How has Higher Criticism effected your faith in scripture?

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Is there such a thing as “Middle Criticism”? If Higher Criticism sometimes gets it wrong would maybe “Middle Criticism” be the answer?
 
Jerry-Jet said:
Is there such a thing as “Middle Criticism”? If Higher Criticism sometimes gets it wrong would maybe “Middle Criticism” be the answer?
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That is actually what I do. I blend historical criticism with the Catholic theology and get “middle criticism.” 🙂
 
:twocents:

Usually a life situation comes up that evokes certain verses in scripture.
Alternately, reading a chapter brings forth meaning that is elaborated on each subsequent reading.
New or Old Testament, they reveal the presence of the Word in the world, then and now.
Scripture is a mediation that grants one a deeper relationship with God and with man.

I have no idea what “higher criticism” means, but when I use words like that, I sound more arrogant than usual. 😉
 
pacomius said:
just serve God in a simple way. leave the many big theories
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For me personally, words like yours are pretty much an exhortation to atheism. You need to be careful throwing around that kind of advice. You may be putting serious stumbling blocks in people’s way.

God made our minds. He wants us to use them precisely, carefully, and critically. On the other side of that, yes there is mystery and simplicity. But only when we’ve done our best to do justice to the complexity. What “doing our best” means is going to vary widely from one person to another.

Edwin
 
dinosaurpaint said:
How has Higher Criticism effected your faith in scripture?

I am reading my first book on the Documentary Hypothesis and it brings me to such a better understanding, but now life became so much more complicated. Honestly, I don’t know how I’m going to put all this together.
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For me it makes sense of Scripture because it makes it seem more real and convincing. For instance, about the time I first started taking the documentary hypothesis seriously I was reading the story of Jacob. In one chapter Jacob sounds like a shrewd, ruthless trickster, playing games with Laban. In the next chapter he calls his wives and children together and announces piously that Laban has been trying to trick him but God has protected him. I had always thought, “what a sanctimonious hypocrite!” But suddenly I realized that YHWH was used in one chapter and Elohim in the other. There were two traditions about Jacob, both divinely inspired, both giving some aspect of what God wanted us to know.

However, I do keep hearing Cassuto’s name mentioned as someone who has made good arguments against the Documentary Hypothesis. I need to read him.

For the most part, mainstream scholars who reject the hypothesis do so because they hold more radically “minimalist” views and deny all historicity to the Pentateuch. So today the DH is in many ways a conservative theory.

Edwin
 
Why does everything have to be a rag on someone else?

Why can’t something be discussed without an insult to an individual or group of people? Why is everything always spoken about in the context of the group of “Us” who are correct vs “Them” who are not?

Why does everything have to be a war?

-Tim-
 
Higher Biblical criticism has made me lose my faith - in academia.

On the bright side, a lot of the nonsense is slowly being challenged and corrected.
 
Higher criticism drove me in the direction of the traditional school of thought. Higher criticism in my opinion is a mix of arrogant religious acedemia and agnosticism. I feel it brings more doubt and can be a stumbling block.
 
I guess it really hasn’t effected my faith that much that I can see (and maybe I’m just not recognizing it). It appeals to the part of me that likes jigsaw puzzles and seeing how pieces fit together. But I try to take much of it with a grain of salt.
 
dinosaurpaint said:
How has Higher Criticism effected your faith in scripture?

I am reading my first book on the Documentary Hypothesis and it brings me to such a better understanding, but now life became so much more complicated. Honestly, I don’t know how I’m going to put all this together.
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Higher criticism has enhanced my study and understanding. The social and political reasons why some of the books took the shape they did…when did the Pentatuch finally take the form we know today? Not for centuries and centuries, most likely after the Exile.
 
abucs said:
Higher Biblical criticism has made me lose my faith - in academia.

