Form-critical Method Research Articles

Form-Critical Analysis of the al-Rajīʿ and Biʾr Maʿūna Stories

Due to their heavy reliance on late, contradictory, and tendentious literary sources, scholars of formative Islam have always been in danger of taking as authentic evidence what is mere literary topos. Adopting a form-critical methodology that includes both classic and “new” approaches to the accounts of the al-Rajīʿ and Biʾr Maʿūna expeditions, this article strives to reveal the literary devices deployed in the sources and to demonstrate the motivations behind their utilization. It will argue, using the classic form-critical method, that reports about the al-Rajīʿ and Biʾr Maʿūna raids reflect far more about the circumstances of their composition and redaction than about first/seventh-century Arabia. Motivated by second/eighth-century tribal feuds, many components of these narratives owe their existence to later modifications and adornments that were retrojected to the time of the Prophet Muḥammad. We shall, furthermore, see that by the third/ninth century, when tribal motivations ceased to be amongst the prime socio-political exigencies of the time, new incentives emerged for the transmission of these narratives, which can be uncovered through implementation of “new” form criticism.

Translating, Summarising and Hidden Attribution: R. H. Lightfoot's Problematic Use of German Scholarship

The form-critical method found an English-speaking champion in R. H. Lightfoot of Oxford University. Through multiple publications he promoted the ideas of Rudolf Bultmann, Martin Dibelius and Ernst Lohmeyer. However, a close comparison of their texts reveals that Lightfoot sometimes simply translated the words of Dibelius and Lohmeyer, at times without appropriate attribution, and presented their ideas as his own. Recently discovered letters in the Lightfoot archive at Oxford University provide a more complete picture of Lightfoot's travels and interaction with German NT scholars. These discoveries call for a reassessment of Lightfoot's place in the history of NT scholarship.

Qaddish: Untersuchungen zur Entstehung und Rezeption eines rabbinischen Gebetes (review)

Reviewed by: Qaddish: Untersuchungen zur Entstehung und Rezeption eines rabbinischen Gebetes Ra‘anan S. Boustan Andreas Lehnardt. Qaddish: Untersuchungen zur Entstehung und Rezeption eines rabbinischen Gebetes. Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 87. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002. Pp. xiv + 386. The ubiquity and elasticity of the Kaddish (alt. Qaddish) within Jewish liturgical practice has made this brief, but enigmatic prayer a perennial object of both scholarly and popular interest. It is our great fortune that we now have a study that has done justice to the complexity and specificity of the historical development of the Kaddish. In a monograph that is focused and sweeping in equal measure, Andreas Lehnardt sets out to explain both how and why the Kaddish emerged as a major structuring element within the Jewish liturgy at the same time that it attracted a diverse range of liturgical applications. Lehnardt's study is grounded in the methodological insight that the histories of (Jewish) prayers such as the Kaddish, with their fluctuating textual identities and heterogeneous liturgical functions, must integrate text-historical, literary-historical, and reception-historical considerations. Studies of early Jewish worship in particular are constrained by the decentralized nature of Jewish religious practice as well as the complex process of Jewish textual transmission. By employing such tools, Lehnardt turns obstacles into opportunities for illuminating key moments in the dynamic history of the Kaddish, while acknowledging the epistemological limits imposed by the evidence. It is thus no coincidence that his account begins in the Middle Ages with the oldest extant textual witnesses for the Kaddish, then backs up into Late Antiquity to explore earlier, indirect testimonies about its language and function, and finally moves forward in time again to describe the various medieval appropriations of this late antique prayer. Lehnardt argues in chapter one (pp. 15–77) that the Kaddish, in both its earliest and its fully crystallized forms, is characterized by generic and linguistic hybridity. Despite this high degree of textual variation, all versions of the Kaddish are characterized by a distinctive admixture of Hebrew and Aramaic juxtaposed within single sentences and even clauses. Numerous earlier scholars suggested that this peculiar linguistic feature reflects the process of translation from a Hebrew original to an [End Page e65] artificial Aramaic "school language." Through careful linguistic comparison of the Kaddish with contemporaneous Hebrew and Aramaic sources, especially Targumic Aramaic, Lehnardt concludes that the prayer cannot be assigned to a specific linguistic-institutional context, but exhibits the general (Hebrew and Aramaic) linguistic features of rabbinic literature. Moreover, the Hebrew units of the Kaddish, which are interwoven with its Aramaic building-blocks, cannot be accounted for as mere back-borrowings. The inseparability of Hebrew and Aramaic within the Kaddish indicates that it was a linguistic hybrid ("ein Mischprodukt") from its earliest stages of development and never existed in a "pure" linguistic form in either Hebrew or Aramaic. According to Lehnardt, the bilingual character of the Kaddish has its counterpart in the prayer's hybrid generic form. The Kaddish resists generic definition, although it employs doxological formulae (i.e. yehe sheme raba mevarakh) and formally resembles certain features of prayers linked to public Scriptural reading (e.g., the 'al ha-kol prayer and the Yekum purkan). Lehnardt rejects the findings of Joseph Heinemann's form-critical method, which placed the Kaddish squarely within the rabbinic study-house (bet ha-midrash). Instead, he argues that, from a formal perspective, the Kaddish cannot be assigned to a single Sitz-im-Leben, and proposes that its generic and linguistic hybridity result from its shifting application in various institutional settings—synagogue as well as study-house. In chapter two (pp. 79–142), Lehnardt analyzes rabbinic sources that provide evidence for the liturgical function of the Kaddish or illuminate the ways in which its meaning and power were conceived in Late Antiquity. The linguistic and formal flexibility of the Kaddish corresponds to its varied reception within classical rabbinic literature. The Kaddish did not develop along a single, linear trajectory from pre-rabbinic prayers such as the Lord's Prayer found in the New Testament, but emerged through an unsystematic process of expansion, reinterpretation, and redeployment. Indeed, the Kaddish is nowhere attested as a fully crystallized...

