Authors: Carl Edwin Armerding
ISBN-13: 9780802819512, ISBN-10: 0802819516
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Eerdmans, William B. Publishing Company
Date Published: September 1983
Edition: (Non-applicable)
Although Many Conservative scholars have had reservations about biblical criticism since its rise a century ago, Carl Armerding contends that critical rationalism need not be antithetical to belief in a divinely inspired Word of God. Indeed, says Armerding, the evangelical scholar - mediating the traditional conservative view and the rational critical view of Scripture - is able to use all the tools of historical, philological, and literary study, while still retaining biblical categories of revelation, inspiration, and history.
Armerding applies this synthesis of approaches - the traditional and the critical - to four major branches of criticism: literary (or source) criticism, form criticism, structural analysis, and textual criticism. Cautioning against misuse of these critical methods, he demonstrates how each method can be conscientiously used by faithful scholars to enrich their understanding of the Old Testament text.
I. | An Evangelical Old Testament Criticism? | 1 |
Introduction | 1 | |
The Word of God, the Words of Men, and the Critical Task | 4 | |
Traditional Conservative | 4 | |
Rational Critical | 6 | |
Evangelical | 7 | |
History, Revelation, and Inspiration | 11 | |
The Old Testament and Various Forms of Criticism | 15 | |
II. | Literary Criticism | 21 |
Introduction | 21 | |
Purpose | 21 | |
Method | 23 | |
Literary Criticism and the Documents | 28 | |
Criteria for Separating the Documents | 29 | |
Divine Names | 29 | |
Doublets | 32 | |
Differences in Detail | 36 | |
Theological Viewpoint | 37 | |
Style | 39 | |
Summary | 41 | |
Conclusion | 42 | |
III. | Form Criticism | 43 |
Introduction | 43 | |
Definition | 43 | |
Origin | 44 | |
Relation to Revelation | 45 | |
Method | 49 | |
Define the Unit | 49 | |
Describe the Genre | 50 | |
Determine the Life-Setting | 52 | |
Determine the Function | 54 | |
Further Examples of an Evangelical Form Criticism | 56 | |
Prose Genres | 56 | |
Poetic Genres | 59 | |
Prophetic Speech | 61 | |
Critique and Summary | 63 | |
Benefits | 63 | |
Cautions | 63 | |
IV. | Structural Analysis | 67 |
Introduction | 67 | |
Structural Analysis: The Discipline | 69 | |
Professional Semiology | 69 | |
Propositions and Assumptions | 70 | |
Method | 72 | |
Synchronic and Diachronic Research | 72 | |
Steps in Structural Exegesis | 74 | |
Other "Structural" Methods | 78 | |
Literary Approaches and Structural Analysis | 84 | |
Structural Analysis in the Pentateuch | 86 | |
Recent Approaches | 89 | |
Summary and Conclusions | 92 | |
What is Structural Exegesis? | 92 | |
Structural Analysis and the Quest for Meaning | 93 | |
Conclusion | 96 | |
V. | Text Criticism | 97 |
Introduction | 97 | |
Development of the Old Testament Text | 100 | |
Early Period | 100 | |
Masoretic Period | 107 | |
Hebrew Texts and English Versions | 112 | |
Hebrew Texts | 112 | |
English Versions | 114 | |
Kinds of Textual Errors | 119 | |
Unintentional Changes | 119 | |
Intentional Changes | 123 | |
Rules for Text Criticism | 125 | |
Summary | 127 | |
Indexes | 129 |