The Gutenberg Bible, the first printed Bible

Biblical criticism is the scholarly "study and investigation of biblical writings that seeks to make discerning judgments about these writings."^[1] Viewing biblical texts as having human rather than supernatural origins, it asks when and where a particular text originated; how, why, by whom, for whom, and in what circumstances it was produced; what influences were at work in its production; what sources were used in its composition; and what message it was intended to convey. It will vary slightly depending on whether the focus is on the Old Testament, the letters of New Testament or the Canonical gospels. It also plays an important role in the quest for a Historical Jesus.

It also addresses the physical text, including the meaning of the words and the way in which they are used, its preservation, history and integrity. Biblical criticism draws upon a wide range of scholarly disciplines including archaeology, anthropology, folklore, linguistics, oral tradition studies, and historical and religious studies.

Background[link]

Biblical criticism, defined as the treatment of biblical texts as natural rather than supernatural artifacts, grew out of the rationalism of the 17th and 18th centuries. In the 19th century it was divided between the higher criticism, the study of the composition and history of biblical texts, and lower criticism, the close examination of the text to establish their original or "correct" readings. These terms are largely no longer used, and contemporary criticism has seen the rise of new perspectives which draw on literary and multidisciplinary sociological approaches to address the meaning(s) of texts and the wider world in which they were conceived.

A division is still sometimes made between historical criticism and literary criticism. Historical criticism seeks to locate the text in history: it asks such questions as when the text was written, who the author/s might have been, and what history might be reconstructed from the answers. Literary criticism asks what audience the authors wrote for, their presumptive purpose, and the development of the text over time.

Historical criticism was the dominant form of criticism until the late 20th century, when biblical critics became interested in questions aimed more at the meaning of the text than its origins and developed methods drawn from mainstream literary criticism. The distinction is frequently referred to as one between diachronic and synchronic forms of criticism, the former concerned the development of texts through time, the latter treating texts as they exist at a particular moment, frequently the so-called "final form", meaning the bible text as we have it today.

History[link]

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Both Old Testament and New Testament criticism originated in the rationalism of the 17th and 18th centuries and developed within the context of the scientific approach to the humanities (especially history) which grew during the 19th. Studies of the Old and New Testaments were often independent of each other, largely due to the difficulty of any single scholar having a sufficient grasp of the many languages required or of the cultural background for the different periods in which texts had their origins.

Old Testament[link]

Title page of Richard Simon's "Critical History" (1685), an early work of biblical criticism.

Modern biblical criticism begins with the 17th century philosophers and theologians - Thomas Hobbes, Benedict Spinoza, Richard Simon and others - who began to ask questions about the origin of the biblical text, especially the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). They asked specifically who had written these books: according to tradition their author was Moses, but these critics found contradictions and inconsistencies in the text that, they claimed, made Mosaic authorship improbable. In the 18th century Jean Astruc (1684–1766), a French physician, set out to refute these critics. Borrowing methods of textual criticism already in use to investigate Greek and Roman texts, he discovered what he believed were two distinct documents within Genesis. These, he felt, were the original scrolls written by Moses, much as the four Gospel writers had produced four separate but complementary accounts of the life and teachings of Jesus. Later generations, he believed, had conflated these original documents to produce the modern book of Genesis, producing the inconsistencies and contradictions noted by Hobbes and Spinoza.

Astruc's methods were adopted by German scholars such as Johann Gottfried Eichhorn (1752–1827) and Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette (1780–1849) in a movement which became known as the higher criticism (to distinguish it from the far longer-established close examination and comparison of individual manuscripts, called the lower criticism); this school reached its apogee with the influential synthesis of Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918) in the 1870s, at which point it seemed to many that the bible had at last been fully explained as a human document.

The implications of "higher criticism" were not welcomed by many religious scholars, not least the Catholic Church. Pope Leo XIII (1810–1903) condemned secular biblical scholarship in his encyclical Providentissimus Deus;^[2] but in 1943 Pope Pius XII gave license to the new scholarship in his encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu: "[T]extual criticism ... [is] quite rightly employed in the case of the Sacred Books ... Let the interpreter then, with all care and without neglecting any light derived from recent research, endeavor to determine the peculiar character and circumstances of the sacred writer, the age in which he lived, the sources written or oral to which he had recourse and the forms of expression he employed." ^[3] Today the modern Catechism states: "In order to discover the sacred authors' intention, the reader must take into account the conditions of their time and culture, the literary genres in use at that time, and the modes of feeling, speaking and narrating then current. For the fact is that truth is differently presented and expressed in the various types of historical writing, in prophetical and poetical texts, and in other forms of literary expression."^[4]

New Testament[link]

Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965). His The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906) demonstrated that 19th century "lives of Jesus" were reflections of the authors' own historical and social contexts.

The seminal figure in New Testament criticism was Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768), who applied to it the methodology of Greek and Latin textual studies and became convinced that very little of what it said could be accepted as incontrovertibly true. Reimarus's conclusions appealed to the rationalism of 18th century intellectuals, but were deeply troubling to contemporary believers. In the 19th century important scholarship was done by David Strauss, Ernest Renan, Johannes Weiss, Albert Schweitzer and others, all of whom investigated the "historical Jesus" within the Gospel narratives. In a different field the work of H. J. Holtzmann was significant: he established a chronology for the composition of the various books of the New Testament which formed the basis for future research on this subject, and established the two-source hypothesis (the hypothesis that the gospels of Matthew and Luke drew on the gospel of Mark and a hypothetical document known as Q). By the first half of the 20th century a new generation of scholars including Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann, in Germany, Roy Harrisville and others in North America had decided that the quest for the Jesus of history had reached a dead end. Barth and Bultmann accepted that little could be said with certainty about the historical Jesus, and concentrated instead on the kerygma, or message, of the New Testament. The questions they addressed were: What was Jesus’s key message? How was that message related to Judaism? Does that message speak to our reality today?

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1948 revitalised interest in the possible contribution archaeology could make to the understanding of the New Testament. Joachim Jeremias and C. H. Dodd produced linguistic studies which tentatively identified layers within the Gospels that could be ascribed to Jesus, to the authors, and to the early Church; Burton Mack and John Dominic Crossan assessed Jesus in the cultural milieu of 1st Century Judea; and the scholars of the Jesus Seminar assessed the individual tropes of the Gospels to arrive at a consensus on what could and could not be accepted as historical.

Contemporary New Testament criticism continues to follow the synthesising trend set during the latter half of the 20th century. There continues to be a strong interest in recovering the "historical Jesus", but this now tends to set the search in terms of Jesus' Jewishness (Bruce Chilton, Geza Vermes and others) and his formation by the political and religious currents of 1st century Palestine (Marcus Borg).

