Form criticism
Essay on form criticism
Form criticism is a method of biblical criticism that classifies units of scripture by literary pattern. It is used in order to discover the origin and history of a text or its creators. The stories about Jesus and the events of his life were not written down straight away, in fact the accounts that we have for the gospels are considered by most scholars to have been written some decades after the events, although they may well have been based on earlier writings going back nearer to the actual time. Whatever the exact dating of the gospels, it has been said that there was a period when the stories were passed around only by word of mouth. Such a procedure would not be unusual in the Near East but rather the traditional way of relating events. This period of verbal transmission is called the “oral period”.
It is with the oral period that the form critics are interested. By the end of the nineteenth century many scholars, particularly in Germany, felt that source criticism had gone as far as it could in helping to understand the gospels. This then drew attention to the oral period, a period that was crucial for understanding the documents that incorporated this oral material. Although all would agree that there was an oral period, it is not clear how long this period lasted. The debate is unresolved as to when the gospels were actually written, but thirty five years after the death of Jesus is a time scale that is generally accepted, though it may well have been less. Thus there would have been a relatively short oral period and so only a limited time during which the early church could have adapted the material. It is therefore questionable whether the material could have become as inaccurate as some form critics have suggested.
There are three main reasons why the gospel was not immediately written; they are as followed ‘the early church were not literally people and wouldn’t have had the time, money or ability to set out a written
Form criticism is a method of biblical criticism that classifies units of scripture by literary pattern. It is used in order to discover the origin and history of a text or its creators. The stories about Jesus and the events of his life were not written down straight away, in fact the accounts that we have for the gospels are considered by most scholars to have been written some decades after the events, although they may well have been based on earlier writings going back nearer to the actual time. Whatever the exact dating of the gospels, it has been said that there was a period when the stories were passed around only by word of mouth. Such a procedure would not be unusual in the Near East but rather the traditional way of relating events. This period of verbal transmission is called the “oral period”.
It is with the oral period that the form critics are interested. By the end of the nineteenth century many scholars, particularly in Germany, felt that source criticism had gone as far as it could in helping to understand the gospels. This then drew attention to the oral period, a period that was crucial for understanding the documents that incorporated this oral material. Although all would agree that there was an oral period, it is not clear how long this period lasted. The debate is unresolved as to when the gospels were actually written, but thirty five years after the death of Jesus is a time scale that is generally accepted, though it may well have been less. Thus there would have been a relatively short oral period and so only a limited time during which the early church could have adapted the material. It is therefore questionable whether the material could have become as inaccurate as some form critics have suggested.
There are three main reasons why the gospel was not immediately written; they are as followed ‘the early church were not literally people and wouldn’t have had the time, money or ability to set out a written