account for the various kinds of creatures existing in this world, there are limitations to the explanatory power of this theory. For one, Catholics are bound to believe that the soul of the first human person was directly created by God and cannot be explained on a purely natural evolutionary plane.
The current teaching of the Church has not significantly modified any of these basic positions. Consider paragraph 390 of the current Catechism of the Catholic Church:

The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language , but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man. Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents.

We can see, then, that the Church recognizes there are special difficulties with interpreting ancient texts like Genesis 1-11 but insists that the text communicates truth about history albeit enshrouded in “figurative language.”
What we must safeguard against, however, is imposing or finding literary genres in order to make a text say something it was not intended to say. In other words, the fact of literary genres does not mean that texts may be explained away and their literal sense avoided. In fact, what we mean by the literal sense is precisely the originally intended sense of the authors. If the author intended something as figurative, we should respect that and understand it accordingly. With respect to Genesis one, for example, it is not enough to say that the Bible has an outmoded cosmology and therefore we should “spiritualize” the text in order to accommodate evolutionary theory. If the text is intended to be literal, here we mean literal in contrast to figurative, we should accept that. The problem with Genesis one, of course, is concerning whether or not this was the intention of the writer. The official sources of Catholic teaching suggest it was not.
Those who engage in literary criticism are doing us a great service since this field of investigation is a tedious one and requires a great deal of effort and expertise. It is necessary to examine ancient cultures, familiarize one’s self with the languages of the ancients, compare texts, and identify meanings of symbols and figures (oftentimes when little remains from which to reconstruct such matters). Literary critics have then helped us in another area that is vital before we can truly appreciate many texts of Scripture by teaching us the correct way in which to read the literature that makes up the Bible.
At the same time we must conclude our comments on this matter with a balancing word. It may seem from what has preceded that reading the Bible is something only possible for the experts in literary criticism. Fortunately cultures, tend to share common ways of communicating information. Although cultures may take on unique symbols or even occasionally develop unique combinations of other literary forms (e.g., Apocalyptic), we still tend to function within a limited number of major categories (Prose and Poetry). The task is not hopeless, then, and much of Scripture can be appreciated without detailed knowledge of all the possible literary forms used. We should simply develop some humility in this area and allow our initial impressions and interpretations of texts to be confirmed over against the serious analysis of literary forms lest we draw erroneous conclusions.

Historical Criticism

Once we have established the reliability of a text and we have also attempted to identify the literary form used in that text, we must also continue our careful examination of Scripture by doing our best to reconstruct the historical context or “world” in which the Scriptures were written.
This form of critical investigation involves a variety of disciplines. Archaeology, for example, has shed much light on first-century culture and therefore aids in understanding texts that allude to or presuppose aspects of that culture. The careful study of other texts outside the Scriptures but from the same general time-period of the biblical books helps to build up knowledge of languages and therefore of nuances of meaning that may not be clear without such outside information.
In general, historical criticism works with the external data, or material outside of the text of Scripture itself, in conversation with the biblical text itself in order to help rebuild the context in which the Scriptures were originally understood. One would naturally spend considerable time considering what is known of the history of the ancient world, especially if such had any bearing on the Israelite people or the people-groups that had an effect upon them (e.g., Babylonians, Canaanites, Persians, Greeks, Romans, etc.).
Historical criticism also works with early Christian sources that may contain material relevant for understanding the biblical books. We have, for example, “fragments” of the writings of an ancient Christian who apparently knew the Elder John in Ephesus, Papias. In a famous fragment, Papias records words attributed to John the Elder, “Mark, having become Peter’s interpreter, wrote down accurately everything he remembered, though not in order, of the things either said or done by Christ.” Another fragment states, “So Matthew composed the oracles in the Hebrew language and each person interpreted them as best as he could.” Since these bits of information tend to be reported in other writers during the second century and beyond, it seems that the traditions were fairly widespread in an age that immediately followed and perhaps overlapped that of the Apostles themselves. This provides an interesting historical basis for the reliability of the traditional name attached to Mark’s Gospel. The fragments also raise a variety of other historical questions that continue to be debated. Is the Elder John identical with the Apostle John? Did Matthew really write his Gospel in Hebrew first or is this fragment a reference to an earlier and different work?