Methods and perspectives[link]

Source criticism: diagram of the two-source hypothesis, an explanation for the relationship of the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke.

The critical methods and perspectives now to be found are numerous, and the following overview should not be regarded as comprehensive.

Textual criticism[link]

Textual criticism (sometimes still referred to as "lower criticism") refers to the examination of the text itself to identify its provenance or to trace its history. It takes as its basis the fact that errors inevitably crept into texts as generations of scribes reproduced each other's manuscripts. For example, Josephus employed scribes to copy his Antiquities of the Jews. As the scribes copied the Antiquities, they made mistakes. The copies of these copies also had the mistakes. The errors tend to form "families" of manuscripts: scribe A will introduce mistakes which are not in the manuscript of scribe B, and over time the "families" of texts descended from A and B will diverge further and further as more mistakes are introduced by later scribes, but will always be identifiable as descended from one or the other. Textual criticism studies the differences between these families to piece together a good idea of what the original looked like. The more surviving copies, the more accurately can they deduce information about the original text and about "family histories."

Textual criticism is a rigorously objective^{[clarification needed]} discipline using a number of specialized methodologies, including eclecticism, stemmatics, copy-text editing and cladistics. A number of principles have also been introduced for use in deciding between variant manuscripts, such as Lectio difficilior potior: "The harder of two readings is to be preferred."^[5] Nevertheless, there remains a strong element of subjectivity, areas where the scholar must decide his reading on the basis of taste or common-sense: Amos 6.12, for example, reads: "Does one plough with oxen?" The obvious answer is "yes", but the context of the passage seems to demand a "no"; the usual reading therefore is to amend this to "Does one plough the sea with oxen?" The amendment has a basis in the text, which is believed to be corrupted, but is nevertheless a matter of judgement.^[6]

Source criticism[link]

Source criticism is the search for the original sources which lie behind a given biblical text. It can be traced back to the 17th century French priest Richard Simon, and its most influential product is Julius Wellhausen's Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels (1878), whose "insight and clarity of expression have left their mark indelibly on modern biblical studies."^[7] An example of source criticism is the study of the Synoptic problem. Critics noticed that the three Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, were very similar, indeed, at times identical. The dominant theory to account for the duplication is called the two-source hypothesis. This suggests that Mark was the first gospel to be written, and that it was probably based on a combination of early oral and written material. Matthew and Luke were written at a later time, and relied primarily on two different sources: Mark and a written collection of Jesus's sayings, which has been given the name Q by scholars. This latter document has now been lost, but at least some of its material can be deduced indirectly, namely through the material that is common in Matthew and Luke but absent in Mark. In addition to Mark and Q, the writers of Matthew and Luke made some use of additional sources, which would account for the material that is unique to each of them.

Form criticism and tradition history[link]

Form criticism breaks the Bible down into sections (pericopes, stories) which are analyzed and categorized by genres (prose or verse, letters, laws, court archives, war hymns, poems of lament, etc.). The form critic then theorizes on the pericope's Sitz im Leben ("setting in life"), the setting in which it was composed and, especially, used.^[8] Tradition history is a specific aspect of form criticism which aims at tracing the way in which the pericopes entered the larger units of the biblical canon, and especially the way in which they made the transition from oral to written form. The belief in the priority, stability, and even detectability, of oral traditions is now recognised to be so deeply questionable as to render tradition history largely useless, but form criticism itself continues to develop as a viable methodology in biblical studies.^[9]

Redaction criticism[link]

Redaction criticism studies "the collection, arrangement, editing and modification of sources", and is frequently used to reconstruct the community and purposes of the authors of the text.^[10] It is based on the comparison of differences between manuscripts and their theological significance.^[11]

Canonical criticism[link]

Associated particularly with the name of Brevard S. Childs, who has written prolifically on the subject, canonical criticism is "an examination of the final form of the text as a totality, as well as the process leading to it."^[12] Where previous criticism asked questions about the origins, structure and history of the text, canonical criticism addresses questions of meaning, both for the community (and communities - subsequent communities are regarded as being as important as the original community for which it was produced) which used it, and in the context of the wider canon of which it forms a part.^[1]

Rhetorical criticism[link]

Rhetorical criticism of the Bible dates back to at least St. Augustine. Modern application of techniques of rhetorical analysis to biblical texts dates to James Muilenberg in 1968 as a corrective to form criticism, which Muilenberg saw as too generalized and insufficiently specific. For Muilenberg, rhetorical criticism emphasized the unique and unrepeatable message of the writer or speaker as addressed to his audience, including especially the techniques and devices which went into crafting the biblical narrative as it was heard (or read) by its audience. "What Muilenberg called rhetorical criticism was not exactly the same as what secular literary critics called rhetorical criticism, and when biblical scholars became interested in "rhetorical criticism," they did not limit themselves to Muilenberg's definition. ... In some cases it is difficult to distinguish between rhetorical criticism and literary criticism, or other disciplines." Unlike canonical criticism, rhetorical criticism (at least as defined by Muilenberg) takes a special interest in the relationship between the biblical text and its intended audience within the context of the communal life setting. Rhetorical criticism asks how the text functions for its audience, including especially its original audience: to teach, persuade, guide, exhort, reproach, or inspire, and it concentrates especially on identifying and elucidating unique features of the situation, including both the techniques manifest in the text itself and the relevant features of the cultural setting, through which this purpose is pursued.^[13]

Narrative criticism[link]

Narrative criticism is one of a number of modern forms of criticism based in contemporary literary theory and practice - in this case, from narratology. In common with other literary approaches (and in contrast to historical forms of criticism), narrative criticism treats the text as a unit, and focusses on narrative structure and composition, plot development, themes and motifs, characters and characterisation.^[14] Narrative criticism is a complex field, but some central concerns include the reliability of the narrator, the question of authorial intent (expressed in terms of the context in which the text was written and its presumed intended audience), and the implications of multiple interpretation (meaning an awareness that a narrative is capable of more than one interpretation, and thus of the implications of each).^[15]

Psychological criticism[link]

Psychological biblical criticism is a perspective rather than a method. It discusses the psychological dimensions of the authors of the text, the material they wish to communicate to their audience, and the reflections and meditations of the reader.

Socio-scientific criticism[link]

Socio-scientific criticism (also known as socio-historical criticism and social-world criticism) is a contemporary form of multidisciplinary criticism drawing on the social sciences, especially anthropology and sociology. A typical study will draw on studies of contemporary nomadism, shamanism, tribalism, spirit-possession, millinarianism, etc. to illuminate similar passages described in biblical texts. Socioscientific criticism is thus concerned with the historical world behind the text rather than the historical world in the text.^[16]

Postmodernist criticism[link]

The "Tomb of Joshua" at Kifl Hares, a Palestinian village located northwest of the Israeli city of Ariel in the West Bank. Postmodernist criticism frequently locates biblical references in a modern setting.