Hosea (review)

Reviewed by: Hosea Mignon R. Jacobs Hosea, by Ehud Ben Zvi. The Forms of Old Testament Literature, volume 21A/1. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2005. 321 pp. $55.00. In keeping with the form-critical model used in the Forms of the Old Testament Literature series (FOTL), Ben Zvi's volume includes discussion of the genre, setting, and intention of the book of Hosea and its individual units. The discussion is accompanied by a representation of the structure of the individual units along with extensive bibliography on each macro-unit. The clarity of the presentation seen in his volume on Micah (also in the FOTL series) is also reflected in his discussion of Hosea. Most valuable is his delineation of the intent of his task and the clarification of the method as applied to the book of Hosea. First, he clarifies that while he affirms the place of the book of Hosea in the Book of the Twelve, he also recognizes its independence as a distinct unit within that corpus. Second, Ben Zvi distinguishes between the formal and the conceptual structure of the book. Regarding formal structure, he identifies the macro-structure of Hosea as a typical prophetic book, namely: introduction (1:1), Prophetic Reading (body of the book) (1:2–14:9), and a conclusion (14:10). Ben Zvi identifies the conceptual structure of the book as a "very common metanarrative in postmonarchic Israel" (p. 8) and notes that while the book is not a narrative, the four stages of the metanarrative are reinforced in reading and rereading the book. Third, Ben Zvi's application of the form-critical method illustrates an adaptation within the method, namely, he focuses on the extant text rather than attempting to discern or reconstruct a form behind the text, and he embraces the tenets of literary criticism. Consequently, he emphasizes the reading and rereading of the text, further highlighting the role and identity of the actual reader on the reading process. In this perspective, Ben Zvi defines genre as a fluid product of the readers, readers' expectation, and the reading process that incorporates the textual markers and assign intention to the implied author of the text. According to this understanding of genre, Ben Zvi posits that the genre of the book of Hosea is "Prophetic Book" or "Authoritative, Ancient Israelite Prophetic Book," namely, one that communicated a claim for authoritativeness and was affirmed by a readership as such, and whose communicator is perceived as authoritative (p. 11). For Ben Zvi the reading and rereading of the Prophetic Book shapes and influences the readers' perspectives; therefore, he is adamant that the text is a theological rather than an historical document of the past. Accordingly, the images of the past preserved within the book are constructed by the authors in accordance with their perspectives and intent for their readers and are not necessarily consistent with social realities. Likewise, Ben Zvi proposes that [End Page 158] one of the primary intentions of the book is to socialize its readers in a way that idealizes them as the sole bearers of Yhwh's words and revelation. Ben Zvi's adaptation of the form-critical method is further evident in his understanding of setting. Regarding the intellectual setting, he proposes the literati and specifically the highly literate by and for whom the book was composed. More specifically, regarding the historical setting of the book, Ben Zvi proposes that its themes are crucial for discerning between the monarchic and postmonarchic times. Of these the exile, the unification of Israel and Judah, and the Davidic ruler are significant to the proposal that the readership of the book was situated in the postmonarchic period. Notably, for Ben Zvi this period is the most likely because it "provides the most reasonable historical background for such a text" (p. 14). Even so, Ben Zvi argues that while the readership of the book is situated in the postmonarchic period, the "world of the book" is the monarchic period. Accordingly, the readership lived out the events that the speakers/authors anticipated. The volume focuses on the formal structure or the individual units of the book of Hosea. The Superscription (1:1) orients the...

