How the Bible Is Studied: The Historical-Critical Method
Not a single writing of the Old Testament survives in its original form. The historical-critical method therefore starts with a basic question: how can anyone establish what was written, and when? According to the German Bible Society, the method is meant to work out what a text meant when it came into being and to separate that from later readings. How does it proceed, and which steps belong to it?
What Is the Historical-Critical Method?
The historical-critical method brings together several tools of exegesis, the interpretation of biblical texts. It is not a single procedure but a series of questions put to the text. Each one targets a different stage of its history: the handwritten transmission, its growth out of several layers, or the setting in which it was used.
The aim is to find the meaning the text had when it was written. Later readings are not thrown out but treated as a subject of research in their own right. The approach stays neutral toward faith: it describes the text and its history without judging the religious content. For readers, this means each step answers a different question, and none can stand in for the others.
Textual Criticism and Literary Criticism: From the Manuscript to the Layers
Textual criticism comes first. It compares manuscripts in order to reconstruct the wording that is probably the oldest. This is necessary because no originals exist and the copies differ from one another. Textual criticism cannot promise certainty. Instead, it names the variant with the strongest case in its favor. That lays the groundwork for every later step, since those steps all assume an established wording.
Literary criticism follows, together with the history of redaction. Both trace how a text grew out of different layers. They show that many books came neither in one stretch nor from one hand. Such an analysis yields a working hypothesis, which is then tested on other passages. The historical-critical method therefore treats its results as conclusions that can be checked and corrected.
Form Criticism and Further Steps
Form criticism looks at the setting in which a text arose and at its genre. Is it a song, a legal provision or a story? Under what circumstances was such a text used? The term “setting in life” (Sitz im Leben), coined by Gunkel, refers to this historical setting, not to an author's personal experience. By uncovering how the text was used in everyday life, form criticism complements textual and literary criticism.
The usual steps also include canon criticism, tradition criticism, the history of interpretation and hermeneutics. Canon criticism asks how the books were collected and arranged. Tradition criticism looks for older traditions behind the text. The history of interpretation and hermeneutics, by contrast, deal with how the text was read later and how it should be understood today.
A Method in Crisis and Further Reading
Aaron Schart describes a present-day crisis of the method. It is often regarded as just one of several equally valid methods rather than the shared foundation of research. He argues, however, for developing it further instead of giving it up. Its tools should be improved without dropping the question of the text's history. In this way the historical-critical method remains a reference point even for those who approach it with reservations.
Readers who want to go deeper will find a good starting point in Köhlmoos's compact introduction to the methods of Old Testament exegesis, published in Tübingen in 2005.