Historical criticism attempts to sort out these questions and determine what material is sound and reliable in our understanding of the historical context of Scripture and therefore must be factored into our interpretation of the biblical texts.

Higher Criticism

We have reserved the treatment of “Higher Criticism” for the present section. This is because it is a secondary discipline to the ones already discussed and tends to be more speculative in its conclusions. This is so because Higher Criticism, by its very nature, attempts to move behind the biblical text, especially with respect to the Pentateuch of the Old Testament and the Gospels of the New Testament, and discover some prior stages of the texts or message of the texts. Since such prior texts or oral teachings no longer exist as such, it is impossible to verify or check on the soundness of the conclusions that are drawn from the practice of the disciplines. Furthermore, our knowledge of the modes of transmitting information in the ancient Near Middle East is growing continually and such knowledge affects the application and conclusions of the higher critical methodologies. Our task here is simply to present the essence of the distinct disciplines in this category and the grounds upon which they are based.
The higher critical methods are based upon the assumption that there is a considerable gap of time between the events or persons described in Scripture and the written accounts that we have concerning them. In other words, the Scriptures were not written “on the spot” as Moses led the children of Israel across the Red Sea or when Jesus multiplied the loaves and fish.
Let’s assume for the moment that Matthew’s Gospel was written sometime in the second half of the first century. This assumption will fit most theories of the origin of this work. Even if it was written as early as 50 AD, a date far too early for most scholars, there would still be a gap of about 20 years from the actual events and words that Matthew is purporting to record.
Upon further examination, we find that there are verbal parallels between Matthew, Mark, and Luke that simply cannot be accounted for on the basis of coincidence or memory alone. No, it is clear that some level of literary dependence existed between the Synoptic writers. The modern-day “Synoptic Problem” seeks to solve this problem of literary relationship by determining which writer(s) made use of the others and thereby establish priority among the writings. The “Two Document Hypothesis,” the one most popular today, argues that Mark’s Gospel was written before the other Synoptics and that Matthew and Luke both made use of Mark. This accounts for the parallel wording and fundamental ordering of certain events shared between all three writers. There are still other texts, however, that are shared common between Matthew and Luke that suggest another common source that no longer remains for our examination. Scholars have given this hypothetical source the name “Q,” from the German word for source (Quelle). “Q” and Mark are then the earliest written sources of information that we have for the Gospel tradition and Matthew and Luke largely borrow from these materials to compose their accounts.
Not everyone agrees with this arrangement of the data. John Wenham is one such scholar who has had a considerable influence on my own thinking in this regard. He argues that the Two Document Theory, and other similar theories holding to Marcan priority, was developed among European scholars who did not have an adequate appreciation of the role of memorization and standardization of the teachings of a Rabbi in the first century. A substantial amount of common wording in similar texts can be accounted for based on this observation. If Matthew, Mark and Luke were all written in connection with “eyewitness” accounts of the ministry of Jesus, we would expect them to have this similarity of wording based on the highly developed memorization abilities of a largely oral culture.
Since the early Christian movement was centered in Jerusalem with the presence of Apostles and other followers of Jesus, we would expect there to have been a formalized way in which Christ’s teachings were passed on to converts to the faith. This is called the “Jerusalem Catechesis.” When the Gospels were eventually written, we would naturally expect this Catechesis to have exercised a great influence in their writing. There is, then, a “chain” of causality beginning with the historical Jesus and passing through the Apostles and Eyewitnesses to the oral Catechesis in Jerusalem and then finally into the written Gospels. Wenham further argues that we should not eliminate so lightly the external evidence concerning the order in which the Gospels were written. If we accept the basic framework he has offered, we can then accept that Matthew wrote first, then Mark, then Luke, and then finally John. Wenham does affirm that some level of literary dependence existed between the Synoptics but that the traditional ordering of these books can stand if one takes seriously the role of the Jerusalem Catechesis.
Regardless of which theory one accepts, however, there is an admission that the Gospel tradition originally was communicated in oral form and was only later written down.
