A method of biblical scholarship that identifies and analyzes the different written sources that were combined to create the final biblical texts. It attempts to trace the literary history and composition process of biblical books by detecting distinct authorial voices and traditions.
The term emerged in 19th-century German biblical scholarship, particularly with the development of the Documentary Hypothesis for the Pentateuch. 'Quellenkritik' (source criticism) became a fundamental tool as scholars recognized that biblical books often combined multiple pre-existing written sources rather than having single authors.
Source criticism turned biblical studies into detective work, with scholars playing literary forensics to identify the 'fingerprints' of different ancient authors! The classic example is the Documentary Hypothesis, which proposes that the first five books of the Bible combine four major sources (J, E, D, P) written centuries apart—explaining why there are two creation stories, duplicate flood narratives, and different names for God. This method revolutionized how we understand biblical composition, showing that 'Moses wrote the Pentateuch' was far more complex than previously imagined.
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