What is the historical critical method of biblical interpretation?

Answer 1

Well, if by "historical" you mean to include the earliest"historical" method of Biblical interpretation, there is the view of Bible character "Joseph" (c. 1900 B.C.E. to c. 1600 B.C.E.) expressed at Genesis chapter 40, verse 8. There Joseph, in very early history, is quoted as saying that for some types of 'Biblical' material "interpretations belong to God"; not humans.

That can be combined with how elsewhere in The Bible it has been indicated that God is the one who chooses persons through whom revelations of true interpretation will come in cases where the revelation comes through humans instead of directly from God. For example, the Bible book of Daniel, at chapter 2, verse 19 refers to God as revealing a particular "secret" of interpretation directly to the prophet Daniel in "a night vision", or special dream. (The historical period of the prophet Daniel is c. 618 to 536 B.C.E..)

So the above would be examples of some of the earliesthistory methodology behind some kinds of Biblical interpretation -- particularly interpretations of a prophetic nature.

The question for us observers, of course, would be how could an outside third party know as genuine versus spurious the claims of an individual who says they have received such a revelation from God of correct interpretation? The Bible gives some clues for that, as well, but I guess that is beyond the scope of this present question and might become the subject of a different question at wiki.answers.com.

Beyond the prophetic variety of Biblical interpretation, there is also the doctrinal and faith-oriented variety of Biblical interpretation. For this it might be recommended to consider what the Apostle Paul said (in c. 61 C.E.) as to defining faith itself. His words on this are recorded at Hebrews 11:1 as: "Faith is the assured expectation of things hoped for, the evident demonstration of realities though not beheld." Note how much this definition contrasts with the 'blind faith' that is preached in many religions in modern times. The apostle Paul was not only a lawyer by past profession, a person valuing accuracy, but he was also an early disciple during the period when Christianity was still only in its "original" form (from which there has since been much deviation over the millennia that followed). So this method described by the Apostle Paul represents another early "historical" method of interpreting Biblical information, particularly of the faith-type category.

To explicate that a little further, the Apostle Paul's method of interpretation in the faith aspects of Biblical knowledge was -- basically and curiously -- logic. He was clear in saying that faith is supposed to be based upon "evident" demonstration (i.e., actual evidence) of realities though not beheld. In other words, interpretations on which to base faith are meant to come from the logical extrapolation of actual evidence in order to try to perceive/interpret realities that are not yet actually observed or directly observable. That sounds to me like some Biblical interpretation can thus be served even by what was articulated in the basic syllogism theory of Aristotelian logic, which centres around the idea of building conclusions ("interpretations") by using evidently demonstrable premises that follow sound rules of reason in the way they're all put together to form a conclusion. It's really remarkably compatible with the Apostle Paul's definition of "faith", even though this might be unsavoury to some who follow a "blind faith" kind of interpretation paradigm that is not actually Biblical as it turns out upon careful reading of the Bible.

Answer 2

The historical-critical approach treats the Bible in the same way as other human texts and uses higher criticism in an attempt to discover the sources and factors that contributed to the making of the texts, as well as determining what the texts meant to the audiences for whom they were originally written.

The main criticism of the historical-critical method is that it can tend ot undermine faith in the miraculous.