Biblical Criticism: A Guide for the Perplexed

Download or read book Biblical Criticism: A Guide for the Perplexed written by Eryl W. Davies and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-01-17 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Guide for the Perplexed will demonstrate how modern biblical scholars have expressed dissatisfaction with a one-sided historical-critical approach to biblical texts and have argued that developments in secular literary theory should be applied in biblical studies. Whereas the historical-critical approach was concerned with the moment of a text's production (authorship, date, place of writing etc), the literary approach is concerned with the moment of the text's reception. Eryl W. Davies shows how and why approaches such as 'reader-response criticism', 'feminist criticism', 'ideological criticism', 'canonical criticism' and 'post-colonial criticism' are now becoming more popular in many quarters. The volume explains to the uninitiated in a readable and accessible form how strategies originally derived from secular literary criticism have been adopted by biblical scholars in order to understand the text of Scripture and to appreciate its relevance.