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Historical criticism, also known as the historical-critical method or higher criticism, is a branch of literary criticism that investigates the origins of ancient text in order to understand "the world behind the text".^[1]

The primary goal of historical criticism is to ascertain the text's primitive or original meaning in its original historical context and its literal sense or sensus literalis historicus. The secondary goal seeks to establish a reconstruction of the historical situation of the author and recipients of the text. This may be accomplished by reconstructing the true nature of the events in which the text describes. An ancient text may also serve as a document, record or source for reconstructing the ancient past which may also serve as a chief interest to the historical critic. In regards to Semitic biblical interpretation, the historical critic would be able to interpret "The Literature of Israel" as well as "The History of Israel".^[2]

In 18th century Biblical criticism, the term higher criticism was commonly used in mainstream scholarship ^[3] in contrast with lower criticism. In the 21st century, historical criticism is the more commonly used term for higher criticism, while textual criticism is more common than the loose expression lower criticism.^[4]

Historical criticism began in the 17th century and gained popular recognition in the 19th and 20th centuries. The perspective of the early historical critic was rooted in Protestant reformation ideology, in as much as their approach to biblical studies were free from the influence of traditional interpretation.^[5] Where historical investigation was unavailable, historical criticism rested on philosophical and theological interpretation. With each passing century, historical criticism became refined into various methodologies used today: source criticism, form criticism, redaction criticism, tradition criticism, canonical criticism, and related methodologies.^[2]

Historical critical methods[link]

Historical-critical methods are the specific procedures ^[1] used to examine the text’s historical origins, such as: the time, the place in which the text was written, its sources, the events, dates, persons, places, things, and customs that are mentioned or implied in the text.^[2]

The approach of Historical-critical methods typifies the following: (1) that reality is uniform and universal, (2) that reality is accessible to human reason and investigation (3) that all events historical and natural are interconnected and comparable to analogy, (4) that humanity’s contemporary experience of reality can provide objective criteria to what could or could not have happened in past events.^[1]

Application[link]

Application of the historical critical method, in biblical studies, investigates the books of the Hebrew Bible as well as the New Testament. Historical critics compare texts to other texts written around the same time. An example of this is when modern biblical scholarship has attempted to understand the Book of Revelation in its 1st century historical context, by identifying its literary genre with Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature.

In regards to the Gospels, higher criticism deals with the synoptic problem, the relations among Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In some cases, such as with several Pauline epistles, higher criticism can confirm the traditional understanding of authorship or contradict church tradition as it has with the Gospels and 2 Peter.

In Classical studies, the 19th century approach to higher criticism set aside "efforts to fill ancient religion with direct meaning and relevance and devoted itself instead to the critical collection and chronological ordering of the source material."^[6] Thus, higher criticism, whether biblical, classical, Byzantine or medieval, focuses on the source documents to determine who wrote it, when it was written, and where.

Historical/higher criticism has also been applied to other religious writings from Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, as well as the Qur'an.

Methodologies[link]

Diagram of the Documentary Hypothesis.

*	includes most of Leviticus
†	includes most of Deuteronomy
‡	"Deuteronomic history": Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, 1& 2 Kings

Historical criticism comprises several disciplines which include:^[2]

• Source criticism
• Form criticism
• Redaction criticism
• Tradition criticism
• Radical criticism

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 undoubtably Julius Wellhausen's Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels (1878), whose "insight and clarity of expression have left their mark indelibly on modern biblical studies."^[7]

Form criticism[link]

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

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 author/s of the text.^[10]

Radical criticism[link]

At the end of the 19th Century, there have been advocates of higher criticism, who strenuously tried to avoid any trace of dogma or theological bias when reconstructing a past reality. This has led to the branch of Radical Criticism, pursued by historical critics most skeptic of ecclesial tradition. Radical criticism has projected the concept that Jesus never existed,^[1] nor his apostles. Radical critics have also attempted to show that none of the Pauline epistles are authentic; that Paul is nothing more than a controverted authorial token.

