THE IDEOLOGY OF HIGHER CRITICISM INFECTED WITH ANTI-SEMITISM DESTROYS BIBLE AND CHURCH. HIGHER CRITICISM IS HIGHER ANTI-SEMITISM DENYING THE DIVINITY OF TORAH OR PENTATEUCH. One of traditional Judaism's most important claims is its total commitment to the divinity of the text of the Torah, the Pentateuch. But in the nineteenth century, this belief came under severe attack by a theory called Higher Criticism. This theory denied the divinity of the Torah as a verbal account of God's words to Moses. The critics claimed that the text was a conglomeration of various sources compiled over hundreds of years. And so it was not written by Moses.

HIGHER CRITICISM QUESTIONED THE AUTHORSHIP AND DATING OF MUCH OF THE BIBLICAL LITERATURE AND REJECTED THE TRADITIONAL UNDERSTANDING OF THE SCRIPTURES AS DIVINELY REVEALED ORACLES. Christianity was simply seen as the historical fulfillment of natural religion, the culminating self - disclosure of immanent Spirit. The life of Jesus was studied with the intent of stripping off the dogmatic formulations of the church and getting back to the concrete, historical human personage. They found hidden behind the smoke-screen of theology and hellenistic philosophy the teaching of a simple ethical religion summed up in the fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man. Insisting that Christianity must be founded upon the exact type of person he was, they felt it necessary to get behind the "Christ of the creeds" to the "Jesus of history."

BRANCHES OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM

Biblical Criticism, is a branch of theology which studies the history, content, origins and purposes of the various books of the Bible. Their intent is to investigate the Scriptures and make judgments concerning their authorship, historicity, and date of writing. Biblical criticism has two branches, the Higher criticism and Lower criticism. "Lower Criticism" was simply textual criticism, the tedious reconstruction of the original text of scripture by weeding out millenniums' worth of copyists' errors. But Higher Criticism was a wide-ranging reexamination of literary sources, historical accuracy, and claims to authorship.

HIGHER CRITICISM

THE HIGHER CRITICISM HAS SOMETIMES BEEN CALLED THE "DOCUMENTARY HYPOTHESIS." The name "the higher criticism" was coined by Eichhorn. It is the discovery and verification of the facts regarding the origin, form and value of literary productions upon the basis of their internal characters. Higher criticism deals with the genuineness of the text. Questions asked includes: When was it really written? Who really wrote this text? The Higher Criticism, studies the historic origins, the dates, and authorship of the various books of the Bible. Their chief appeal is to the supposed evidence of the documents themselves.  But they refer to history where they can gain any polemic advantage by doing so. The word “Higher” is an academic term. It is simply a term of contrast. It is used contrast to the phrase, “Lower Criticism.”

HISTORICAL CRITICISM IS ALSO KNOWN AS THE HISTORICAL-CRITICAL METHOD OR HIGHER CRITICISM. The primary goal of historical criticism is to determine the text's original meaning in its original historical context by an attempt to reconstruct the historical situation. Historical-critical methods examine factors such as: the time, the place in which the text was written, its sources, the events, dates, persons, places, things, and customs that are mentioned or implied in the text. Historical-critical methods falsely assume that: every reality is uniform and universal, that every reality is accessible to human reason and investigation, that all events historical and natural are interconnected and comparable to analogy, that humanity’s contemporary experience of reality can provide objective criteria to what could or could not have happened in past events.

BRANCHES OF HIGHER CRITICISM

SOURCE CRITICISM

Source criticism is the search for the original sources which lie behind a given biblical text. Source criticism is a specialized field of biblical studies that seeks to determine the sources used to develop the final form of the biblical text. One of the foundations of modern source criticism is the theory that Mark was the first Gospel to be written and that Mark was used as the basic source by Mathew and Luke. It can be ultimately agreed that Mark was one of the sources for Mathew and Luke. In fact we do not and cannot have sufficient information to be certain about the details of the sources. Ultimately, the Holy Spirit is the source of the biblical text. As the human authors of Scripture wrote, the Spirit led them to include only what was true.

FORM CRITICISM

Form criticism is a field of biblical studies that sees the Bible as a collection of traditional stories which were circulated orally and eventually combined and preserved in writing. Form criticism attempts to determine literary patterns in Scripture, isolate units of text, and trace each unit to its “origin” in oral tradition. The form-critic separates a Bible story from its literary context and asks, “What is this unit’s literary genre? What is the pre-history of this unit? How did the story change as it was passed down orally?” Originally focused on the Old Testament, this field of research soon became another lens through which to understand portions of the New Testament. For example, parallel accounts of a parable are analyzed, and variations in wording are noted; then, the form-critic draws conclusions as to what he thinks Jesus really said and how oral tradition may have led to the various written accounts. Bultmann believed that the Bible needed to be divested of its miraculous accounts, that the gospel must be “demythologized” in order to be accepted by modern society. Form criticism is a favorite among scholars who want deny the authority and inerrancy of Scripture. Form-critics have a bias against supernaturalism and dismiss the miracles of Jesus as myths. Form criticism is based on speculation, skepticism, and blatant unbelief.

