Handbook of Biblical Criticism, Fourth Edition

Richard N. Soulen, R. Kendall Soulen

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781611641561
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

The fourth edition of this best-selling textbook continues to be a valuable resource for the beginning student in the critical study of the Bible. Thoroughly revised to include the newest methods, recent discoveries, and developments in the field of biblical criticism over the past decade, the Handbook of Biblical Criticism is designed to be a starting point for understanding the vast array of methods, approaches and technical terms employed in this field. Updates in this edition also include an expanded dictionary of terms, phrases, names, and frequently used abbreviations, as well as a bibliography that includes the most up-to-date date publications.

The Handbook of Biblical Criticism is a valuable introductory textbook and a reliable guide for pastors, laypersons, and scholars whose expertise lies in other fields.

HANDBOOK OF
TECHNICAL TERMS
WITH NAMES, TOOLS, AND
INTERPRETIVE APPROACHES

Acrostic A series of lines or verses whose initial, final, or other identifiable letters form a word, a phrase, the initial letters of a phrase, or the alphabet. Acrostics in the Hebrew OT include in whole or part Pss 2; 9–10; 25; 34; 37; 111; 112; 119; 145; Prov 31:10–31 and Nah 1:2–10. In some instances the acrostic is formed on every other line; in other instances more than one line opens with the same letter; e.g., Ps 119 is formed of 176 lines, eight lines for each of the twenty-two letters of the alphabet. Unfortunately, acrostics are inevitably lost in translation.

Advocacy Criticism is an umbrella term used to refer to those approaches that are centrally concerned with interpreting scripture in light of the history, contemporary circumstances, and aspirations of a particular historically oppressed group, such as AFROCENTRIC, FEMINIST, MUJERISTA, POSTCOLONIAL, and WOMANIST BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION. Generally speaking, these approaches hold in common the view that all interpretation is conditioned by the social location of the interpreter and that the purpose of interpretation is to expose oppressive tendencies in the Bible and the history of its interpretation and, so far as this is deemed possible, to use the Bible as a resource to confront and change current structures of oppression, whether social, political, religious, or academic. Practitioners of advocacy criticism regard these approaches as less, not more, vulnerable to ideological distortion than other approaches because they explicitly identify their theoretical presuppositions and cultural interests and do not claim to provide a value-free, positivistic knowledge.

African American Biblical Interpretation seeks to read the Bible, and the history of its interpretation, through the unique lens of the African American experience, in part to challenge what is deemed the largely unacknowledged Eurocentric (male) perspective privileged not only in the field of biblical interpretation but also in the interpretation of literatures and histories in the West. What over the decades was presented by mainstream biblical scholars as unbiased methodological objectivity has shown itself to be shaped by the values of dominating cultures, which have often been hostile to the faith perspective and the physical well-being of African Americans. The long and slow struggle from slavery to equal rights (in America’s Bible Belt in particular) is but sad testimony to this one-sided interpretation. Although there is no one AA perspective, the operative assumption of AA biblical interpretation is that sociocultural space (esp. race) matters; that it determines in large measure how and what one thinks, not only about scripture but also about oneself. Although the church is the most significant institution in the African American community, it has virtually been without voice in biblical scholarship; though terms and movements known as Black Power, Black Liberation Theology, etc., appeared in the 1960–1970s, it is only within more recent decades and the appearance of a critical mass of African American biblical scholars that AA biblical interpretation has come to the fore, as most explicitly spelled out by Michael Joseph Brown, Blackening of the Bible: The Aims of African American Biblical Scholarship (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2004),True to Our Native Land: An African American New Testament Commentary, Brian K. Blount et al. eds. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007); Vincent L. Wimbush, ed., African Americans and the Bible: Sacred Texts and Social Textures (New York: Continuum, 2007); Allen Dwight Callahan, The Talking Book: The Bible and African Americans (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006); and Boykin Sanders, Blowing the Trumpet in Open Court: Prophetic Judgment and Liberation (Trenton, N.J.: African World, 2002). Innovations in African American Religious Thought is a series published by Fortress Press. Also see Afrocentric Biblical Interpretation; Womanist Biblical Interpretation.

Afrocentric Biblical Interpretation, as a hermeneutical perspective, refers to an approach to scripture that seeks to recover the rightful place of Africa, its peoples, and its cultures within the biblical tradition itself, and to draw attention to and correct misrepresentations of that place that have accrued over the centuries in Western exegetical traditions. The term Afrocentricity, attributed to M. K. Asante (1987), attempts to encapsulate this intention.

The practitioners of Afrocentric biblical interpretation contend that European-dominated exegetical and representational traditions have slowly but decisively painted Africa and its inhabitants out of the biblical picture, from its maps to its murals to its movies. Afrocentric biblical interpretation has therefore called for a “corrective HISTORIOGRAPHY,” one that restores to Africa in general and Black people in particular the significant roles they play in biblical history. For example, attention is drawn to the fact that Ethiopia is mentioned over forty times and Egypt over one hundred times in the OLD TESTAMENT alone; that color prejudice is absent from scripture—indeed, that the beloved of the Song of Songs is “black and beautiful” (1:5); and that if race is to be applied to the populations of the ancient Near East then, in modern parlance, they should be termed Afro-Asiatic. (It is noted that no less a personage than Moses is depicted as married to a Cushite [Num 12:1].) Through such observations as these Afrocentric biblical interpretation seeks to provide a contribution to mainstream biblical interpretation and not just an ethnocentric perspective. See M. K. Asante, The Afrocentric Idea (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987); D. T. Adamo, Africa and the Africans in the Old Testament (San Francisco: International Scholars Publication, 1998). See The Original African Heritage Study Bible, ed. Cain Hope Felder (Valley Forge, PA: Pilgrim, 1993; New York: Thomas Nelson, 2005); The Africana Bible, Hugh R. Page, Jr., et al., eds. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009); African Journal of Biblical Studies is the official publication of the Nigerian Asso. for Biblical Studies, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria ([email protected]); it is the only journal of its kind in Africa.

