Theological Term of the Week

Biblical Theology
The theological discipline that “seeks to discover what the biblical writers, under divine guidance, believed, described, and taught in the context of their own times,”1 in order to mark out “the message of the books of the Bible in their historical setting”;2 the study of “the progressive unfolding of God’s special revelation throughout history.”3

• From Biblical and Systematic Theology: Speaking from Different Premises by Donald Macleod:

Biblical Theology finds its starting-point in the diversity and variety of Scripture.  …

There can be no denying the variety. Not only were the scriptures written at ‘sundry times’: they were also written in ‘diverse ways’ (Heb. 1:1). This was partly a function of their long historical time-line. They were written over a period of at least a thousand years and some of the oral and written traditions which they used may well go back a good deal further. They inevitably reflect, then, a wide variety of social, cultural and political settings: and, corresponding to this, a wide variety of forms of revelation.

The result is that instead of a Bible in monochrome we have a Bible of varied landscapes, myriad voices and ever-changing colour: a wide variety of literary genres, ranging from narrative to poetry to law to parables to highly didactic epistles and even to fables (Judges 9:8-15); and, even more important, a wide variety of individual authors each with his own experience, gifts, temperament, vocabulary, favourite concepts, unique style and unique life-setting.

The task of Biblical Theology is to highlight the distinctiveness of the various contributions … .  

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Theological Term of the Week

redaction criticism
The “study of the role of the redactor (editor) in the final compostion of the biblical text.”1

(Evangelical redaction criticism presupposes the supernatural nature of scripture, and is used to discover the particular emphasis of a biblical author. But more commonly, redaction criticism is done from anti-supernatural presuppositions, and used to confirm the (supposedly) human origin of scripture. Some of the linked articles under Learn More below denounce redaction criticism generally, but they do so under the assumption that all redaction criticism has anti-supernatural presuppositions.)

• From 40 Questions About Interpreting the Bible by Robert L. Plummer:

[W]hile many biblical authors had both firsthand knowledge of events (e.g., the apostle John) and oral and written sources from which to draw (e.g., Luke 1:1-4), the redactor ultimately showed his theological interests and purposes through selecting, omitting, editing, and summarizing the material for his text. (Of course, Christians assume the Holy Spirit was working through the redactors in this process.) 

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Theological Term of the Week

source criticism
The field of biblical studies that seeks to “establish the literary sources the biblical author/editor drew upon.”1

• From 40 Questions About Interpreting the Bible by Robert L. Plummer:

Source criticism seeks to establish the literary sources the biblical author/editor drew upon. For example, Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918), a liberal Old Testament scholar, argued that the Pentateuch was composed of four literary strands: the Yahwist or Jehovist (J), Elohistic (E), Priestly (P), and Deuteronomistic (D) sources. The evidence for the JEPD construction is actually quite tenuous. The data support traditional Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, while obviously allowing for some gathering and editing of the Mosaic material. 

In the New Testament, source criticism is especially applied to Matthew, Mark, and Luke (the Synoptic Gospels) because of their close similarity in wording and order. The majority of New Testament scholars believe that Luke and Matthew used two main sources in their composition—the written gospel of Mark and “Q.” “Q” is an abbreviation for the German word Quelle (source) and stands for a collection of written and oral sources that Matthew and Luke had in common. Indeed, Luke explicitly indicates that he drew upon multiple sources in the composition of his Gospel (Luke 1:1-4). As many early church fathers comment on the literary sources behind the Gospels (i.e., which Gospel author(s) were dependent on others), source criticism is truly an ancient discipline. 

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