This whole process of trying to identify the earliest written accounts of the Gospel tradition is called Source Criticism. Source Criticism is also applied to complex texts like the Pentateuch in the Old Testament in which various distinct strands of interest are supposedly found that are taken as evidence of earlier written sources that were then combined together to form the Pentateuch as we know it. Elsewhere I have offered a discussion and critique of some of the assumptions of this theory and the limitations of the method when applied in that case.
Given the assumption that certain texts of Scripture were based on earlier written texts, there still remains a period of time in which the biblical traditions were passed in oral form. This “gap” between, say, the “historical” Jesus and the Jesus of the Gospels is the primary focus of a second kind of higher criticism, Form Criticism.
The form critic is interested in investigating the “shapes” in which oral traditions tend to develop as they are standardized over time. Rudolph Bultmann is the most prominent name associated with this kind of criticism. His book, History of the Synoptic Tradition, is a good example of the careful work that he exerted in identifying and categorizing “forms” that, in his judgment, enable him to peer into the period of oral tradition.
As an aside, Bultmann did not believe that the Bible is to be taken at face value in one’s personal life or that whatever one discovers about the original form of the Christian proclamation would necessarily be true. In fact, in a famous essay written by Bultmann entitled, Kerygma and Myth, he argues that modern man finds the world-view presupposed by Scripture “incredible.” Since modern man cannot accept this world-view, we are driven to ask a more basic question: How may we preach the Gospel of Christ now if we do not engage in a process of stripping it of all the mythological elements that can no longer be embraced and replacing that context with one acceptable to modern man?

We are therefore bound to ask whether, when we preach the Gospel today, we expect our converts to accept not only the Gospel message, but also the mythical view of the world in which it is set. If not, does the New Testament embody a truth which is quite independent of its mythical setting? If it does, theology must undertake the task of stripping the Kerygma from its mythical framework, of “demythologizing” it.

Of course, it is a matter of debate both to what extent the Gospel of the New Testament may be stripped of its original context and it also is questionable as to whether or not Bultmann’s solution (adopting Hegelian philosophy in its place) is acceptable. It must also be kept in mind that there is a difference between what Scripture teaches as true, especially with respect to scientific theories of the universe, and the language it uses to convey theological truths. Sometimes this language is “phenomenological” insofar as it speaks of the world as it appears to us now in sense experience (e.g., flat, sun revolves around earth, etc.). Even us moderns continue to use such language in everyday speech. It would be unfair to assume that we are asserting scientific theories by a descriptive manner of speech that is not interested in such matters but is concerned with simple communication.
Bultmann is often quite helpful, however, in understanding the text of the New Testament precisely because he feels no particular need to insert his theory of reality into the mouth of Jesus. He has no problem with approaching the New Testament as it stands and carrying out his analysis of forms simply because he does not believe that ancient Christianity proclaimed the exact message he is proclaiming. This cannot be said for many others who are guilty of historical anachronism since they read their theories back into early Christianity and strip from the documents anything incompatible with the theories offered.
Among the “forms” that Bultmann identifies may be found the following three sample. (1) Apothegms or Paradigms. These are short sayings of Jesus that may stand alone and therefore would have been easily passed on orally because of the ease of memorization. For example, Jesus said, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that be God’s.” This statement may be stripped of any context of controversy or payment of taxes and stand by itself. “Man was not made for Sabbath but Sabbath for man,” is another such example. Although the Gospels place such sayings in given contexts they do not require them for their making sense. (2) Tales or Miracle Stories. Bultmann was especially fond of this category since he claimed that the form of miracle stories in the Gospels is remarkably like what is found in Hellenistic literature. This suggests that the Miracle Stories come from a later period of oral tradition than the forms that express a clearly Jewish context in which the sayings were preserved. Many have criticized Bultmann on this point, however, based on the clear variations of form that do exist in the Gospels and also because it is somewhat difficult to tell a miracle story in a short space without including the elements found in the stories. In other words, Hellenistic literature has no monopoly on the style and contents found in the Gospel miracle stories. (3) Saying/Exhortations/Parables. There are clearly various other texts in the Gospels that are more lengthy and contain more substantial teaching material than what is found in short sayings or miracle stories. These texts, including the famous parables of Jesus, have received serious examination in order to determine their purpose and form. Much careful study of the parables has resulted from such efforts and has raised numerous critical questions that were not foreseen in the previous centuries. Often parables have been read allegorically while it appears now that they are not primarily allegorical but tend to have a central idea or truth that is intended. C. H. Dodd and Joachim Jeremias are important scholars that have done considerable work in this area.
