Source, form and redaction criticism: what each asks

Program / Course 4: Biblical Studies and Hermeneutics / Lesson 4.2

What you will learn

• State the question each of the three methods asks of a text.
• Describe the Synoptic problem and the main proposals for solving it.
• Describe the documentary hypothesis for the Pentateuch and the main criticisms of it.
• Explain how these methods can be used by readers with different convictions about Scripture.

The big idea

Source criticism asks what earlier materials a biblical author used. Form criticism asks what small units lie behind the text and what life setting shaped them. Redaction criticism asks how the final author or editor arranged and shaped his materials to make his own point. All three belong to the family of historical methods. They offer ways of noticing features of the text that a surface reading can miss. Their conclusions are often debated, and Christians of different traditions use them in different measures.

Key terms

Source criticism

The study of the written or oral sources a biblical author may have drawn on.

Form criticism

The study of the literary forms or patterns of short units, such as miracle stories, sayings and psalms, and of the settings in which they were used.

Redaction criticism

The study of how an editor or author arranged, changed and added to his sources to express his own purposes.

Synoptic Gospels

Matthew, Mark and Luke, which are called synoptic because they can be seen together and share much material.

Q

A proposed lost collection of sayings of Jesus used by Matthew and Luke. The letter comes from the German word Quelle, meaning source.

Documentary hypothesis

A theory that the Pentateuch was formed from several documents, traditionally labeled J, E, D and P, combined over time.

Sitz im Leben

A German phrase meaning setting in life. It names the situation in the community, such as worship or teaching, in which a form arose.

Background

The historical methods grew up in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when scholars began to examine the Bible with the tools they used on other ancient texts. They noticed repeated stories, shifts in style, and parallels between books. They asked how these came to be. Some of their answers have been widely accepted, some have been revised, and some have been rejected. In every case the methods give questions more reliably than conclusions.

The three methods in this lesson fit together as stages. Source criticism looks at the sources behind a book. Form criticism looks further back at the small units that fed into the sources. Redaction criticism looks forward to the finished work and asks what the final author did. A reader can use them in sequence, or can use only one.

A Christian reader may use these methods with different convictions. Some see them as tools that help the reader to understand how God spoke through human authors. Others use them cautiously, concerned that they can be turned to doubt the text. A fair study explains what each method does, and what it cannot do.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: Source criticism

The Synoptic Gospels are the best known case. Matthew, Mark and Luke share a great deal of wording and order, and also differ. Scholars ask how to explain this. The most widely held proposal, the two-source hypothesis, holds that Mark was written first and that Matthew and Luke each used Mark and also used a second source, called Q, for the sayings of Jesus that they share but Mark lacks. Other scholars propose that Luke used Matthew, or that Matthew used Luke, without Q, or that Matthew came first and Mark abbreviated it, which was the view of Augustine and of many in the church until the modern period.

In the Old Testament, the best known proposal is the documentary hypothesis. Scholars such as Julius Wellhausen in the nineteenth century argued that the five books of Moses combine four strands, J, E, D and P, named for features such as the use of the divine name Yahweh and the interest in priestly matters. Many scholars still use a version of it, but many others have changed or replaced it. They propose supplements to a core text or smaller fragments combined over time. Jewish and Christian readers who hold to Mosaic authorship reject it, or accept only that Moses used earlier material.

Step 2: Form criticism

Hermann Gunkel applied form criticism to the Psalms and to Genesis in the early twentieth century, grouping psalms by type such as lament, thanksgiving and royal psalm. In the 1920s, Martin Dibelius and Rudolf Bultmann applied the approach to the gospels. They proposed that stories and sayings were first told and retold in the early church, and that they took recognizable shapes, such as miracle stories, controversy stories with a closing saying, and parables.

The method is useful for seeing patterns. A reader who notices that many healing stories have a similar structure sees how the gospel writers tell the story of Jesus. But the method has drawn criticism. It assumed that the early tradition was shaped mostly by the community’s needs, and the assumption has been challenged by scholars who stress the role of eyewitnesses and the possibility of careful memory. Richard Bauckham’s argument, listed in the recommended readings for this course, is one such challenge. Others reply that a role for the community does not exclude a role for memory.

