Biblical criticism is a form of Historical Criticism that seeks to analyze the Bible through asking certain questions of the text, such as: Who wrote it? When was it written? To whom was it written? Why was it written? What was the historical, geographical, and cultural setting of the text? How well preserved is the original text? How unified is the text? What sources were used by the author? How was the text transmitted over time? What is the text's genre and from what sociologial setting is it derived? When and how did it come to

Biblical criticism has been traditionally divided into lower criticism, also called textual criticism, that seeks to establish the original text out of the variant readings of ancient manuscripts, and higher criticism that focuses on identifying the author, date, and place of writing for each book of the Bible. In the twentieth-century a number of specific critical methodologies have been developed to address such questions in greater depth.

Types of Biblical criticism

• Textual criticism
• Source criticism
• Documentary hypothesis
• Form criticism
• Redaction criticism
• Socio-historical criticism
• Rhetorical criticism
• Narrative criticism
• Tradition history

See also

• Internal consistency and the Bible