Although there are various other kinds of “forms” the reader should now have a glimpse of what is done in the realm of Form Criticism. The goal is to find forms that oral speech tends to take and then locate them within the Gospel texts and this will identify what remains of the oral period of transmission. It is then a step beyond the results of Source Criticism and would seem to logically follow upon the results of that investigation.
The most concerning question at this point is regarding the reliability of the oral transmission of the Gospel tradition. How can we be sure that the biblical writers faithfully passed on the teachings of Jesus and not simply their own ideas placed in the mouth of Jesus? We will return to this question in the next section after we have gained some knowledge of the remaining kind of higher critical investigation.
Once the critic has successfully identified the sources used by the Gospel writers as well as the most primitive form in which the Gospel tradition was passed along before its being written, his final procedure is to retrace the concerns and purposes of the Gospel writers in respect of their own theological interests. In other words, the Gospel writers were redactors of the materials available to them. Redaction Criticism is the study of the writers of the biblical Gospels as theologians who were not slavishly copying documents but were copying and arranging them with a particular agenda or set of concerns in view.
Scholars and careful readers of the Gospels have been long aware of the fact that these Gospels do not all share the same intended audiences or interests in every respect. Matthew is clearly oriented towards Jewish readers as is evidenced by the frequent citation of Old Testament Scriptures to substantiate or illustrate things pertaining to Jesus. He also has a greater interest in matters that would be of particular concern to Jewish persons as, for example, his use of “kingdom of heaven” in the place of “kingdom of God” so as not to offend Jewish readers who would be concerned about the frequent repetition of names, titles, or things associated with God. Luke’s Gospel clearly has a “Gentile” audience in view, something also consistent with the concerns of the book of Acts, the companion text to Luke.
Redaction critics are not only interested in these overarching concerns or agendas of biblical writers but also with analyzing particular texts and the way in which they were modified or adapted to a particular purpose or concern.
As with the other kinds of higher criticism, this one may be helpful and may also be abused. If one thinks of the “redactors” as innovators who were attempting to create a “new Jesus” without concern or regard for the real Jesus of history, one must seriously question this presupposition. It is possible to selectively use the teachings of Jesus in connection with a particular set of concerns and to place those teachings into that context without such involving distortion or disregard for the facts of history. We will discover that there are a number of good reasons to believe that the Gospel writers were especially interested in retaining and faithfully passing along the teachings of Jesus. With this in mind, we have no reason to necessarily attach redaction criticism with a disposition of doubt and skepticism.
In sum, then, we have discovered that modern higher criticism has developed into three primary disciplines. Source Criticism attempts to identify the earliest written source of the biblical texts, especially with respect to the Gospels and the Pentateuch, by discovering evidence of use by the writers of multiple sources. In the case of the Gospels, this “discovery” is caused by the comparison of the Synoptic Gospels that appear to give evidence of some literary dependence. The source critic works back from the completed form of these texts to earlier texts which turn out to either be the earliest one of the Synoptics (Mark?) or another document that no longer remains (“Q”). In the case of the Pentateuch, the critic “discovers” evidences within the books of Moses that various sources were combined together by some redactor and at least in some cases whole portions of text were kept intact so that we are still able to recognize the distinct texts placed alongside of others in the redaction process. Form Criticism seeks to penetrate behind the written form of the texts to an oral stage. In the case of the Gospels, the interest is in studying how teachings tend to take particular forms whenever they survive within a primarily oral culture. Form critics identify primary forms of such oral teaching and then discover that many such forms exist in the New Testament writings. We may reasonably conclude, they say, that such forms were gathered together and written down and, whenever the form remains pure, is a good source of information about Christianity during the oral stage of its development. Finally, Redaction Criticism is the attempt to observe the work of the first two forms of criticism described above and then get into the mind of the authors, so to speak, as they take the pieces of the Gospel tradition and weave them together into the finished product of the New Testament Gospels.
