My personal favorites
Favorite methodological study
- Rudolph Bultmann, "What is Form Criticism?" in R. Bultmann and K. Kundsin, Form Criticism: Two Essays on New Testament Research (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1934/1962).
Favorite overviews
- The series put out by Fortress Press, "What is ...?"
- John Hayes and Carl Holladay, Biblical Exegesis: A Beginner's Handbook (Atlanta: John Knox, revised edition1987).
Favorite methods to use
- New Tradition-Historical Criticism
- Interdisciplinary methods, particularly from Anthropology, Sociology, and Psychology
- Oral-Rhetorical methods
A Favorite quote about method
- Paula Fredriksen in Jesus of Nazareth (p. 7): "Once method determines our perspective on our sources, how we see is really what we get."
2 comments:
Thank you for this! Can you point me to a resource(s) on New Tradition Historical Criticism? I don't think I have heard that term before.
Also, I am naive here, and this is probably a dumb question, but how do we do oral-rhetorical criticism when we only have written texts?
Anyway, resources that describe your three methods would be helpful.
It seems we have moved a long way since I was in seminary from Form Criticism, Redaction Criticism, and Narrative Criticism.
Great post!
john
John,
Wow have we ever moved a long way. The older methods are still useful as long as we realize their limitations - that they can't always produce the results that the pioneers thought they could.
New Tradition Historical Criticism is my own attempt to bring Tradition criticism up to date. I have a chapter about it in Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas.
Oral-Rhetorical studies try to understand the creation of texts within cultures that are dominated by orality and illiteracy. There are many studies, so I will just give you a few names of scholars who have or do work in this area: Albert Lord, Miles Foley, Walter Ong, Werner Kelber. This should get you started.
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