Postmodernist biblical criticism treats the same general topics addressed in broader postmodernist scholarship, "including author, autobiography, culture criticism, deconstruction, ethics, fantasy, gender, ideology, politics, postcolonialism, and so on." It asks such questions as, What are we to make, ethically speaking, of the program of ethnic cleansing described in the book of Joshua? What does the social construction of gender mean for the depiction of male and female roles in the bible?^[17] In textual criticism, postmodernist criticism rejects the idea of an original text (the traditional quest of textual criticism, which marginalised all non-original manuscripts), and treats all manuscripts as equally valuable; in the "higher criticism" it brings new perspectives to themes such as theology, Israelite history, hermeneutics and ethics.^[18]

Feminist exegesis[link]

Feminist criticism of the Bible utilizes the same means and essentially strives for the same ends as feminist literary criticism. It is therefore made up of a variety of peoples, including, but not limited to, Jews, people of color, and feminist Christians, such as Elisabeth Fiorenza.

New Testament authenticity and the historical Jesus[link]

Multiple attestation[link]

The criterion of multiple attestation or "independent attestation" is an important tool used by scholars. Simply put, the more independent witnesses that report an event or saying, the better.

The gospels are not always independent of each other. There is a possibility that Matthew and Luke copied contents from Mark's gospel.^[19] There are, however, at least four early, independent sources. The criterion of multiple attestation focuses on the sayings or deeds of Jesus that are attested to in more than one independent literary source such as the Apostle Paul, Josephus, Q and/or the Gospel of the Hebrews. The force of this criterion is increased if a given motif or theme is also found in different literary forms such as parables, dispute stories, miracle stories, prophecy, and/or aphorism.^[20][21]

Multiple attestation has a certain kind of objectivity. Given the independence of the sources, satisfaction of the criterion makes it harder to maintain that it was an invention of the Church.^{[20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28]}

Tendencies of the developing tradition[link]

It is important that scholars research the earliest testimonies. To do this, they need to figure out the earliest gospel and the earliest parts of the gospels. Ideally, this material would come from eyewitnesses, but that is not always possible.

The writings of the Church Fathers are helpful in this regard. They wrote that the Hebrew Gospel was the first written while the Gospel of John was later. Also, because certain "laws" govern the transmission of tradition during the oral period, we can, by understanding these "laws," determine which tradition is early and which is late.^{[20] [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29]}

Embarrassment[link]

The criterion of embarrassment, also known as the "criterion of dissimilarity", is an analytical tool that biblical scholars use in assessing whether the New Testament accounts of Jesus' actions and words are historically accurate. Simply put, trust the embarrassing material. If something is awkward for an author to say and he does anyway, it is more likely to be true.^[30]

The essence of the criterion of embarrassment is that the Early Church would hardly have gone out of its way to "create" or "falsify" historical material that only embarrassed its author or weakened its position in arguments with opponents. Rather, embarrassing material coming from Jesus would naturally be either suppressed or softened in later stages of the Gospel tradition, and often such progressive suppression or softening can be traced through the Gospels.

The evolution of the depiction of the Baptism of Jesus exhibits the criterion of embarrassment. In the Gospel of the Hebrews, Jesus is but a man (see Adoptionism) submitting to another man for the forgiveness of the "sin of ignorance" (a lesser sin, but sin nonetheless). Matthew's description of the Baptism adds John's statement to Jesus: "I should be baptized by you", attempting to do away with the embarrassment of John baptising Jesus, implying John's seniority. Similarly, it resolves the embarrassment of Jesus undergoing baptism "for the forgiveness of sin," the purpose of John's baptising in Mark, by omitting this phrase from John's proclamations. The Gospel of Luke says only that Jesus was baptized, without explicitly asserting that John performed the baptism. The Gospel of John goes further and simply omits the whole story of the Baptism. This might show a progression of the Evangelists attempting to explain, and then suppress, a story that was seen as embarrassing to the early church.^{[20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28]}

Coherence[link]

The Criterion of coherence (also called consistency or conformity) can be used only when other material has been identified as authentic. This criterion holds that a saying and action attributed to Jesus may be accepted as authentic if it coheres with other sayings and actions already established as authentic. While this criterion cannot be used alone, it can broaden the database for what Jesus actually said and did.^{[20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28]}

The Crucifixion[link]

The criterion of the Crucifixion emphasizes that Jesus met a violent death at the hands of Jewish and Roman officials and that the authentic words and actions of Jesus would alienate people, especially powerful people.^{[20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28]}

Semitisms[link]

Since Jesus spoke in Aramaic, traces of Aramaic in the Gospels argue in favor of a primitive tradition that may go back to Jesus. Semitisms are structured according to general rules that allow Hebrew speakers and hearers to say and hear things according to predictable patterns. Hebrew and Aramaic are closely related linguistically, and they follow similar elementary rules. For example the pun in Matt 23:24, "straining out the gnat (galma) and swallowing a camel (gamla)" points in the direction of the historical Jesus.^{[22] [31]}

[edit] Sitz im Leben

The sayings and actions of the historical Jesus must reflect the Sitz im Leben or the concrete social, political, economic, agricultural, and religious conditions of ancient Palestine, while sayings and actions of Jesus that reflect social, political, economic, agricultural, or religious conditions that existed only outside Palestine or only after the death of Jesus are to be considered inauthentic.^{[20][21][23][24][25][26][27][28][32]}

Vividness of narration[link]

Liveliness and concrete details—especially when the details are not relevant to the main point of the story—are sometimes taken as indicators of an eyewitness report. For example, note the detail in the Gospel of the Hebrews account of the rich man:

The second rich youth said to him, “Rabbi, what good thing can I do and live?” Jesus replied, “Fulfill the law and the prophets.” “I have,” was the response. Jesus said, “Go, sell all that you have and distribute to the poor; and come, follow me.” The youth began to fidget, for it did not please him. And the Lord said, “How can you say, I have fulfilled the law and the prophets, when it is written in the law: You shall love your neighbor as yourself and many of your brothers, sons of Abraham, are covered with filth, dying of hunger, and your house is full of many good things, none of which goes out to them?” And he turned and said to Simon, his disciple, who was sitting by Him, “Simon, son of Jonah, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the rich to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” ^[33]

Notable biblical scholars[link]