Given this kind of description, there is nothing inherently problematic with these methodologies. Even if we grant that the biblical books have come to us by divine inspiration, a conviction certainly held by this writer, there is no great problem with admitting that the Gospel was primarily preached in oral form during its early days and that the teachings of Jesus would have taken certain shapes and forms during this time to make them easier to remember and pass on to others. In fact, there is no particular problem with affirming that something like this most likely took place under the teaching of Jesus while He still walked the face of the earth. Such would have presumably been a standard way of listening and repeating the teachings of a great teacher. There is also no great problem in granting that written sources were used by some of the Gospel writers when composing their accounts. This much is admitted by St. Luke in the opening verses of his Gospel (1:1-3). In fact, if the traditional ordering of the Gospels is correct, Luke could have very well used Matthew and Mark as well as other sources, both written and oral, in composing his account. In other words, divine inspiration does not exclude the normal process of learning or investigation. We may say the same with respect to the teaching of the Church through the centuries. Although the providential guidance of the Church into a correct understanding of the “deposit of faith” is a matter of our faith, this does not exclude the responsibility that leaders of the Church carefully investigate and inquire into theological matters before making important pronouncements about them. Redaction Criticism is simply the observation that the authors of Scripture had particular concerns and sought to reach different groups of people in meaningful ways. This, of course, does not in any way necessitate that the biblical writers distorted, embellished, or created de novo the teachings or actions of Jesus.
The guiding assumption throughout these pages has been that the biblical writers are primarily interested in passing on the truth about Jesus and not in expressing their own ideas as placed into the mouth of Jesus. To this subject we must now return and treat in more detail since it is vital to our approach to the Gospels and, ultimately, to all of Scripture.

3. Reliability of the Oral Transmission of the Gospel

The reliability of the transmission of the Gospel tradition during the oral stage of its existence must be established in order to avoid many of the confusing interpretations of the life of Jesus that are based on the assumption that the Gospel tradition was more the creation of the early Christian Church than it was of Christ and His life. In this section I would like to identify some of the various reasons that have been offered to support the reliability of the Gospels even if they existed primarily in oral form for the early part of their history.
1. Theologically difficult sayings. The Gospels contain a number of texts that may be classified as “theologically difficult.” By this is meant that they can easily be misunderstood in some cases and in others the meaning is difficult to see. In Mark 10:18, for example, Jesus replies to the young man who called Him a “good master,” “Why do you call me good, there is none good but one, God.” At first glance, this text may understandably be taken as a direct denial of Christ’s deity from His own words. Since the Church has affirmed the full deity of Christ as the “Son of God” from earliest times (e.g., John 1:1, 10:30, Romans 9:5, etc.), it is somewhat embarrassing to find Jesus suggesting that this is not the case. Or is He? It is possible to read Jesus’ words as more of an inquiry into the motives and understanding of the young man. In this case, Jesus would not be denying His deity but rather He is bringing to the young man’s mind the full sense of “goodness” and challenging him to consider if he truly intends to apply this meaning to Him. If the young man did indeed grasp the identity of Jesus, it is all the more tragic that he refused to respond to Christ’s call (v. 22). Even though, then, it is possible to explain this text in a way that is consistent with the faith of the Church, it is still remarkable that such a text has been retained in the Gospel tradition without modification or interpretation even though it would prove troublesome to many through the centuries. There are many other texts that may be considered in the same light (e.g., Matthew 10:5-6, Mark 9:1). If such sayings have been recorded without obvious concern to modify them, it follows that such texts can serve as strong bases for concluding that the Gospel writers are primarily concerned with preserving the real words of Jesus.