History of higher criticism[link]

The Dutch scholars Desiderius Erasmus (1466? – 1536) and Benedict Spinoza (1632–1677) are usually credited as the first to study the Bible in this way.^[11] When applied to the Bible, the historical-critical method is distinct from the traditional, devotional approach.^[12] In particular, while devotional readers concern themselves with the overall message of the Bible, historians examine the distinct messages of each book in the Bible.^[12] Guided by the devotional approach, for example, Christians often combine accounts from different gospels into single accounts, whereas historians attempt to discern what is unique about each gospel, including how they are different.^[12]

The phrase "higher criticism" became popular in Europe from the mid-18th century to the early 20th century, to describe the work of such scholars as Jean Astruc (mid-18th century), Johann Salomo Semler (1725–91), Johann Gottfried Eichhorn (1752–1827), Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860), and Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918).^[13] In academic circles today, this is the body of work properly considered "higher criticism", though the phrase is sometimes applied to earlier or later work using similar methods.

Higher criticism originally referred to the work of German biblical scholars of the Tübingen School. After the path-breaking work on the New Testament by Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), the next generation – which included scholars such as David Friedrich Strauss (1808–74) and Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–72) – in the mid-19th century analyzed the historical records of the Middle East from Christian and Old Testament times in search of independent confirmation of events related in the Bible. These latter scholars built on the tradition of Enlightenment and Rationalist thinkers such as John Locke, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Gotthold Lessing, Gottlieb Fichte, G. W. F. Hegel and the French rationalists.

These ideas were imported to England by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and, in particular, by George Eliot's translations of Strauss's The Life of Jesus (1846) and Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity (1854). In 1860 seven liberal Anglican theologians began the process of incorporating this historical criticism into Christian doctrine in Essays and Reviews, causing a five year storm of controversy which completely overshadowed the arguments over Darwin's newly published On the Origin of Species. Two of the authors were indicted for heresy and lost their jobs by 1862, but in 1864 had the judgement overturned on appeal. La Vie de Jésus (1863), the seminal work by a Frenchman, Ernest Renan (1823–92), continued in the same tradition as Strauss and Feuerbach. In Catholicism, L'Evangile et l'Eglise (1902), the magnum opus by Alfred Loisy against the Essence of Christianity of Adolf von Harnack and La Vie de Jesus of Renan, gave birth to the modernist crisis (1902–61). Some scholars, such as Rudolf Bultmann and Robert M. Price , have used higher criticism of the Bible to "demythologize" it.

Historical critics[link]

Recent authors who have offered higher criticism of the Bible include: Robert M. Price, 'The case against the case for Christ, a New Testament scholar refutes the reverend Lee Strobel'; Robert M. Price, 'The reason driven life'; Earl Doherty, 'The Jesus puzzle: challenging the existence of an historical Jesus'; and Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy, 'The Jesus mysteries.'

Other known historical critics are:

• Alexander Geddes
• Edwin Johnson (historian)
• Ken Humphreys
• John W. Loftus
• Hector Avalos

Higher criticism interpretations[link]

Scholars of higher criticism have sometimes upheld and sometimes challenged the traditional authorship of various books of the Bible.^[14] Details of the arguments regarding this issue are addressed more specifically in the articles about each book.

Old Testament[link]

Around the end of the 18th century Johann Gottfried Eichhorn, "the founder of modern Old Testament criticism", produced works of "investigation of the inner nature of the Old Testament with the help of the Higher Criticism". Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher also influenced the development of Higher Criticism.

A group of German biblical scholars at Tübingen University formed the Tübingen school of theology under the leadership of Ferdinand Christian Baur, with important works being produced by Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach and David Strauss. In the early 19th century they sought independent confirmation of the events related in the Bible through Hegelian analysis of the historical records of the Middle East from Christian and Old Testament times.^[15][16]

Their ideas were brought to England by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, then in 1846 Mary Ann Evans translated David Strauss's sensational Leben Jesu as the Life of Jesus Critically Examined, a quest for the historical Jesus. In 1854 she followed this with a translation of Feuerbach's even more radical Essence of Christianity which held that the idea of God was created by man to express the divine within himself, though Strauss attracted most of the controversy.^[15] The loose grouping of Broad Churchmen in the Church of England was influenced by the German higher critics. In particular, Benjamin Jowett visited Germany and studied the work of Baur in the 1840s, then in 1866 published his book on The Epistles of St Paul, arousing theological opposition. He then collaborated with six other theologians to publish their Essays and Reviews in 1860. The central essay was Jowett's On the Interpretation of Scripture which argued that the Bible should be studied to find the authors' original meaning in their own context rather than expecting it to provide a modern scientific text.^[17][18]