Textual Source Analysis

Textual – Source – Redaction

Why these criticisms benefit the authenticity of the Holy Bible. The Holy Bible is the most read, studied, refuted, and revered book on earth. There are those who blindly believe, like the Author, the Bible is the word of God. No amount of shared information or contrived evidence the Bible is anything more than a collection of stories passed from generation to generation and finally centuries later written by a collection of unknown scholars will change this opinion. There are also scholars who attempt to interpret the words of the Bible so those who read the words can understand their meanings two thousand years after they were first written. Textual and source criticism are examples of the positive use of criticism

Their intention is to investigate the Scriptures with the primary goal to judge authorship, historicity and date of writing. Editorial activity might involve additions, omissions, rearrangement, or rewording of a source. One example used for redaction criticism is a gospel synopsis or parallel, a resource that arranges similar gospel passages (also known as periscopes) in parallel columns for the sake of comparison. Sadly, redaction criticism ends up attempting to discredit the text of the Bible and to prove it is not written with any authority. Biblical criticism can be broken into two major forms: higher and lower criticism. Lower criticism is an attempt to find the original wording of the text (since we no longer have the original writings.) Higher criticism deals with the genuineness of the text. Questions are asked such as: When was it really written? Who really wrote this text? Many redaction critics and higher critics do not believe in the inspiration of Scripture and therefore use these questions to dispel the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of the authors of Scripture. For instance; redaction critics believe the Old Testament was simply a compilation of oral traditions and were not actually written until after Israel was taken into captivity to Babylon in 586 B.C. Redaction criticism is the idea the writers of the Gospels were nothing more than final compilers of oral traditions and not actually the direct writers of the Gospels themselves. Redaction critics hold that the purpose for their study is to find the “theological motivation” behind the author's selection and compilation of traditions or other written materials within