2. No overt anachronisms. This point is, for me at least, one of the most compelling observations that supports the conviction that the Gospel accounts are most interested in giving to us an accurate portrayal of Jesus Christ and not of their own theological concerns. When one compares the Epistles of the New Testaments, many of which were written to contend with various theological and moral errors that crept into the various early Christian communities, he finds that they give evidence of issues with which the authors seem preoccupied. Take, for instance, St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Here he speaks in harsh terms to those influenced by the Judaizers, viz., Jewish Christians that fought to impose on Gentile converts to Christianity Old Testament practices, especially circumcision, about departing from the truth of the Gospel. In fact, Paul is unwilling to grant that the Judaizers have the Gospel at all. They proclaim something that is really quite “other” than the real good news of Jesus Christ. These same concerns are also to be found in the description of the formative years of the Christian Church in the Acts of the Apostles (e.g., Acts 15). Such ideas were so troubling that they caused significant division and confusion and forced the careful definition and explanation of the nature of the Christian Gospel over against Old Testament Law and its special emphasis on circumcision as the “sign” of the covenant.
Our point here is simply that when one turns to the written Gospels, books written during and beyond the period of these controversies, he finds that there is no effort or evidence that Christ has been “shaped” to fit a particular perspective on these matters. In fact, there is no more than one reference in the Gospels to circumcision in the mouth of Jesus and that one does not have any special bearing on the controversy of the early Church. This is remarkable simply because it is not what one would expect given the perspective of many critics who want to make the Jesus of the Gospels more of a creation of the early Church than a person of history. This is not to say that the Gospels have no concern with contemporary problems or issues. Our point is simply that in dealing with such concerns they are careful to preserve the truth about Christ even if it meant that they were not able to show Christ directly addressing a later concern.
3. Christological Titles. The “favorite” title of the early Church for Jesus was clearly “Christ.” It is used more than 450 times in Acts to Revelation. In the Gospels, Jesus refers to Himself most frequently as “Son of Man,” a title used some 82 times but used only 4 times outside the Gospels. The title “Christ” is used in the Gospels only 24 times with particular reference to Jesus. These few facts display an interesting fact. If the words of Jesus show that He used the title, “Son of Man” most frequently but the remainder of the New Testament shows that the biblical writers did not particularly tend to use this title for Jesus when not claiming to report His words, such suggests a desire to faithfully report the original words and not mix together popular terms or modes of expression with what was originally spoken by Christ and delivered to the churches.
4. High view of tradition. The early teachers of Christianity were interested in passing on the tradition as they had received it. A striking example of this may be found in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (chp. 7) in which he carefully distinguishes between his instructions and those of the Lord. This is normally understood to be a distinction by Paul between what Jesus had taught explicitly and where he is going beyond Christ and adding his own insights (e.g., 7:10). Paul elsewhere gives evidence of citing the “traditions” as he had received them and as they were believed everywhere in the Church (see 1 Cor. 15:1-5, 11:23-25). Tradition was then seen as something sacred and to be protected rather than something “fluid” that could be changed at one’s whim.
5. Role of eyewitnesses. Luke 1:1-4, a text already alluded to, gives evidence that there were recognized persons in the first century who were “eyewitnesses” of the events of the life and teachings of Jesus. These held a particularly important role in the Church and were apparently numbered among the Apostles who were also eyewitnesses (Acts 1). Eyewitnesses would then have a controlling influence over suggestions that Jesus taught certain things for which there was no real grounds.
6. Memorization. As already noted elsewhere, the first century Jewish culture would have depended much more heavily on memory for passing on the teachings of a rabbi than we would be familiar with in 20th century America. Our culture tends to depend more on written sources and the ease of accessing information. The early disciples, as ones holding to the importance and significance of the teachings of Jesus would certainly have exercised their powers of memory towards preserving and protecting them. The burden of proof should certainly lie with those who claim that the disciples would have been sloppy in their desire and action of preserving the teachings of Jesus. We must insist that the disciples would not want to promote their own particular agenda as if it were superior to or more worthy of a hearing than the words of their Master.
7. It also seems reasonable to suppose that there was an interest in the “historical Jesus” among the early Christians. In other words, just as my students who are learning about Jesus Christ would naturally wish to learn what He taught more than what I think he should have taught, so there would have been a natural concern by early Christians to receive the most accurate and forthright accounts of the life of Jesus possible. Since there were quite a number of living disciples who were eyewitnesses of some aspect or another of the ministry of Christ during the decades in which the New Testament books were composed, it stands to reason that they would have exercised some kind of controlling influence over the “urge” to “make up” a life of Jesus that did not correspond to reality.
