Biblical studies

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**Biblical studies** is the academic application of a set of diverse disciplines to the study of the Jewish and Christian scriptures, the Bible. For its theory and methods, the field draws on disciplines ranging from archaeology, ancient history, cultural backgrounds, textual criticism, literary criticism, historical backgrounds, philology, and social science.

Many secular as well as religious universities and colleges offer courses in biblical studies, usually in departments of religious studies, theology, Judaic studies, history, or comparative literature. Biblical scholars do not necessarily have a faith commitment to the texts they study, but many do.

## Definition

The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Studies defines the field as a set of various, and in some cases independent disciplines for the study of the collection of ancient texts generally known as the Bible. These disciplines include but are not limited to archaeology, Egyptology, textual criticism, linguistics, history, sociology and theology.

## Academic societies

Several academic associations and societies promote research in the field. The largest is the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) with around 8,500 members in more than 80 countries. It publishes many books and journals in the biblical studies, including its flagship, the Journal of Biblical Literature. SBL hosts one academic conference in North America and another international conference each year, as well as smaller regional meetings.

## Biblical criticism

Main article: Biblical criticism
The research of biblical scholars is frequently called biblical criticism. It does not presuppose, but also does not deny, belief in the supernatural origins of the scriptures. Instead, it applies to the Bible methods of textual analysis used in other disciplines of the humanities and social sciences. Many biblical scholars also interact with traditional Jewish and Christian interpreters and methods of interpretation, which may be called biblical exegesis or hermeneutics and history of interpretation or reception history.

## Textual criticism

Textual criticism is a branch of textual scholarship, philology, and literary criticism that is concerned with the identification and removal of transcription errors in texts, both manuscripts and printed books. Ancient scribes made errors or alterations when copying manuscripts by hand.Given a manuscript copy, several or many copies, but not the original document, the textual critic seeks to reconstruct the original text (the archetype or autograph) as closely as possible. The same processes can be used to attempt to reconstruct intermediate editions, or recensions, of a document's transcription history.The ultimate objective of the textual critic's work is the production of a "critical edition" containing a text most closely approximating the original.

There are three fundamental approaches to textual criticism: eclecticism, stemmatics, and copy-text editing. Techniques from the biological discipline of cladistics are currently also being used to determine the relationships between manuscripts.

The phrase "lower criticism" is used to describe the contrast between textual criticism and "higher criticism", which is the endeavor to establish the authorship, date, and place of composition of the original text.

## History of the Bible

Historical research has often dominated modern biblical studies. Biblical scholars usually try to interpret a particular text within its original historical context and use whatever information is available to reconstruct that setting. Historical criticism aims to determine the provenance, authorship, and process by which ancient texts were composed. Famous theories of historical criticism include the documentary hypothesis, which suggests that the Pentateuch was compiled from four different written sources, and different reconstructions of "the historical Jesus", which are based primarily on the differences between the canonical Gospels.

## Original languages

Most of the Jewish Bible, the Tanakh, which is the basis of the Christian Old Testament, was written in Biblical Hebrew, though a few chapters were written in Biblical Aramaic. The New Testament was written in Koine Greek, with possible Aramaic undertones, as was the first translation of the Jewish Bible known as the Septuagint or Greek Old Testament. Therefore, Hebrew, Greek and sometimes Aramaic continue to be taught in most universities, colleges and seminaries with strong programs in biblical studies.

## See also

* The Bible and history
* Biblical hermeneutics
* Chronology of the Bible
* Higher criticism

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 *The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Studies* by J. W. Rogerson and Judith M. Lieu (May 18, 2006) ISBN 0199254257 page xvii
2. ↑ *Introduction to Biblical Studies, Second Edition* by Steve Moyise (Oct 27, 2004) ISBN 0567083977 pages 11–12

## Further reading

* *The Cambridge History of the Bible,* 3 vols., eds. P. R. Ackroyd, C. F. Evans, S. L. Greenslade and G. W. H. Lampe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963, 1969, 1970.
* Frei, Hans. *The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics.* New Haven: Yale, 1974.
* Greenspahn, Frederick E. "Biblical Scholars, Medieval and Modern," in J. Neusner et al. (eds.), *Judaic Perspectives on Ancient Israel* (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), pp. 245–258.
* Harrison, Peter. *The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science.* Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2001.
* Harrisville, Roy A. & Walter Sundberg. *The Bible in Modern Culture: Baruch Spinoza to Brevard Childs*. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001.
* Knight, Douglas A. and Gene M. Tucker, eds. *The Hebrew Bible and Its Modern Interpreters.* Philadelphia: Fortress/Chico: Scholars Press, 1985.
* Nicholson, Ernest W. *The Pentateuch in the Twentieth Century: The Legacy of Julius Wellhausen.* Oxford: Clarendon, 1998.
* Noll, Mark A. *Between Faith and Criticism: Evangelicals, Scholarship, and the Bible in America.* Harper & Row, 1986.
* Reventlow, Henning Graf. *The Authority of the Bible and the Rise of the Modern World.* Tr. J. Bowden. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985.
* Sherwood, Yvonne and Stephen D. Moore. *The Invention of the Biblical Scholar: A Critical Manifesto.* Fortress, 2011.
* Sperling, S. David. *Students of the Covenant: A History of Jewish Biblical Scholarship in North America.* Atlanta Scholars Press, 1992.
* Sugirtharajah, R.S. *The Bible and the Third World: Precolonial, Colonial, and Postcolonial Encounters.* Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2001.

## External links

* Categorized Bible Study Articles
* Bible Studies - Staying in the Word
* Society of Biblical Literature
* AcademicBible.com from the German Bible Society
* Wabash Center's Internet Guid to Religion: Bible

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