Development of biblical criticism

• Increasingly over the past two centuries, liberal theologians have claimed that the Bible should be studied in the same way as other literature- this led to the development of biblical criticism
• Biblical criticism: examining the Bible as a whole, the different books that comprise the Bible and analysing the contents and sometimes the individual words in those books
• Biblical criticism looks at:

  The language in which a text was written, including differences in the early copies of the text. For example, in Mark's account of Jesus healing a man with leprosy, most texts have the Greek word 'filled with compassion', but some early manuscripts have 'filled with anger'
• Biblical criticism looks at:

  Literary genres. For example considering whether a given books is a historical account, poetry, early liturgy or a letter
• Biblical criticism looks at:

  An understanding of the cultural views from which a text sprang. For example, considering whether the subordination of wives to husbands found in Ephesians reflects the cultural 'blinkers' of the first century writer rather than God's purpose for marriage
• Liberal theologians= aim to analyse the Bible and Christian thinking, using modern thought informed by reason and science
• Liberal biblical criticism would also consider relevant archaeological evidence (or lack of), extra-biblical written sources, and parallels with other biblical texts and non-biblical literature; for example, comparing the status of men and women according to Genesis 1 with that in the Babylonian creation story, which is thought to be either the source of or a parallel version of Genesis 1