Isaiah 46, 47, and 48: A New Literary-Critical Reading (review)

160 SHOFAR Fall 1996 Vol. 15, No. 1 Jungian bias I would commend the venture this collection undertakes and wish it bon voyage. John P. Dourley Carleton University Ottawa Isaiah 46, 47, and 48: A New Uterary-Critical Reading, by Chris Franke. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1994. 293 pp. $32.50. Franke's Graduate Theological Union dissertation (Duane Christensen, David Noel Freedman, and Francis I. Andersen) applies literary- or rhetorical-critical methodology to the study of Isaiah 46, 47, and 48 in an effort to demonstrate that the poems found within these chapters constitute unified literary works. She is especially concerned to refute the work of earlier form-critical studies, such as those by Schoors, Westermann , Melugin, and Whybray, that divide the text into a series of originally independent, short, self-contained generic units. Noting that most scholars regard Isaiah 47 as a long, skillfully constructed, unified poem by DeuteroIsaiah , she argues that it is inconsistent to propose that the rest of Deutero-Isaiah consists ofsuch short, form-critically defined units. Because previous scholarship notes thematic parallels between Isaiah 47 and the surrounding material in Isaiah 46 and 48, she proposes a study of all three to see what rhetorical devices are employed to define the structure of each poem/chapter. She assumes that each poem is a unified work and conceives of her study as a means to test that assumption. Franke's method owes much to the work of James Muilenburg and Richard Clifford, who developed the rhetorical-critical approach by focusing especially on the literary coherence and interrelationship of textual sub-units within a larger textual structure. She gives special emphasis to their concern with the strophic structure of the text, which she establishes in large measure by the syllable and stress count approach developed by Freedman. Her analysis of each chapter includes the following elements: 1) a transliteration of the text, which indicates its strophic divisions and syllable or stress count; 2) her English translation of the text; 3) detailed notes which take up philological, text-critical, and other interpretive issues; 4) an analysis of the microstructure of the text based upon various rhetorical features; and 5) an analysis of the macrostructure of the text. Her analyses of Isaiah 46, 47, and 48 conclude that each is a unified poem. Book Reviews 161 Franke is certainly correct to challenge Gunkel's axiomatic principle that the short, self-contained, generic unit constitutes an originally independent text that must stand as the primary focus of biblical exegesis. She is likewise correct in her assertion that scholars need to consider larger literary contexts and textual structures in which the smaller units function. together as part of a large whole. But to a certain extent, she is shadow-boxing with the form-critical methodology ofthe past. More recent form-critical methodological literature, especially the work of Martin Buss, George Coats, RolfKnierim, Wolfgang Richter, and others, and the volumes of the "Forms of the Old Testament literature" commentary series demonstrate that the lessons taught by James Muilenburg and others have been heeded as form-critical scholarship is increasingly shifting its attention to the larger textual entities. Gunkel's focus on the short, self-contained generic unit is not inherent to the form-critical method; rather, concern with the typical elements of language, its generic character, and its function in shaping and defining a text are the essential elements of formcritical analysis. Franke's assertion that all texts are unique is correct, but typical generic elements function within the language of each unique text to define its textual character and message. In this regard, Franke's assessment of Muilenburg's methodological intention is to the point: "He does not seek to undermine previous scholarship; rather, he opens up additional perspectives on the biblical text" (p. 11). Many form critics understand Muilenburg as a contributor to the development of formcritical theory insofar as he points to the need to examine larger textual units and their unique features. Ideally, form criticism and rhetorical criticism work together to identifY the interaction of typically generic language and unique rhetorical structure which define the larger literary text. Franke's discussion of the structure of Isaiah 48, for...

