ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates the principles involved in the interplay between material and method, as these work themselves out in the act of biblical interpretation. What "source criticism" meant for the interpretation of many biblical books was that the final form of the text, as it presently stands in the Bible, need not be the only focus of interest. Redaction criticism is a way of approaching and reading a biblical text. The concern for interpretive method is a highly disciplined and sophisticated area of biblical study, the underlying implication applies to both the most casual and the most highly trained reader. Biblical scholars study the Pentateuch and the Gospels in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They realize that these biblical books are in all likelihood based on prior sources that have been incorporated in the final literary text as it now stands in the Bible.