Agrapha (sg.: agraphon) is a Greek term meaning literally “unwritten (SAYINGS)” and was first employed by the German scholar J. G. Koerner in 1776 to designate sayings attributed to Jesus but not found in the canonical GOSPELS. The agrapha are also occasionally referred to as the “unknown” or “lost” sayings of Jesus. Since it is known that Jesus’ teachings were first passed down orally, it is presumed that certain of these escaped the knowledge of the EVANGELISTS and were subsequently lost except as they are alluded to or preserved by early Christian writers, e.g., by Paul in Rom 14:14. In 1889, Alfred (not Arnold) Resch claimed to have recovered a large number of these from Paul’s writings (such as 1 Cor 2:9: “‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him,’” NRSV), which purportedly derived from a precanonical Gospel (but cf. Isa 64:4). The second, 1906 edition of his work “used the term to refer to extracanonical scriptural fragments whether of the OT or NT” (ABD).

Current scholarship rejects Resch’s loose definition and (when used) limits the term agrapha to sayings (not allusions) explicitly attributed to Jesus. Sayings with some possible claim to authenticity that are not in the Gospels can be found in (a) the NT (Acts 20:35 and 1 Thess 4:16f.); (b) ancient MSS of the NT (such as the addition to Luke 10:16 in Codex Koridethi or the substitute reading of CODEX BEZAE at Luke 6:5: “Man, if indeed you know what you are doing, you are blessed; but if you do not know, you are cursed and a transgressor of the LAW”); (c) the church fathers (such as Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, ORIGEN, etc., who in the main do not record ORAL TRADITION but passages from noncanonical gospels); (d) the GOSPEL OF THOMAS, some of whose 114 sayings are also found in OXYRHYNCHUS PAPYRUS 654; and (e) Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 1, 655, and 840.

Recent studies dedicated to the quest of the historical Jesus have elevated noncanonical sayings of Jesus to new prominence, claiming for them an authenticity equal or superior to those of the Gospels. The claim is disputed. See William D. Stroker, Extracanonical Sayings of Jesus: Texts, Translations and Notes (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988); also R. W. Funk and R. W. Hoover, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (New York: Macmillan, 1993).

Additional sayings attributed to Jesus can be found in the TALMUD (

Abodah Zarah l6b l7a and Šabbat 116 a, b) and in Islamic writings and inscriptions. These sayings are generally deemed spurious. (See Joachim Jeremias, The Unknown Sayings of Jesus [London: SPCK, 1958].)

Aktionsart (Ger: type or kind of action) is a German technical term employed by grammarians to characterize an aspect of Greek verbs and participles not present in like manner in English (or German), viz., the kind of action involved in the verb. Greek verbs have two kinds of action: punctiliar and linear (Moulton). Whereas in English the primary task of the verb is to tell the time of an action or event (past, present, or future), in Greek the kind of action (aktionsart), whether extended (linear) or momentary (punctiliar) in time, is primary. Although exceptions to this generalization are numerous, in the main the present stem of a Greek verb (from which the imperfect tense is formed) denotes an action or an event continuous in time and can be translated into English only with auxiliary words, e.g., “I am praying” (or “I was praying”). The aorist stem (from which the future, perfect, and pluperfect tenses are also formed) denotes an action or an event momentary (punctiliar) in time, though its effects may still continue (perfect) or have continued for some time in the past (pluperfect), e.g., “I prayed.” The “interpretation of many NT passages depends not a little” on the aktionsart of the verb (C. F. D. Moule).

Aland, Kurt (1915–1994). Born and educated in Berlin, Aland became a student of the famed church historian and NT textual critic, Hans Lietzmann, under whose tutelage he began a lifelong passion for the Greek text of the NT. A member of the Confessing Church during the Nazi period and a declared public enemy of the German Democratic Republic following the war, Aland escaped East Berlin in 1958, finding an appointment in church history and TEXTUAL CRITICISM on the theological faculty at Münster, West Germany, in 1959. At Münster, where he spent the rest of his life, he founded the Institute for NT Textual Criticism. He became the coeditor and later editor of Erwin and EBERHARD NESTLE’S Novum Testamentum graece, from the 22nd edition through the 27th. In the 1960s he joined the editorial committee of the Greek New Testament, sponsored by the American Bible Society. He avidly collected phot...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Preface to the Fourth Edition
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• Introduction
• Handbook of Technical Terms with Names, Tools, and Interpretive Approaches
• Abbreviations in Textual Criticism (Plus Common Latin Words and Phrases)
• Abbreviations of Selected Works commonly cited in Biblical studies
• Major Reference Works Consulted
• Diagram of Biblical Interpretation