Ancient Wisdom Today » Canonical Criticism

Authors and Divine Authority

Maer — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 16:50:48 +0000

In a previous post, I mentioned Brevard Childs’ understanding of Mosaic authorship as a claim that “functioned as a norm by which to test the tradition’s authority.” Then we saw James Kugel’s long answer to the question: was the Pentateuch written by Moses?

To many people that accept some version of the Documentary Hypothesis or who believe that, regardless of how the Pentateuch came to be, it wasn’t written by Moses, this may be a moot question – a question that only the religious-minded would ask. The link between Childs and Kugel, to use but one example, is that these are men who read the Bible critically but are also part of a community whose tradition is at odds with their critical reading.

Brevard Childs’ Intro to the OT

Maer — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 15:45:21 +0000

I am working my way through Brevard Childs’ Introduction to the OT as Scripture (Fortress Press, 1979). The more I read it, the more I like his approach. Now I want to see how his methodology is going to play out in practice.

His canonical approach does raise some issues, and I was pleasantly surprised that every time I had a question, he either answered it or at least gave me enough to think about. One of the questions I had was about textual criticism since I wanted to know when we would start to talk about a “canon” of the OT when things seemed to be so fluid in the first century. Not only that, why should I even limit myself to the first century? What is the role of the canonical shape of scriptures throughout its entire history?