Step 3: Redaction criticism

Redaction criticism begins from the finished text and compares it with its sources. If Matthew and Luke used Mark, their changes to Mark show what they cared about. For example, comparing the gospels in the story of the stilling of the storm, one can see differences in how the disciples address Jesus and in how they are described. The method asks why each writer shaped the story as he did.

This approach changed the way scholars viewed the evangelists. They were not mere collectors but authors with purposes. Matthew arranges the teaching of Jesus in five great discourses. Luke places the journey to Jerusalem at the center of his gospel. These are features a reader can see without any theory, but the method gives them a framework. Its weakness is that it depends on knowing the sources, and where the sources are uncertain, the conclusions are less sure.

Step 4: Use the methods with care

A sound habit is to use each method for the question it asks, and to mark the level of confidence of each result. That Mark was written before Matthew is a conclusion with wide support. That Q existed is argued but not proved. That a certain story belongs to a form that developed late is an inference. Writing these levels down in your notebook keeps you honest, and keeps the method from controlling the text.

1. Does this passage have a parallel in another book, and how do the two differ?
2. What evidence is there for an earlier source, and what is only a theory?
3. What form does this short unit take, and what setting might have used it?
4. What has the author changed or added, and what does the change show?
5. How confident are scholars in this conclusion, and why?
6. What is the passage saying in its present form, whatever its history?

Examples

Different perspectives

Catholic

In 1943 the encyclical Divino afflante Spiritu encouraged Catholic scholars to use the historical and literary methods. Later, the Second Vatican Council taught that interpreters must attend to the literary forms and the circumstances of the authors. The church also teaches that such study serves a reading in the light of the whole of Scripture and tradition.

Protestant

Protestants range widely. Mainline traditions have largely adopted the methods, and many evangelicals use them selectively, accepting the study of sources and forms while rejecting conclusions that deny the historicity of events or the unity of authorship. Others resist them altogether as based on doubt.

Orthodox

Orthodox scholars have often been cautious, valuing the received text and the fathers, though many Orthodox biblical scholars now use the methods with attention to the way the church reads Scripture. They tend to stress the final form of the text as the one given in the church.

Jewish

Many Jewish scholars use source and form criticism in academic study, and many traditional Jewish communities hold to Mosaic authorship of the Torah. Both approaches exist side by side, and Jewish scholarship has contributed greatly to the study of the text.

Secular scholarship

In universities, these methods are used as general tools of historical study, apart from questions of faith. Their results are tested by the same standards as other historical conclusions, and scholars of many convictions contribute to the debate.

Why it matters

Much commentary on the Bible rests on these methods, so a reader who meets terms like Q, J or redaction will want to know what they mean and how much weight they carry. The methods also train the eye to notice how a text is built. Used with care, they enrich reading. Used without care, they can claim more than the evidence allows.

Common misunderstandings

Knowledge check

Think it through

1. How might knowing that Luke used earlier accounts, as his preface says, affect the way you read him?
2. What are the benefits and the dangers of looking for the history behind a text?
3. Why might some believers welcome these methods and others distrust them?
4. Does a text lose or gain authority when you learn that it was shaped by an editor?

Independent assignment

Compare a parallel

Choose a story that appears in two or three gospels, such as the stilling of the storm in Mark 4, Matthew 8 and Luke 8. In your notebook, set the accounts side by side and list every difference in wording, detail and order. Write 350 to 500 words saying what each writer seems to emphasize, and which differences you can explain and which you cannot. Do not try to decide the history of the sources. Keep your work in your notebook.

Further study

• Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth Read the chapters on the gospels and the Old Testament narratives.
• Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses Read selectively for an argument that challenges older form criticism.
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Hermeneutics Read for the background of the historical methods.
• Augustine of Hippo, The City of God Read selectively to see Augustine reading history as a believer.
• Luke 1:1 Luke’s preface describes earlier accounts and careful investigation.
• Matthew 5:3 The first Beatitude.
• Luke 6:20 The first Beatitude in Luke.
• Psalm 13:1 A lament that moves to trust.