• William Albright (1891-1971): Professor at Johns Hopkins University and the founding father of American biblical archaeology
• Albrecht Alt (1883–1956): prominent in early debates about the religion of the biblical patriarchs; he was also an important influence on the generation of mid-20th century German scholars, including Martin Noth and Gerhard von Rad.
• Jean Astruc (1684-1776): early French biblical critic, who adapted source criticism to the study of Genesis.
• Margaret Barker (1944-): maintains that the polytheistic practices of the First Jewish Temple survived and influenced gnosticism and early Christianity.
• Walter Bauer (1877-1960): redefined the parameters of orthodoxy and heresy with his multiregional hypothesis for the origins of Early Christianity.
• F. C. Baur (1792-1860): explored the secular history of the primitive church.
• Rudolf Karl Bultmann (1884–1976): a New Testament scholar who defined an almost complete split between history and faith, called demythology.
• D.A. Carson (1946-): Canadian-born New Testament scholar who is most noted for his work on the Gospel of John.
• John J. Collins (1946-): Irish scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Second Temple Judaism; he has worked extensively on Jewish messianism and apocalypticism.
• Frank Moore Cross (1921-): American biblical scholar and Harvard University Professor notable for his interpretations of the Deuteronomistic History, the Pentateuch, and the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as his work in Northwest Semitic Epigraphy.
• William G. Dever (1933-): American biblical archaeologist, known for his contributions to the understanding of early Israel.
• Johann Gottfried Eichhorn (1752–1827): applied source criticism to the entire Bible, decided against Mosaic authorship.
• Alvar Ellegård (1919-2008): linguist, has reordered the chronology of the texts of The New Testament and is a proponent of the "Jesus Myth Theory".
• Bart D. Ehrman (1955-): University of North Carolina Professor, who has examined issues of textual corruption and authorship in New Testament and Early Christian texts.
• Israel Finkelstein (1949-): Israeli archaeologist and Professor at Tel Aviv University, an advocate for re-dating remains previously ascribed to King Solomon to the rule of the Omrides.
• Johann Jakob Griesbach (1745-1812): pioneered the Griesbach hypothesis, which supports the primacy of the Gospel of Matthew.
• Hermann Gunkel (1862-1932): the father of form criticism, the study of the oral traditions behind the text of the Pentateuch.
• Niels Peter Lemche (1945-): biblical scholar at the University of Copenhagen, sometimes associated with biblical minimalism, which has warned against uncritical acceptance of biblical texts as history.
• Martin Noth (1902-1968): developed tradition history and undertook important work on the origins of the Pentateuch and the Deuteronomistic History.
• Rolf Rendtorff (1925-): German critic who advanced an influential non-documentary hypothesis for the origins of the Pentateuch.
• Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834): German theologian and philosopher whose theoretical hermeneutics underlie much of modern biblical exegesis.
• Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965): German theologian who was a pioneer in the quest for the historical Jesus.
• John Van Seters (1935-): American Hebrew Bible scholar, who favors a supplementary model for the creation of the Pentateuch.
• Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677): Dutch philosopher, who collected discrepancies, contradictions, anachronisms etc. from the Torah to show that it could not have been written by Moses.
• David Friedrich Strauss (1808-1874): a German critic who published influential work on the historical origins of Christian beliefs, most notably in his Das Leben Jesu.
• Thomas L. Thompson (1939-): an outspoken critic of Albright's conclusions about archaeology and the historicity of the Pentateuch.
• Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918): German biblical critic and popularizer of a four-source documentary hypothesis.
• Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette (1780–1849): an important early German contributor to higher criticism and the study of Pentateuchal origins.
• Joseph Wheless (1868-1950): American lawyer who traced origins of the scriptures, examining original Hebrew and Greek meanings, and the translations into Latin and English.
• R. N. Whybray (1923-1997): critiqued the assumptions of source criticism underlying the documentary hypothesis.

See also[link]

• Gospel harmony
• Pentateuchal criticism
• Biblical studies
• The Bible and history
• Biblical archaeology
• Historical method
• Heresy in the 20th century
• Essays and Reviews
• Timeline of the Bible
• Biblical exegesis

Notes[link]

Further reading[link]

• Barton, John (1984). Reading the Old Testament: Method in Biblical Study, Philadelphia, Westminster, ISBN 0-664-25724-0. 
• Barenboim Peter, Biblical Roots of Separation of Powers, Moscow : Letny Sad, 2005, ISBN 5-94381-123-0, http://lccn.loc.gov/2006400578
• Birch, Bruce C., Walter Brueggemann, Terence E. Fretheim, and David L. Petersen (1999). A Theological Introduction to the Old Testament, ISBN 0-687-01348-8. 
• Coggins, R. J., and J. L. Houlden, eds. (1990). Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation. London: SCM Press; Philadelphia: Trinity Press International. ISBN 0-334-00294-X. 
• Ehrman, Bart D. (2005). Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. HarperSanFrancisco. ISBN 0-06-073817-0. 

• Fuller, Reginald H. (1965). The Foundations of New Testament Christology. Scribners. ISBN 0-684-15532-X. 
• Goldingay, John (1990). Approaches to Old Testament Interpretation. Rev. ed. Downers Grove, IL, InterVarsity, ISBN 1-894667-18-2. 
• Hayes, John H., and Carl R. Holladay (1987). Biblical Exegesis: A Beginner's Handbook, Rev. ed. Atlanta, GA, John Knox, ISBN 0-8042-0031-9. 
• Knight, Douglas A., and Gene M. Tucker, eds. (1993). To Each Its Own Meaning: An Introduction to Biblical Criticisms and Their Applications, Louisville, KY, Westminster/John Knox, ISBN 0-664-25784-4. 
• Rogerson, John (1984). Old Testament Criticism in the Nineteenth Century, SPCK, ISBN 0-281-04094-X. ISBN 978-0-8006-0737-1. http://books.google.com/books?id=3BiHAAAACAAJ. 
• Morgan, Robert, and John Barton (1988). Biblical Interpretation, New York, Oxford University, ISBN 0-19-213257-1. 
• Soulen, Richard N. (1981). Handbook of Biblical Criticism, 2nd ed. Atlanta, Ga, John Knox, ISBN 0-664-22314-1. 
• Stuart, Douglas (1984). Old Testament Exegesis: A Primer for Students and Pastors, 2nd ed., Philadelphia, Westminster, ISBN 0-664-24320-7. 

