HIGHER CRITICISM

A term first used by the Biblical scholar William Robertson Smith (1846–94) in his book The Old Testament in the Jewish Church [(Edinburgh 1881) 105] to distinguish the critical literary and historical study of the books of the Old and New Testaments from textual or lower criticism. Questions of authorship, time of composition, sources, theological content, purpose, and related matters are the concern of higher criticism. Textual, or lower criticism, deals primarily with the establishment of the text itself on the basis of a critical examination and comparison of readings found in MSS written in the original languages and in ancient versions. The new term was soon applied to similar critical, literary, and historical studies in the classics and other fields. However, it should be emphasized that the methods of higher criticism and their underlying principles were not new in themselves. The great classical scholar Richard bentley (1662–1742) had really founded higher criticism in his exhaustive literary and historical investigation of the problems of the authorship and date of composition of the Epistles of Phalaris. In the area of Biblical studies, Richard simon (1638–1712), Jean astruc, and Alexander geddes (1737–1802) were all pioneers in applying the method of higher criticism, at least in part, to the study of the Pentateuch and other parts of the Old Testament. Nineteenth-century scholars greatly elaborated the methods and principles of literary and historical criticism especially in their exhaustive investigations of Homer and the Bible. However, too many in both fields tended to adopt extreme positions that were not warranted by the limited and incomplete data on which they were based. Furthermore, in the case of leading Biblical critics, especially in Germany, many were rationalists whose approach to Biblical problems was often colored, as in the case of J. wellhausen, for example, by the principles of Hegelian dialectic. The term higher criticism was thus coined precisely at a time when its methods and results were being challenged by more conservative critics, and it acquired the bad reputation that it still has in certain quarters. However, despite its mistakes and its failures, its employment has led to revolutionary and positive advances in both the philological and Biblical fields. Its methods continue to be developed and refined, and, when applied properly, it is an indispensable instrument of literary and historical research. One may cite among its conspicuous successes, the solutions to the problems of the false decretals, the sibylline oracles, and the time, composition, and character of the works ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite (see pseudo-dionysius). On the Biblical side, it will suffice to mention the great progress made in the interpretation of the Sacred Books by the recognition of their literary genres, their scope, and their purpose. It must be emphasized that the mistakes made in the past by an abuse of the methods of higher criticism have usually been corrected by a proper employment of its own methods.

Bibliography: t. birt, "Höhere Kritik," in his Kritik und Hermeneutik nebst Abriss des antiken Buchwesens (Munich 1913) 213–242. g. garraghan, A Guide to Historical Method (New York 1946) 168–169. h. cazalles and p. grelot, "La Critique littéraire," and "La Critique historique," in Introduction à la Bible, a. robert and a. feuillet, eds. (1959) 1:121–164.

[m. r. p. mcguire]