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The Historical Critical Method

The Historical Critical Method is a broad term that includes numerous methodologies and strategies for understanding the ancient Manuscripts. Historical Criticism is divided into two main branches: Lower and Higher Criticism (for terminology see appendix I)

Lower Criticism

None of the ‘original‘ Jesus documents have survived to modern times. All we have are copies of these source materials. Since they often do not match, Lower Criticism was developed to find what the original looked like.

For example, when Josephus wrote his Antiquities, there was no printing press to publish his work. He had to employ several scribes to copy his ‘history of the Jewish people’.

As the scribes copied The Antiquities they made ‘mistakes’. The copies of these copies also had the mistakes. Each generation of copies contained more and more errors.

When the error consisted of something being left out, it was called a deletion. When something was added, it was called an interpolation.

Today, we do not have the original of Josephus’ work, but different ‘families’ of texts have survived. Lower Criticism studies these surviving families, particularly the ‘differences’ among them. Scholars are then able to piece together what the original looked like. The more surviving copies, the more accurately we can piece together the original. Lower Criticism is essential to understanding the source documents of the Historical Jesus.

Higher Criticism

Once Lower Critics have done their job and we have a good idea of what the original text looked like, we can then compare this text with the writing of other authors.

We try to understand whether the author is an eyewitness to Jesus, or whether he is basing his work on primary or even secondary sources.  We also try to understand the bias of the writer, which will give us hints to why he focuses on one aspect of our Lord’s life but omits another.

An example of Higher Criticism at work would be the study of the Synoptic Problem. Higher Critics noticed that the three Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, were very similar, indeed, at times identical. They learned that Matthew and Luke were secondary sources, while Mark was a primary source.

Today, Higher Critical Scholars believe that Luke edited three sources: Mark, ‘Q’ source, and Proto-Luke into the Canonical Lukean Gospel.

The Gospel of Matthew is even more interesting. Scholars not only agree that this Gospel was based on Mark, ‘Q’ source and ‘M’ source, but they further believe that the Canonical Matthean Gospel was not written by Matthew, and it was not written in Hebrew!

Since the Early Church Fathers spoke of a Gospel of Matthew that was written in Hebrew by the Apostle Matthew when Matthew left to join Peter in Rome, there has been speculation that there were two Gospels of Matthew. One is the Canonical Matthean Gospel found in the Bible, the other, “authentic” Matthew, which has been lost. Thus, the search for the second ‘hypothetical’ Gospel is underway.

THE CANONICAL MATHEAN GOSPEL

       M               Q            MARK

          \                |               /

            \              |              /

                   MATTHEW

THE CANONICAL LUKEAN GOSPEL

          Proto Lk       Q         Mark

                  \               |               /

                    \             |             /

                             LUKE