• Shinan, Avigdor, and Yair Zakovitch (2004). That's Not What the Good Book Says, Miskal-Yediot Ahronot Books and Chemed Books, Tel-Aviv

External links[link]

• David J. A. Clines, "Possibilities and Priorities of Biblical Interpretation in an International Perspective", in On the Way to the Postmodern: Old Testament Essays 1967–1998, Volume 1 (JSOTSup, 292; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), pp. 46–68 See Section 6, Future Trends in Biblical Interpretation, overview of some current trends in biblical criticism.
• Philip Davies, review of John J. Collins, "The Bible after Babel: Historical Criticism in a Postmodern Age", 2005 Reviews a survey of postmodernist biblical criticism.
• Allen P. Ross (Beeson Divinity School, Samford University), "The Study of Textual Criticism" Guide to the methodology of textual criticism.
• Yair Hoffman, review of Marvin A. Sweeney and Ehud Ben Zvi (eds.), The Changing Face of Form-Criticism for the Twenty-First Century, 2003 Discusses contemporary form criticism.
• Exploring Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations on the Internet Introduction to biblical criticism
• Library of latest modern books of biblical studies and biblical criticism

v t e The Bible and history General studies Biblical criticism Biblical studies History of ancient Israel and Judah The Bible and history Quest for the historical Jesus Jesus Christ in comparative mythology Historicity Biblical archaeology Historicity of Jesus Historical reliability of the Gospels List of artifacts significant to the Bible List of biblical figures identified in extra-biblical sources Historical Jesus Criticism Criticism of the Bible Christ myth theory Bible Portal

Ray Charles
Ray Charles in 1990
Background information
Birth name	Ray Charles
Born	(1930-09-23)September 23, 1930 Albany, Georgia, United States
Origin	Greenville, Florida, United States
Died	June 10, 2004(2004-06-10) (aged 73) Beverly Hills, California, United States
Genres	Rhythm and blues, soul, blues, soul blues, rock and roll, jazz, vocal jazz, country, pop, gospel
Occupations	Composer, musician, arranger, bandleader
Instruments	Vocals, piano, keyboards, alto saxophone, trombone
Years active	1947–2004
Labels	Atlantic, ABC, Warner Bros., Swing Time, Concord, Columbia, Flashback
Associated acts	The Raelettes, Quincy Jones, Betty Carter, Marvin Gaye, Billy Joel, James Brown, Little Richard
Website	Official website

Ray Charles Robinson (September 23, 1930 – June 10, 2004), known by his shortened stage name Ray Charles, was an American musician. He was a pioneer in the genre of soul music during the 1950s by fusing rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues styles into his early recordings with Atlantic Records.^[1][2][3] He also helped racially integrate country and pop music during the 1960s with his crossover success on ABC Records, most notably with his Modern Sounds albums.^[4][5][6] While with ABC, Charles became one of the first African-American musicians to be given artistic control by a mainstream record company.^[2] Frank Sinatra called Charles “the only true genius in show business.”

The influences upon his music were mainly jazz, blues, rhythm and blues and country artists of the day such as Art Tatum, Nat King Cole, Louis Jordan, Charles Brown, Louis Armstrong. His playing reflected influences from country blues and barrelhouse, and stride piano styles.

Rolling Stone ranked Charles number ten on their list of "100 Greatest Artists of All Time" in 2004,^[7] and number two on their November 2008 list of "100 Greatest Singers of All Time".^[8] In honoring Charles, Billy Joel noted: "This may sound like sacrilege, but I think Ray Charles was more important than Elvis Presley. I don't know if Ray was the architect of rock & roll, but he was certainly the first guy to do a lot of things . . . Who the hell ever put so many styles together and made it work?"^[9]

Early life: 1930–1945[link]

Ray Charles Robinson was the son of Aretha Robinson, a sharecropper, and Bailey Robinson, a railroad repair man, mechanic and handyman.^[10] Aretha Robinson was a devout Christian and the family attended the New Shiloh Baptist Church.^[11] When Ray was an infant, his family moved from Albany, Georgia, where he was born, to the poor black community on the western side of Greenville, Florida. In his early years, Charles showed a curiosity for mechanical things and he often watched the neighborhood men working on their cars and farm machinery. His musical curiosity was sparked at Mr. Wiley Pit's Red Wing Cafe when Pit played boogie woogie on an old upright piano. Pit would care for George, Ray's brother, so as to take the burden off Williams. However, George drowned in the Williams' bath tub when he was four years old.^{[citation needed]} After witnessing the death of his brother, Ray would feel an overwhelming sense of guilt later on in life.

Charles started to lose his sight at the age of five. He went completely blind by the age of seven, apparently due to glaucoma.^[12][13] He attended school at the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind in St. Augustine from 1937 to 1945,^[14] where he developed his musical talent.^[12] During this time he performed on WFOY radio in St. Augustine. His father died when he was 10 and his mother died five years after.

In school, Charles was taught only classical music, but he wanted to play the jazz and blues he heard on the family radio.^[14] While at school, he became the school's premier musician. On Fridays, the South Campus Literary Society held assemblies where Charles would play piano and sing popular songs. On Halloween and Washington's birthday, the Colored Department of the school had socials where Charles would play. It was here he established "RC Robinson and the Shop Boys" and sang his own arrangement of "Jingle Bell Boogie."^[15] He spent his first Christmas at the school, but later the staff pitched in so that Charles could return to Greenville, as he did each summer.

Henry and Alice Johnson, who owned a store not unlike Mr. Pit's store in Greenville, moved to the French town section of Tallahassee, just west of Greenville; and they, as well as Freddy and Margaret Bryant, took Charles in. He worked the register in the Bryants' store under the direction of Lucille Bryant, their daughter. It's said he loved Tallahassee and often used the drug store delivery boy's motorbike to run up and down hills using the exhaust sound of a friend's bike to guide him. Charles found Tallahassee musically exciting too and sat in with the Florida A&M University student band. He played with the Adderley brothers, Nat and Cannonball, and began playing gigs with Lawyer Smith and his Band in 1943 at the Red Bird Club and Deluxe Clubs in Frenchtown and roadhouse theaters around Tallahassee, as well as the Governor's Ball.^[16]

Career[link]

Early career: 1946–1952[link]

After his mother died in 1946, Charles was 15 years old and didn't return to school. He lived in Jacksonville with a couple who were friends of his mother. For over a year, he played the piano for bands at the Ritz Theatre in LaVilla, earning $4 a night. Then he moved to Orlando, and later Tampa, where he played with a southern band called The Florida Playboys. This is where he began his habit of always wearing sunglasses, made by designer Billy Stickles.^[17]