Georgian Studies and the New Testament

Much of the study of the New Testament in the recent decades of the present century has emphasized that we encounter in scripture, not so much a record of the data on which opinion about Jesus and belief in him are grounded, as the forms which these traditions and affirmations have assumed in their use, transmission and development within the early church. From the first impact of the form-critical method, this emphasis has been made more and more until its validity has been acknowledged even in many quarters where at first it might have been vociferously rejected.

Empty Tomb and Resurrection

In 1976, Fergus Kerr reviewed Hubert Richard’s The First Easter in New Blackfriars, and followed the review, in 1977, with two articles on the empty tomb and the appearance stories in recent Catholic writing. Hubert Richard’s book made available to the British public the method and results of form-critical study of these narratives. The method had been developed in Germany and taken up by English-speaking scholars like R. H. Fuller and C. F. Evans. The form-critical method still dominates study of the resurrection narratives, although, during the past twenty years, New Testament scholars have adopted different methods for interpreting the rest of the Gospels and the epistles. The books by Fuller and Evans have been reprinted, and as recently as June 1981, Professor Kenneth Grayston offered a spirited and compressed form-critical study of the empty tomb tradition (Expository Times, June 1981, pp 263-267). The form-critical method isolates the pericope from its context and examines its form with a view to discovering its purpose and giving it a place in a history of tradition. It is part of a quest to discover what happened in history, but it is often also very useful in elucidating the genre of the passage. It presupposes that fragments of tradition can be separated from the Gospels and the epistles and that such separation and analysis can lead to accurate relative dating e.g. Professor Grayston’s comments on I Cor. 15:3-5 (p 263f). The criteria for this kind of separation are sometimes doubtful and the results uncertain, but the method has a more serious limitation. It involves losing sight of the whole for the parts, and since any statement made in isolation becomes difficult to interpret with confidence, in losing sight of the whole, meaning is lost.

Some Observations On the Analysis of Structure in Biblical Narrative

In recent years an increasing number of studies has been published devoted to the investigation of the literary features of biblical narratives 1). Whereas in the past biblical scholars paid attention primarily to genetic questions, with a view to restoring the original, authentic form of the narratives by peeling off additions and disposing of alterations, lately there has been evidence of a growing tendency to deal with the biblical narrative in its present shape. Needless to say, this new literary approach is not to be confused with the formcritical method, which occupies itself mainly with questions of genre, formulas and other more or less fixed forms, and with their Sitq im Leben 2). The present literary method is concerned mainly with the

THE SCIENCE OF LITERATURE METHOD OF PROF. M. WEISS IN CONFRONTATION WITH FORM CRITICISM, EXAMPLIFIED ON THE BASIS OF Ps. 49

SUMMARY The purpose of this article is to offer some remarks on the relation between the Science of Literature method of Prof. M. Weiss and the Formcritical method. I intend to do this in three stages. First of all the starting-off point of Weiss is presented. Next comes his critique of current exegesis. Finally some remarks follow about the relation between the Science of Poetry and the Formcritical approach, as illustrated in the case of Ps. 49. According to Weiss, basic principles have been formed in the new critical trend of the general Science of Literature which can be applied' in the process of interpretation. The exegesis of the Tenach should take into account the insights of the Science of Poetry as to the essence of language and as to the unicity and once for all character of a linguistic work of art. Seeing that current exegesis takes little or no account of this, Weiss considers this exegesis as needing supplementation and correcting and even calls it inapplicable. In our eyes only a creative ...

