Also important for form criticism is the boundary between oral and written language, for many of the forms discerned were originally oral ones. The extent of the influence of oral speech—with its pattern of repetition and its creative reformulation as a story is retold—on biblical literature is a hotly debated topic. Unfortunately, the original setting of many forms can be reconstructed only hypothetically. In New Testament studies, form criticism has been especially useful in classifying the forms of the sayings and narratives in the Synoptic Gospels. Form-critical analysis, by showing the general pattern of a parable or miracle story, for instance, is able to make much clearer the force of a particular parable by showing how it both uses and creatively distorts the basic form.
Redaction Criticism. Redaction criticism studies the changes that an author made in the traditions incorporated into a finished work. It aims to understand how Jews and Christians responded to new situations by creatively reworking their traditions. Form criticism presupposes sufficient stability in tradition so that earlier (often originally oral) forms can be recognized in a later work. Redaction critics agree, but they look at the often slight changes in a section of the Bible and in the introductory and concluding settings of a passage to interpret how the final author related the tradition to a later community and a later pattern of faith.
Redaction criticism is on firm ground when both earlier and later stages of the tradition are available. A clear case is the use of Mark by Matthew and Luke, according to the “two document theory” (see below). Changes that Matthew and Luke made in Mark’s formulation of the tradition about Jesus indicate the special interests of the later writers and their churches. Redaction criticism can also be very successful even when the earlier form of the tradition is present only in its later setting. The editing of earlier forms of the Hebrew story by the writer or writers of Judges and 1 and 2 Kings, for instance, tells us a great deal about the faith of these authors (see Judg. 2:19).
Redaction criticism thus assumes that the writers of the biblical books were not mere collectors (as had sometimes been thought by form critics) but were authors who expressed distinct points of view. Yet its clues to the meaning of a work are found in specific parts; it is left to literary criticism to look at the overall pattern of a book.
Literary Criticism. Literary criticism may be focused in various ways, but in biblical studies most literary criticism has dealt either with literary history or with literary form.
Literary criticism as literary history led to the discovery that many biblical books were not written as unified wholes by single authors but were collections that used earlier sources. The classic “Documentary theory” of the writing of the first five books of the Bible and the “two document theory” of the writing of the first three Gospels in the New Testament are primary examples of historical literary criticism. The Documentary theory of the Pentateuch or first five books of the Hebrew scriptures holds that these books were compiled from a number of previously written “documents,” two of which, “J” and “E,” were narratives of the Hebrew past, and two of which, “D” (the deuteronomic source) and “P” (the Priestly document), were collections of laws. The clue that led to the discovery of this hypothesis is a shift between two names of God, “Yahweh” (“J” in German) and “Elohim” (“E”), in the narrative parts of the books in question. Since an unreflective reading of these books suggests that they were all written by a single author, Moses, the Documentary theory was exceedingly controversial when it was first advanced. Current study, for the most part, accepts the view that these books were compilations, but it is much more flexible about the details, since today oral tradition is recognized as playing a large part in the transmission of the traditions that we now find in these books.
A similar study of the first three Gospels of the New Testament led to the “two document theory,” which is now very widely held, though not universally accepted. It holds that Matthew and Luke both used Mark as a source, and also used a lost document, “Q,” which was a collection of the words of Jesus.
Essential though it is, historical literary criticism, like all forms of historical study, risks leaving the Bible in the distant past if it is the only method employed. Literary criticism that looks at the form of the passage or book in question is more open to present-day appropriation.
Literary criticism directed to form is quite varied. From the time of Aristotle’s Poetics to the New Critics of the twentieth century, formal literary criticism has studied how the form of a work (or shorter passage) is related to the effects the work produces. Attention is shifted away both from the history of the work and from its ideas as abstracted from their role in the work itself. Instead, criticism is turned to how the work appeals to the imagination and to feelings. Such formal criticism thus includes both rigorous attention to the interrelation of the parts of the work—how plot, characters, setting, and language are related, for instance—and a sensitivity to the work’s symbolic, imaginative, and aesthetic aspects.
Narrative is a prominent literary form in the Bible, and formal literary criticism has been exceptionally fruitful in interpreting biblical narrative. Narrative criticism illuminates how the subtle characterization of figures like Joseph is achieved and how the actually narrated story of the Gospels is related both to the figure of Jesus and to the expected events that lie beyond the scope of the Gospel narrative. Study of biblical narrative has also emphasized the contrast between narratives such as the Gospels, which help the reader find a place, and narratives such as the parables, which often dislocate or displace the reader.
Structural criticism has its roots in the formal criticism briefly described above. It attempts to achieve greater rigor, and thus to depend less on intuition, by analyzing a passage into constituent units of meaning, showing how they are related step-by-step as one moves through the work, and how they derive their dynamic from deeper, more general or abstract forces that lie beneath the surface interactions that are studied in traditional formal criticism. Structural criticism is an extension of linguistics to units larger than the sentence. It attempts to show how the deeper structures, such as the fundamental existential tension between life and death, and the fundamental ethical tension between good and evil, provide the energy or dynamic for the production of meaning.
A specific type of literary criticism is genre criticism, which seeks to identify the larger forms of biblical literature and relate them to their functions in the life of the community. An example is the genre of the Gospels, which has been the focus of intense study. How appropriate is the description of the Gospels as biographies? It was long held that their lack of interest in Jesus’ inner life made it wrong to class the Gospels as biographies, but more recent study of Hellenistic biographies has shown that the Gospels are close enough to some ancient biographies that this is an appropriate way to think of them. Yet the apocalyptic element in the Gospels has led some students to think of them as a modification of the form of the apocalypse, while others point to the element of kerygma or proclamation and see the Gospels as a unique genre, created to proclaim the Christian message. The diversity of views is a reminder that important writings may not fit established patterns of genre.
Audience criticism considers how a work makes its impact on its audience. It may deal with the original audience, or with a modern one. In either case, such criticism notes how the reader or hearer must make a creative contribution to what the work becomes as it is understood, so that the meaning of a work is not fixed, but is changed or enriched as people with different backgrounds and questions encounter it.
Conclusion. The specialization that marks academic work has tended to separate biblical criticism from theology, but these two studies always interact and deeply need each other. Historical biblical study contributed enormously to theology when an important task of theology was to show how the biblical narratives or biblical figures such as Jesus were functioning in a world in many respects like the present world. This is still an important contribution, but at the present time another contribution of biblical criticism, especially in its various literary modes, takes precedence. This involves showing how faith is communicated not simply through the intellect, but by narrative or story, metaphor, and imagination. Biblical literary criticism is challenging theology to deal less with ideas and doctrines, important though these are, and to reflect on how God’s presence and purpose are communicated