Charles had always played for other people, but he wanted his own band. He decided to leave Florida for a large city, but Chicago and New York City were too big. After asking a friend to look in a map and note the city in the United States that was farthest from Florida, he moved to Seattle in 1947^[12] (where he first met and befriended, under the tutelage of Robert Blackwell, a 14-year-old Quincy Jones)^[18][19] and soon started recording, first for the Down Beat label as the Maxin Trio with guitarist G.D. McKee and bassist Milton Garrett, achieving his first hit with "Confession Blues" in 1949. The song soared to No. 2 on the R&B charts. He joined Swing Time Records and under his own name ("Ray Charles" to avoid being confused with boxer Sugar Ray Robinson)^[10] recorded two more R&B hits, "Baby, Let Me Hold Your Hand" (No. 5) in 1951 and "Kissa Me Baby" (No. 8) in 1952. The following year, Swing Time folded and Ahmet Ertegün signed him to Atlantic Records.^[12]

Atlantic Records: 1953–1958[link]

Charles laid low from recording until early 1953 as Atlantic executives cleared out Charles' contract with Swingtime. Charles began recording jump blues and boogie-woogie style recordings as well as slower blues ballads where he continued to show the vocal influences of Nat "King" Cole and Charles Brown. "Mess Around" became Charles' first Atlantic hit in 1953 and he later had hits the following year with "It Should Have Been Me" and "Don't You Know". He also recorded the songs, "Midnight Hour" and "Sinner's Prayer". Some elements of his own vocal style showed up in "Sinner's Prayer", "Mess Around" and "Don't You Know".

Late in 1954, Charles recorded his own composition, "I Got a Woman" and the song became Charles' first number-one R&B hit in 1955 and brought him to national prominence.^[20] The elements of "I Got a Woman" included a mixture of gospel, jazz and blues elements that would later prove to be seminal in the development of rock 'n' roll and soul music. He repeated this pattern throughout 1955 continuing through 1958 with records such as "This Little Girl of Mine", "Drown in My Own Tears", "Lonely Avenue", "A Fool For You" and "The Night Time (Is the Right Time)".

However, Charles didn't stop his ambitions of jazz recording a couple of instrumental jazz albums with vibraphonist Milt Jackson while also promoting his R&B career. By 1958, Charles was not only headlining black venues such as The Apollo Theater and The Uptown Theater but also bigger venues such as The Newport Jazz Festival. It was at the Newport festival where he cut his first live album. In 1956, Charles recruited a young all-female singing group named the Cookies, and reshaped them as The Raelettes. Before then, Charles had used his wife and other musicians to back him up on recordings such as "This Little Girl of Mine" and "Drown In My Own Tears". The Raelettes' first recording session with Charles was on the bluesy-gospel inflected "Leave My Woman Alone".

Crossover success: 1959–1967[link]

Charles in 1971. Photo: Heinrich Klaffs.

Charles reached the pinnacle of his success at Atlantic with the release of "What'd I Say", a complex song that combined gospel, jazz, blues and Latin music and a song that Charles would later say he composed spontaneously as he was performing in clubs and dances with his small band. Despite some radio stations banning the song because of its sexually suggestive lyrics, the song became a crossover top ten pop record, Charles' first record to do so.^[21] Later in 1959, Charles recorded and released his first country song, a cover of Hank Snow's "Movin' On", and had recorded three more albums for the label including a jazz record (later released in 1961 as The Genius After Hours), a blues record (released in 1961 as The Genius Sings the Blues) and a traditional pop/big band record (The Genius of Ray Charles). The Genius of Ray Charles provided his first top 40 album entry where it peaked at #17 and was later held as a landmark record in Charles' career but Charles saw a bigger opportunity following his Atlantic contract expiring in the fall of 1959 when several big labels offered him record deals.

Choosing not to renegotiate his contract with Atlantic, Ray Charles signed with ABC-Paramount Records in November 1959, obtaining a much more liberal contract than other artists had at the time.^[22] Following the success of "What'd I Say" and The Genius of Ray Charles, ABC offered Charles a $ 50,000 annual advance, higher royalties than previously offered and eventual ownership of his masters — a very valuable and lucrative deal at the time.^[23] During his Atlantic years, Charles was heralded for his own inventive compositions, however, by the time of the release of the instrumental jazz LP Genius + Soul = Jazz (1960) for ABC's subsidiary label Impulse!, Charles had virtually given up on writing original material and had begun to follow his eclectic impulses as an interpreter.^[21]

With his first hit single for ABC-Paramount, Charles received national acclaim and a Grammy Award for the Sid Feller-produced "Georgia on My Mind", originally written by composers Stuart Gorrell and Hoagy Carmichael, released as a single by Charles in 1960.^[21][24] The song served as Charles's first work with Feller, who arranged and conducted the recording. Charles also earned another Grammy for the follow-up "Hit the Road Jack", written by R&B singer Percy Mayfield.^[25] By late 1961, Charles had expanded his small road ensemble to a full-scale big band, partly as a response to increasing royalties and touring fees, becoming one of the few black artists to crossover into mainstream pop with such a level of creative control.^[21][26] This success, however, came to a momentary halt in November 1961, as a police search of Charles's hotel room in Indianapolis, Indiana during a concert tour led to the discovery of heroin in his medicine cabinet. The case was eventually dropped, as the search lacked a proper warrant by the police, and Charles soon returned his focus on music and recording.^[26]

The 1962 album, Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music and its sequel Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, Vol. 2, helped to bring country into the mainstream of music. His version of the Don Gibson song, I Can't Stop Loving You topped the Pop chart for five weeks and stayed at No. 1 R&B for ten weeks in 1962. It also gave him his only number one record in the UK. In 1962, he founded his own record label, Tangerine Records, which ABC-Paramount promoted and distributed.^[27][28] He also had major pop hits in 1963 with "Busted" (US No. 4) and Take These Chains From My Heart (US No. 8). With the rise of younger soul performers such as James Brown, Otis Redding and Motown singers such as Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye and its own blind artist, Stevie Wonder, Charles' successes on the pop and R&B charts peaked after 1964 though he remained a huge concert draw.

Later years: 1967-2004[link]

1972 meeting of President Nixon and Ray Charles taken by Oliver F. Atkins

By 1967, Charles' commercial success had begun peaking on both pop and R&B charts though he would remain a concert draw both in the states and overseas. In 1965, Charles' career after being arrested for a third time for heroin halted after he agreed to go to rehab to avoid jail time. Charles kicked his habit at a clinic in Los Angeles. After spending a year on parole, Charles reemerged on the charts in 1966 with a series of hits composed with the fledgling team of Ashford & Simpson including the dance number, "I Don't Need No Doctor" (later covered in a hard rock style by British supergroup Humble Pie), "Let's Go Get Stoned", which became his first #1 R&B hit in several years, and "Crying Time", which reached #6 on the pop chart and later helped Charles win a Grammy Award the following March.