The One Anointing of Jesus: Another Application of the Form-Critical Method

Research Article| September 01 1976 The One Anointing of Jesus: Another Application of the Form-Critical Method Robert Holst Robert Holst Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Biblical Literature (1976) 95 (3): 435–446. https://doi.org/10.2307/3265275 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Robert Holst; The One Anointing of Jesus: Another Application of the Form-Critical Method. Journal of Biblical Literature 1 September 1976; 95 (3): 435–446. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/3265275 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveSBL PressJournal of Biblical Literature Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 1976 Society of Biblical Literature1976 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Joachim Jeremias. The Parables of Jesus. Pp. 248. Translated by S. H. Hooke. Klaus Koch. The Growth of the Biblical Tradition: The Form-Critical Method. Pp. 248. Translated by S. M. Cupitt. (Both published by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. $2.95 each.

Joachim Jeremias. The Parables of Jesus. Pp. 248. Translated by S. H. Hooke. Klaus Koch. The Growth of the Biblical Tradition: The Form-Critical Method. Pp. 248. Translated by S. M. Cupitt. (Both published by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. $2.95 each. - Volume 8 Issue 3

DE VORMKRITISCHE ANALYSE VAN HET OUD TESTAMENT

SUMMARY 1. Definition, aims and importance of the method The form-critical method consists in a thorough analysis of the genre or form of a given text. We have to establish very carefully in each individual case what the indigenous features of the text are. To do so, we should take into account its contents, its form elements and its origin in a particular situation of life in ancient Israelitic society. As the biblical books generally are compositions of smaller units, it is an important preliminary task of the form critic to delimitate the most original units, which belong to a definite literary genre of the Kleinliteratur. Each of these genres has its own features and its own history. Therefore it is indispensable to investigate on which point in the evolution of the genre the text under consideration is to be situated. Hence the name „form history” (Formgeschichte). In order to provide a full understanding of the text this method should go together with two other ones, viz. the study of the tradition ...

The Growth of the Biblical Tradition: The Form-Critical Method

Book Review| June 01 1970 The Growth of the Biblical Tradition: The Form-Critical Method The Growth of the Biblical Tradition: The Form-Critical Method, Klaus Koch and S. M. Cupitt. Patrick D. Miller, Jr. Patrick D. Miller, Jr. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Biblical Literature (1970) 89 (2): 242–243. https://doi.org/10.2307/3263068 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Patrick D. Miller; The Growth of the Biblical Tradition: The Form-Critical Method. Journal of Biblical Literature 1 June 1970; 89 (2): 242–243. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/3263068 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveSBL PressJournal of Biblical Literature Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 1970 Society of Biblical Literature1970 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

SHORT NOTICES

Journal Article SHORT NOTICES Get access The Growth of the Biblical Tradition: The Form-Critical Method. By K. KOCH. Translated by S. M. CUPITT. Pp. xvi+233. London: A. & C. Black, 1969. 42s. J. A. EMERTON J. A. EMERTON Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Journal of Theological Studies, Volume XXI, Issue 2, October 1970, Pages 536-c–536, https://doi.org/10.1093/jts/XXI.2.536-c Published: 01 October 1970

Revival of Synoptic Source-Criticism

AFTER a long lull which stretched from the end of the first World ^ War until the present, the last few years have seen renewed activity in the field of Synoptic Source-Criticism. Activity had almost ceased in this sector of New Testament studies because of the general conviction that the Two-Source theory had uncovered the ultimate documents from which these Gospels derived. Scholars had the feeling that, if any attempt to get behind those sources to an earlier stage of Gospel tradition were to have any hope of success, it must proceed according to the Form-Critical method which had been successfully exploited since 1919 by Dibelius, Bultmann, and their followers. Recently, however, a series of books and articles has appeared which, though they differ in much else, commonly challenge this general conviction. Judging by the unanimously respectful and often favorable comment which it has called forth both here and abroad, this tendency may well have reached a zenith in the recent work of L. Vaganay.