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Bubba_Switzler
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Very good, thank you!
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Bubba_Switzler
Guest
I do appreciate your patience.Like I mentioned before, it’s sounds like you have a pretty good grip on things. Being stuck on terms can limit a person to just studying one thing or less. Therefore I am siding with you as to the approach you are choosing and would recommend tossing the terms to the wind…as long as one studies the Word of God with the attention such a study deserves.
So, giving up on terms, let’s try example. The book that best fit my interest in terms of form was Richard Elliott Friedman’s Who Wrote the Bible. It was limited in it’s focus to the Torah and the author was Jewish but it provided a grand view of history and culture, drawing on many sources and including some speculation, and fit the Torah into that. If anything, it should be easier to do that with the NT since we know more about that period of history (though obviously there are limits with any historical subject from antiquity).
I have not forgotten the books already recommended, I am making a list. But I am still trolling for other suggestions as I try to clarify my own thinking on this.
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CrossofChrist
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Yep.
Does Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI count? He is definitely scholarly and has many credentials, not least of which include being very influential in forming Dei Verbum at Vatican II, being the President of the International Theological Commission (1981–2005), the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (1981–2005), and the President of the Pontifical Biblical Commission (1981–2005). He is also very interested in the historical-critical approach. He really found it important that God entered human history and left a mark in history via Jesus, and is one of the reasons he found St. Bonaventure so interesting.
Does Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI count? He is definitely scholarly and has many credentials, not least of which include being very influential in forming Dei Verbum at Vatican II, being the President of the International Theological Commission (1981–2005), the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (1981–2005), and the President of the Pontifical Biblical Commission (1981–2005). He is also very interested in the historical-critical approach. He really found it important that God entered human history and left a mark in history via Jesus, and is one of the reasons he found St. Bonaventure so interesting.
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Bubba_Switzler
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I just finished How to Read the Bible by Marc Zvi Brettler. It was not as historically oriented as Who Wrote the Bible but it was a very good read just the same, steeped in the historical-critical method at a level I could appreciate and understand.
Aside from the obvious caution against reading the (Old Testament) Bible as literal Word of God (something that Catholics should not need to be lectured on), perhaps the most interesting thesis of the book was his argument that the Bible should be read as a “source book” and not a “text book”. By this analogy he means that the (OT) Bible is a collection of writings representing a variety of viewpoints evolving over time. I had suspected something like this but he lays it out fairly convincingly even if the historical-critical method is never as certain as we would prefer.
This book has whet my appetite for something historical-critical on the NT. Thanks again for all the suggestions. Now to pick one to start…
Aside from the obvious caution against reading the (Old Testament) Bible as literal Word of God (something that Catholics should not need to be lectured on), perhaps the most interesting thesis of the book was his argument that the Bible should be read as a “source book” and not a “text book”. By this analogy he means that the (OT) Bible is a collection of writings representing a variety of viewpoints evolving over time. I had suspected something like this but he lays it out fairly convincingly even if the historical-critical method is never as certain as we would prefer.
This book has whet my appetite for something historical-critical on the NT. Thanks again for all the suggestions. Now to pick one to start…
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