In 1967, he had a top twenty hit with another ballad, "Here We Go Again".^[29] Charles' renewed chart success, however, proved to be short lived and by the late 1960s his music was rarely played on radio stations partly due to the rise of psychedelic rock and harder forms of rock and R&B music and also due to Charles choosing to record pop standards and covers of then-modern day rock and soul hits as he had no desire to write due to him earning masters. Most of his recordings between 1966 and 1973 were either received well or poorly.^[12] Nonetheless, Charles continued to have an active recording career. Charles' 1972 album, Message from the People, included his unique gospel-influenced version of "America the Beautiful". In 1974, he left ABC Records and recorded several albums on his own Crossover Records label. His 1975 recording of Stevie Wonder's hit, "Living for the City" later helped Charles win another Grammy.

In 1977, he reunited with Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler and re-signed to Atlantic Records where he recorded the album, True to Life. However, the label had now begun focusing on rock acts and some of the label's prominent soul artists such as Aretha Franklin were starting to be neglected. Charles stayed with his old label until 1980. In November 1977 he appeared as the host of NBC's Saturday Night Live.^[30] In April of 1979, Charles' version of "Georgia On My Mind" was proclaimed the state song of Georgia. An emotional Charles performed the song on the floor of the state legislature.^[12] Though he notably supported the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1960s, Charles would be criticized for performing at South Africa's Sun City resort in 1981 during an international boycott of its apartheid policy.^[12] In 1983, Charles signed a contract with Columbia Records and recorded a string of country albums. Charles also began having a string of country hits often with duet singers such as George Jones, Chet Atkins, B.J. Thomas, Mickey Gilley, Hank Williams, Jr. and lifelong friend Willie Nelson, for which he recorded the #1 country duet, "Seven Spanish Angels". After 1987, his Columbia contract ended and Charles returned to recording pop music after signing with Warner Bros. Records. Prior to the release of his first Warner release, Would You Believe, Charles made a return on the R&B charts with a cover of The Brothers Johnson's "I'll Be Good to You", a duet with his lifelong buddy Quincy Jones and singer Chaka Khan. The song hit number-one on the R&B charts in 1990 and won Charles and Khan a Grammy for their dual work. Prior to this, Charles returned on the pop charts in another duet, with singer Billy Joel on the song, "Baby Grand" and in 1989, recorded a cover of the Southern All Stars' "Itoshi no Ellie", releasing it as "Ellie My Love" for a Japanese TV ad for Suntory releasing it in Japan where it reached #3 on its Oricon chart.^[31] Charles' 1993 album, My World became his first album in some time to reach the Billboard 200 and his cover of Leon Russell's "A Song for You" gave him a charted hit on the adult contemporary chart as well as his twelfth and final Grammy he would receive in his lifetime.

By the beginning of the 1980s, Charles would reach younger audiences by appearances in various films and TV shows. In 1980, he made a cameo on the film, The Blues Brothers. While he never appeared on the show, Charles' version of "Night Time is the Right Time" was played during the popular "Cosby Show" episode, "Happy Anniversary". In 1985, he appeared among a slew of other popular musicians in the USA for Africa charity recording, "We Are the World". Charles' popularity increased among younger audiences in 1991 after he appeared where he popularized the catchphrase "You Got the Right One, Baby" The catchphrase came from a song that was composed by Kenny Ascher, Joseph C. Caro and Helary Jay Lipsitz.^[32]

Charles with President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan in 1984.

Charles also appeared at two Presidential inaugurations in his lifetime. In 1985, he performed for Ronald Reagan's second inauguration, and in 1993 for Bill Clinton's first.^[33] In the late 1980s/early 1990s, Charles made appearances on the Super Dave Osbourne TV show, where he performed and appeared in a few vignettes where he was somehow driving a car, often as Super Dave's chauffeur. During the sixth season of Designing Women, Charles sang "Georgia on My Mind", instead of the song being rendered instrumentally by other musicians as in the previous five seasons. He also appeared in 4 episodes of the popular TV comedy The Nanny in Seasons 4 & 5 (1997 & 1998) as 'Sammy', in one episode singing "My Yiddish Mamma" to December romance and later fiancee of character Gramma Yetta, played by veteran actress Ann Guilbert. From 2001-2002, Charles appeared in commercials for the New Jersey Lottery to promote its "For every dream, there's a jackpot" campaign.

In 2003, Ray Charles headlined the White House Correspondents Dinner in Washington, D.C. where the President, First Lady, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice attended. He also presented one of his greatest admirers, Van Morrison, with his award upon being inducted in the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the two sang Morrison's song "Crazy Love". This performance appears on Morrison's 2007 album, The Best of Van Morrison Volume 3. In 2003 Charles performed "Georgia On My Mind" and "America the Beautiful" at a televised annual electronic media journalist banquet held in Washington, D.C. His final public appearance came on April 30, 2004, at the dedication of his music studio as a historic landmark in the city of Los Angeles.^[12]

Personal life[link]

Family[link]

Charles was married twice and had 12 children with nine different women.^[34][35] His first marriage to Eileen Williams was brief: July 31, 1951 to 1952. He had three children from his second marriage, to Della Beatrice Howard Robinson from April 5, 1955 to April 26, 1977. His long term girlfriend and partner at the time of his death was Norma Pinella. His first child, Evelyn, was born in 1950 to girlfriend Louise Mitchell. His three children with Della, Ray Charles, Jr., David and Robert, were born in 1955, 1958 and 1960 respectively. Another son, Charles Wayne, was born in 1959 during his six-year long affair with original Raelettes vocalist Margie Hendricks. In 1961, a daughter, Raenee, was born during an affair with Mae Mosely Lyles. Two years later, in 1963, Charles and Sandra Jean Betts welcomed daughter Sheila Raye Charles Robinson.^[36] In 1966, a daughter named Alicia was born by a woman who remains unidentified to this day, followed by another daughter, Alexandra, born to a woman named Chantal Bertrand. Charles' next child, Vincent, came from a relationship with Arlette Kotchounian following his divorce from Della Howard in 1977. A year later, daughter Robyn was born to a woman named Gloria Moffett. Charles' youngest child, son Ryan Corey, was born in 1987 to Mary Anne den Bok.

Charles gave 10 of his 12 children checks for one million USD in December 2002 at a family luncheon, while the other two could not make it.^[37]

Substance abuse and legal issues[link]

On November 14, 1961, Charles was arrested on a narcotics charge in an Indiana hotel room, where he waited to perform. The detectives seized heroin, marijuana, and other items. Charles, then 31, stated that he had been a drug addict since the age of 16. While the case was dismissed because of the manner in which the evidence was obtained,^[38] Charles's situation did not improve until a few years later. Individuals such as Quincy Jones and Reverend Henry Griffin felt that those around Charles were responsible for his drug use.