The primary interest of the form critics is to go back behind the written gospels and try to say something about the use of the gospel material in the church of the earlier period. In the process they find out some excuses to refute the Bible. They concentrate on the separate individual units of the gospel material rather than the completed written gospels. The basic assumption is that the gospel material has been transmitted through an oral stage during which it has taken particular forms and even to some extent has been written down before it has reached the evangelists.  It is the study of the evangelist’s editorial work, of how they arranged their material, how they changed the words or phrases, what they put in and what they left out. The synoptic problem was based on the assumption that there were written sources which were the sources from which the gospels were written. But we do not have enough information about those sources. THOSE WHO WERE DISSATISFIED WITH SOURCE CRITICISM INITIATED FORM CRITICISM. They included Schimidt, Martin Dibelius, Vincent Taylor and Rudolf Bultmann. Their basic assumption is that the earlier oral use of the tradition shaped the material and resulted in the variety of literary forms found in the final written records.

FALSE ASSUMPTIONS OF FORM CRITICISM

They simply want to deny the historicity of Jesus and the events surrounded Him. It is an attempt to go back to a stage earlier than our written gospels that is to the oral stage and see how the material was used during this period; and also how it was changed during this time. It emphasizes the oral transmission of the early church’s knowledge of Jesus. BUT THESE CRITICS HYPOCRATICALLY ASSUME SUPERIOR KNOWLEDGE OF THE EARLY CHURCH EVENTS THAN THE WRITERS OF THE GOSPELS. They assume that gospels are composed of small independent units or episodes. They feel that the units gradually took the forms of legends, tales, myths and parables. They believe that the formation and preservation of the units were determined by the needs of the Christian community. Hence the units are not witnesses to the life of Jesus but beliefs and practices of the early church. Hence they are often unwilling to accept the actions of God in history as real and objective events.

FORM CRITICS CUNNINGLY DEVISE FALSE STORIES

Form critics always falsely assume that the first Christians were making up stories of Jesus to suit a situation in their Church. Such reasoning only shows how the form-critics are cunningly devising stories into the mouth of early Christians and the Church-situations to suit stories of Jesus. For these critics guessing the traditions behind the gospels is a fascinating occupation.

ERRORS OF REDACTION CRITICISM

Redaction criticism studies "the collection, arrangement, editing and modification of sources", and is frequently used to reconstruct the community and purposes of the authors of the text.  The liberals and higher critics have a skeptical attitude towards the historical value of the material contained in the gospels. They wrongly assume that the early church was very free with the material not only changing what they received but also inventing stories about Jesus. They wrongly think that evangelists were authors and creative interpreters of the traditions. It is wrong to assume that literary forms influenced the gospel material. Honest Bible scholars no longer maintain that the Torah is the result of different fragments edited and reedited. RADICAL CRITICISM - Radical criticism has gone to the mad extent of assuming that Jesus and his apostles never existed, that none of the Pauline epistles are authentic etc.

TEXTUAL OR LOWER CRITICISM

The Lower Criticism or Textual Criticism studies the text of the Scripture, investigates the manuscripts, and the different readings in the various versions and codices in order to find the original wording of the text since we no longer have the original writings. LOWER CRITICISM IS ULTIMATELY USED AS A TOOL TO QUESTION THE RELIABILITY OF THE TEXT. Lower criticism, also known as textual criticism, is a sister school of Higher Criticism. This school questions the reliability of the text based on outside sources such as the Septuagint. Whenever and wherever they found difficult things to believe or understand, they mistrusted the Biblical text and came to the unwise conclusion that the Bible was full of later interpolations.

IN FACT, THE JEWISH SCRIBES WERE EXTRAORDINARILY CAREFUL TO GUARANTEE THAT NO CHANGES WERE MADE IN THE TEXT OF THE BIBLE. Their precision was so incomparable that even though the Jews were dispersed to almost every part of the world with little contact with each other, for thousands of years, there are no essential differences in the text of the Torah scrolls, they all possess. Scribes who prepared Torah scrolls were and are required to use a copy of the traditional Torah text as a source and are prohibited from writing a scroll from memory. It is possible that non-Jewish editions of the Bible, such as the Septuagint or Vulgate, may have used private scrolls as a source, and this would account for the deviations found there.

CRITICS ARE TOTALLY WRONG because, differences in the various translations are not because of the differences in the original text. Because every translation is a commentary, and the variations in them result from the translator preferring one explanation to another. Hence the differences among translations are exegetical not textual. Whenever documents are copied, especially when copied by hand, copying errors are liable to creep in. Now we do not have the original text of Isaiah or Paul's epistles. We have only copies, and in most cases only copies of copies of copies. Hence there were chances for copying errors to enter in. This is particularly the case in the NT. This is because there are more manuscripts of New Testament than the Old Testament has. Moreover the Christians could have been less careful copiers than the Jews. But with the help of textual criticism these errors can be identified and the text can be restored to its original form.  IN SPITE OF THE ASSUMED COPYING ERRORS, THE CORE MESSAGE OF THE BIBLE IS ALWAYS CLEAR.