8. Other reasons centering around the normal procedures of disciples and their rabbi’s teachings. There are a collection of other reasons that I will simply subsume under this section for sake of space. As Stein discusses at length in an earlier cited work, there is growing evidence that the disciples of Jesus would have most likely made notations of the teachings of their Master while He was still with them. These “notes” would have later formed the basis of written texts designed for public use. Furthermore, it is also clear, as already indicated, that the disciples also had bilingual abilities and therefore would have immediately given some consideration to how the teachings of Jesus would be communicated in the Greek language. Both of these considerations reduce the supposed “oral period” of the Gospel tradition to a much smaller and, perhaps, even nonexistent status. We must wait and see how further research into first-century practices will illuminate this interesting area of study. Finally, it should also be noted that the frequent attempt to parallel the writing of the biblical Gospels several decades after the events themselves with the development of folklore and tales in other cultures over centuries of time is simply a poor analogy. Even if we grant several decades of time before the Gospels were written, which seems quite likely, it still seems highly unlikely that the Gospel tradition suffered on account of it. No, it seems, in light of the above reasons and more, that the Gospel tradition would have remained pure since the disciples prized it so highly and also because of the controlling influence of eyewitnesses and other Apostles who would certainly have corrected any misleading or false information that another might set forth for whatever reason.

Conclusion of Critical Methodologies

The goal in the previous sections of this essay has been to introduce the reader to some of the primary forms of biblical criticism on the scene today. Some of these have always been present in some form or another, I suppose, as long as there has been literature available. There has always been a need to make sure one has the purest form of a text possible (Textual Criticism). One would always want to make sure that a text is understood in the sense intended by its original author(s) (Literary Criticism). It would also be needful to reconstruct, as best as possible, the original historical context and situation in which a work was written (Historical Criticism). Additionally, the last few centuries have seen the rise of several other types of critical study that are more difficult to evaluate than the first three.
The difficulty with Source, Form, and Redaction Criticism is caused by the subjectivity involved in the methodologies. There is no way to check the results of the investigation. Further, there are various ways in which to construe the data when considered in light of such methodologies and often these ways are the result of varying presuppositions or preferences. In order to use them with value, then, we proposed that a serious look be given to one’s presuppositions. We offered a critique of three principles connected with Enlightenment criticism and then we proposed our own alternatives that were consistent with Christian faith and, we believe, sound use of reason. When purified of these misleading and dangerous presuppositions, we found a limited but useful domain for the application of these higher critical methodologies. Source Criticism simply considers what evidence may be found within the texts of Scripture of prior written documents upon which our present accounts may have been drawn. This in turn led to Form Criticism which focuses on the “forms” that oral tradition tends to take. Form critics try to locate these forms in the written Gospels to find the earliest form of the teachings of Jesus as they were passed on during the earliest decades of Christian proclamation. Finally, Redaction Criticism was found to be a potentially helpful analysis of the intentions and particular purposes of the Gospel writers as they sought to persuade different audiences of the truth that is found in Jesus Christ.
Since it is such an important topic, we found it necessary to look at the problem of the oral transmission of the Gospel tradition to determine if there are good reasons to believe that the Gospel writers did in fact have as their primary goal a truthful and accurate account of the teachings of Christ. We determined that there are good reasons to accept this position and therefore we are justified in our confidence that the Gospels are a reliable testimony of the teachings, acts, and passion of Christ.
With our study of the critical methodologies concluded, we now must turn our attention to the next stage of biblical interpretation or analysis. We will call the next “level” of study the analysis of the “Spiritual Senses” of Scripture or, more fundamentally, the “Typological Sense” from which we will then distinguish the Tropological and Anagogical Senses. This will require that we first look at the nature of biblical inspiration and then consider why it is that divine inspiration justifies a further kind of biblical analysis, a kind of analysis that could only be justified in a book given by divine inspiration.