By 1964 Charles' drug addiction caught up with him and he was arrested for possession of marijuana and heroin. Following a self-imposed stay^[38] at St. Francis Hospital in Lynwood, California, Charles received five years' probation. Charles responded to the saga of his drug use and reform with the songs "I Don't Need No Doctor", "Let's Go Get Stoned", and the release of his first album since having kicked his heroin addiction in 1966, Crying Time.^[39][40]

Other interests[link]

Charles played chess using a special board with holes for the pieces and raised squares.^[41] Charles referred to Willie Nelson as "my chess partner" in a 1991 concert.^[42] In 2002, he played and lost to American Grandmaster and former U.S. Champion Larry Evans.^[43]

Death[link]

Charles died on June 10, 2004 at 11:35 a.m. of liver disease at his home in Beverly Hills, California, surrounded by family and friends.^[44][45] He was 73 years old. His body was interred in the Inglewood Park Cemetery.

Star on Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6777 Hollywood Blvd.

His final album, Genius Loves Company, released two months after his death, consists of duets with various admirers and contemporaries: B.B. King, Van Morrison, Willie Nelson, James Taylor, Gladys Knight, Michael McDonald, Natalie Cole, Elton John, Bonnie Raitt, Diana Krall, Norah Jones, and Johnny Mathis. The album won eight Grammy Awards, including five for Ray Charles for Best Pop Vocal Album, Album of the Year, Record of the Year and Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals for "Here We Go Again" with Norah Jones, and Best Gospel Performance for "Heaven Help Us All" with Gladys Knight; he also received nods for his duets with Elton John and B.B. King. The album included a version of Harold Arlen's "Over the Rainbow", sung as a duet by Charles and Johnny Mathis; this record was played at his memorial service.^[46]

Two more posthumous albums, Genius & Friends (2005) and Ray Sings, Basie Swings (2006), were released. Genius & Friends consisted of duets recorded from 1997 to 2005 with his choice of artists. Ray Sings, Basie Swings consists of archived vocals of Ray Charles from live mid-1970s performances added to new instrumental tracks specially recorded by the contemporary Count Basie Orchestra and other musicians. Charles's vocals recorded from the concert mixing board were added to new accompaniments to create a "fantasy concert" recording.

Legacy[link]

Charles possessed one of the most recognizable voices in American music. In the words of musicologist Henry Pleasants:

Sinatra, and Bing Crosby before him, had been masters of words. Ray Charles is a master of sounds. His records disclose an extraordinary assortment of slurs, glides, turns, shrieks, wails, breaks, shouts, screams and hollers, all wonderfully controlled, disciplined by inspired musicianship, and harnessed to ingenious subtleties of harmony, dynamics and rhythm... It is either the singing of a man whose vocabulary is inadequate to express what is in his heart and mind or of one whose feelings are too intense for satisfactory verbal or conventionally melodic articulation. He can’t tell it to you. He can’t even sing it to you. He has to cry out to you, or shout to you, in tones eloquent of despair — or exaltation. The voice alone, with little assistance from the text or the notated music, conveys the message.

Ray Charles is usually described as a baritone, and his speaking voice would suggest as much, as would the difficulty he experiences in reaching and sustaining the baritone's high E and F in a popular ballad. But the voice undergoes some sort of transfiguration under stress, and in music of gospel or blues character he can and does sing for measures on end in the high tenor range of A, B flat, B, C and ev in full voice, sometimes in an ecstatic head voice, sometimes in falsetto. In falsetto he continues up to E and F above high C. On one extraordinary record, "I’m Going Down to the River’ . . . he hits an incredible B flat . . . giving him an overall range, including the falsetto extension, of at least three octaves.^[47]

In 1979, Charles was one of the first of the Georgia State Music Hall of Fame to be recognized as a musician born in the state.^[48] Ray's version of "Georgia On My Mind" was made the official state song for Georgia.^[49] In 1981, he was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and was one of the first inductees to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame at its inaugural ceremony in 1986.^[50] He received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1986.^[51]

In 1987, he was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1991, he was inducted to the Rhythm & Blues Foundation. In 1993, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.^[52] In 1998 he was awarded the Polar Music Prize together with Ravi Shankar in Stockholm, Sweden. In 2004 he was inducted to the Jazz Hall of Fame, and inducted to the National Black Sports & Entertainment Hall of Fame.^[53] The Grammy Awards of 2005 were dedicated to Charles.

On December 7, 2007, Ray Charles Plaza was opened in Albany, Georgia, with a revolving, lighted bronze sculpture of Charles seated at a piano. Later that month, on December 26, 2007, Ray Charles was inducted into the Hit Parade Hall of Fame. He was also presented with the George and Ira Gershwin Award for Lifetime Musical Achievement, during the 1991 UCLA Spring Sing.^[54]

In 2003, Charles was awarded an honorary degree by Dillard University. Upon his death, he endowed a professorship of African-American culinary history at the school, which is the first such chair in the nation.^[55] A $20 million performing arts center at Morehouse College was named after Charles and was dedicated in September 2010.^[56]

The biopic Ray, released in October 2004, portrays his life and career between 1930 and 1979 and stars Jamie Foxx as Charles. Foxx won the 2005 Academy Award for Best Actor for the role.

Discography[link]

Filmography[link]

• Swingin' Along (1961)
• Ballad in Blue (1964)
• The Big T.N.T. Show (1966) (documentary)
• The Blues Brothers (1980)
• Who's The Boss (himself) 1987
• Limit Up (1989)
• Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones (1990) (documentary)
• Love Affair (1994)
• Spy Hard (1996)
• The Nanny (1999) as Sammy
• The Extreme Adventures of Super Dave (2000)
• Blue's Big Musical Movie (2000)
• Ray (2004)

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

External links[link]

	Book: Ray Charles
Wikipedia books are collections of articles that can be downloaded or ordered in print.

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Ray Charles

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Ray Charles

• Official website
• Article from the St. Augustine Record noting Charles' being on WFOY.
• Ray Charles - Daily Telegraph obituary
• Ray Charles discography at MusicBrainz
• Ray Charles at RollingStone
• Ray Charles at Songwriters Hall of Fame
• Ray Charles at The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
• Ray Charles at the Internet Movie Database
• Ray Charles at Allmusic
• Ray Charles discography at Discogs
• Ray Charles autobiography: The Early Years 1930–1960
• I Can't Stop Loving You: Ray Charles and Country Music - Past Exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
• Ray Charles's oral history video excerpts at the National Visionary Leadership Project
• Ray Charles interviewed on the Pop Chronicles (1969).