ABSTRACT
In earlier chapters we have encountered trends in the modern study of the Bible. Historical reconstruction of the events and social realities underlying the biblical narrative requires the ability to date the various biblical books; and that in turn throws up the possibility that some of the books are composite, with an origin in the combining of two or more source documents. This is especially true in the Pentateuch (and we surveyed some of the current theories about this) and the Gospels, where the main scholarly consensus favours the idea that there were at least two major sources, Mark and ‘Q’, together with other traditions peculiar to Matthew (‘M’) and Luke (‘L’). The study of these hypothetical sources is generally known in the English-speaking world as source criticism, though in German-speaking scholarship as Literarkritik, which it is misleading to translate as ‘literary criticism’. At an even more fundamental level, we need to know what actually appeared in the biblical books at the earliest point we can investigate, by comparing one manuscript with another, and this produces the technique known as textual criticism, discussed in chapter 2. However, these historical investigations into the origins of the
biblical text by no means exhaust how the Bible is or ought to be studied. With more modern texts, and even with those produced in classical antiquity, there can be an advantage in knowing about the
author’s sources; and we certainly want to make sure we have an accurate edition, not one full of printing mistakes or errors by the editor. But the interpretation of texts goes well beyond these rather technical matters. We also want to know what the texts mean. The second half of the twentieth century saw various movements dedicated to interpreting biblical texts in something like the way other texts are interpreted, in a quest for the meaning.