On the bright side, a lot of the nonsense is slowly being challenged and corrected.
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COPLAND_3 said:
Higher criticism drove me in the direction of the traditional school of thought. Higher criticism in my opinion is a mix of arrogant religious acedemia and agnosticism. I feel it brings more doubt and can be a stumbling block.
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Amen. 👍

From the Catholic Encyclopedia regarding higher criticism:
Taken in this limited sense, Biblical criticism, in the light of modern philological, historical, and archæological science, and by methods which are recent in their development, subjects to severe tests the previously accepted and traditional views on the human authorship, the time and manner of composition, of the sacred writings, and discriminates as to their objective historical value. In reaching its results it sets more store on evidences internal to the books than on external traditions or attestations, and its undeniable effect is to depreciate tradition in a great measure, so that there exists a sharply-drawn line between the exegetes of the critical and those of the traditional school. In the process by which the critics arrive at their conclusions there is a divergence of attitude towards the supernatural element in Holy Writ.
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Witness the notes in the NAB suggesting that Mary never spoke the Magnificat, but rather, Luke compiled it and inserted it there as is fit nicely. AYKM?
 
po18guy said:
Amen. 👍

From the Catholic Encyclopedia regarding higher criticism: Witness the notes in the NAB suggesting that Mary never spoke the Magnificat, but rather, Luke compiled it and inserted it there as is fit nicely. AYKM?
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That doesn’t have anything to do with the supernatural. Young women from small villages can be poets without the supernatural being involved, even if it’s unusual in a “patriarchal” culture.

The NAB notes take quite a beating on these forums, but the USCCB has them on its website as a resource for understanding Scripture. The notes have never, as far as I know, been condemned or censured.

That doesn’t mean that everything in them is right. I think that the notes lean too far at times in the direction of conformity to conventional secular/liberal higher criticism. But the view that they are unorthodox is the private view of some Catholics. The bishops whose job it is to discipline heresy do not appear to share this view, at least not as a whole.

Edwin
 
Contarini said:
That doesn’t have anything to do with the supernatural. Young women from small villages can be poets without the supernatural being involved, even if it’s unusual in a “patriarchal” culture.

The NAB notes take quite a beating on these forums, but the USCCB has them on its website as a resource for understanding Scripture. The notes have never, as far as I know, been condemned or censured.

That doesn’t mean that everything in them is right. I think that the notes lean too far at times in the direction of conformity to conventional secular/liberal higher criticism. But the view that they are unorthodox is the private view of some Catholics. The bishops whose job it is to discipline heresy do not appear to share this view, at least not as a whole.

Edwin
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👍
 
Contarini said:
But the view that they are unorthodox is the private view of some Catholics.
Edwin
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I’d say at times they are downright maliciously heretical with the level of gullibility breathtaking in its stupidity.
Contarini said:
The bishops whose job it is to discipline heresy do not appear to share this view, at least not as a whole.

Edwin
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The Church plays the long game. It doesn’t get into slanging matches with poorly thought out forms of thought if it can help it. The Church knows that the latest rebellious group-think bubble based on clear illogic, no matter how well supported, has a limited shelf life.

100 years on and they are being proved right.
 
Contarini said:
That doesn’t have anything to do with the supernatural. Young women from small villages can be poets without the supernatural being involved, even if it’s unusual in a “patriarchal” culture.

The NAB notes take quite a beating on these forums, but the USCCB has them on its website as a resource for understanding Scripture. The notes have never, as far as I know, been condemned or censured.

That doesn’t mean that everything in them is right. I think that the notes lean too far at times in the direction of conformity to conventional secular/liberal higher criticism. But the view that they are unorthodox is the private view of some Catholics. The bishops whose job it is to discipline heresy do not appear to share this view, at least not as a whole.

Edwin
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👍👍
 
abucs said:
I’d say at times they are downright maliciously heretical with the level of gullibility breathtaking in its stupidity.

The Church plays the long game. It doesn’t get into slanging matches with poorly thought out forms of thought if it can help it. The Church knows that the latest rebellious group-think bubble based on clear illogic, no matter how well supported, has a limited shelf life.

100 years on and they are being proved right.
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By your definition the majority of Catholic biblical scholarship is or is near heresy. 🤷 The NABRE, the Jerusalem Bible, the NewJerusalem Bible, the Christian Community Bible, the New Jerome Bible Commentary, the Collegeville Bible Commentary, portions of the Navarre Bible (documentary theory), and a great many Catholic Universities who teach historical-criticism in their theology classes.???
 
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