BIBLICAL CRITICISM. — Biblical criticism, or the art of distinguishing truth from falsehood, when applied to a literary work aims to establish its authenticity (i.e., the identity of its author), its integrity, the kind of truth it conveys, and so forth. The Bible, as the Word of God and therefore free from all error (cf. INERRANCY), is nonetheless subject to the laws of criticism because the charism of inspiration, while elevating the faculties of the sacred writer, leaves them entirely free to exercise their own human mode of activity. Thus, while the text is the Word of God, it is at the same time a human work; and precisely insofar as it is a human work, it is subject to the same criteria by which other human works are judged.
Two main types of criticism are commonly distinguished: textual criticism, also called “humiliar” criticism, which seeks to determine what words the author actually used; and literary criticism, or “sublimar” criticism, which concerns the work itself—its integrity, authenticity, and the various circumstances that influenced its composition. After sketching the history of criticism—with particular attention to the role played by Catholics—these two aspects will be treated in turn (cf. also BIBLICAL HERMENEUTICS; LITERARY GENRES).
I. HISTORY OF CRITICISM
As soon as Christian scholars began to reflect upon and study the Sacred Books, Origen, Lucian of Antioch, Hesychius of Alexandria, and among the Latins, St. Jerome and St. Augustine, applied to the Holy Scriptures the critical rules developed for profane works. Origen himself offered a solution regarding the authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews that is still widely accepted among Catholics; he also defended the deuterocanonical passages of the Book of Daniel against Julius Africanus. St. Dionysius of Alexandria subjected the Apocalypse to a genuine literary-critical study, while Theodore examined the sources of the Book of Judith as well as those of the Books of Kings and Chronicles. Later, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the revival of the study of ancient languages and the controversies stirred up by Protestants paved the way for the rise of modern criticism, whose first representative was the Catholic priest Richard Simon with his *Histoire critique du Vieux Testament* (Paris, 1678, etc.). Despite certain bold opinions and at least some ill-advised assertions, his principles remain those of modern critics.Unfortunately, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, rationalism seized upon the weapons furnished by this new discipline to undermine the authority of the Sacred Books at its foundations and to construct, from scratch, a history of Israel—indeed, a history of the origins of Christianity—in which every supernatural intervention vanished, and the principal figures, Jesus Christ not excepted, were reduced to minor roles, or even had their very existence denied, as happened more than once. It is enough to mention among the most representative of these critics in Germany J. Wellhausen with his explanation of the Pentateuch (cf.), F. C. Baur (cf.), founder of the Tübingen school, with his account of Christian origins through the conflict between Petrinism and Paulinism, and in France E. Renan and later A. Loisy, who ended by dating New Testament literature, including the Pauline epistles, to the mid-second century.
It is not surprising that more than one Catholic viewed such methods with suspicion. Yet there were those who, responding to the invitation of Leo XIII that exegetes should be “doctiores atque exercitationes in vera artis criticae disciplina” (encyclical *Providentissimus Deus*), judged it their first duty to disengage the critical method from the uses to which rationalists put II. These pioneers were sometimes misunderstood, even fiercely attacked, accused of abandoning too readily positions deemed untenable. Certainly, after fifty years of labor, research, and refinement, clearer, more precise, and more accurate formulations are now possible. Yet all acknowledge not only that these pioneers were animated by a burning love for the Church, but that in fact most of their fundamental positions have become the common patrimony of Catholic exegesis, in accordance with the norms laid down by the Church’s magisterium in the encyclical *Divino afflante Spiritu* of 30 September 1943 and in the letter of the Pontifical Biblical Commission of 16 January 1948. These two documents will guide us.
II. TEXTUAL CRITICISM
The encyclical *Divino afflante Spiritu* underscores the importance of biblical textual criticism in unmistakable terms. Since, in fact, the only inspired text is the original, not even the most perfect versions, the first task of exegesis—“precisely out of reverence for the Word of God”—is “to procure a correct text,” “to restore the Sacred Text, as far as possible, to its original purity, purging it of the corruptions introduced by copyists’ errors, freeing it from glosses and lacunae, from transpositions of words, repetitions, and similar defects of every kind that tend to infiltrate writings transmitted by hand over the centuries.”From the standpoint of textual criticism, the Old Testament presents a wholly distinctive profile. The oldest manuscripts—apart from the discovery of 1947—do not go back beyond the eighth or ninth century of our era, and all reproduce the same text, indeed a single archetype (as is shown by the evident errors repeated in all known manuscripts without exception), whose consonantal form was fixed between the second and fifth centuries and provided with vowel points only after St. Jerome. Certain readings were placed in the margin by editors called “Masters,” readings “to be read” (qere) instead of those “written” (ketiv) in the text; these variants constitute the oldest list of textual variants. But long before this, the Hebrew Old Testament had been translated first into Greek (cf. SEPTUAGINT; GREEK VERSIONS) around the second or third century B.C., and then into Syriac around the first or second century A.D.; these witnesses suggest that, at least in some passages, the Hebrew text differed considerably from the Masoretic text. The aforementioned discovery of Hebrew manuscripts dating probably from the first or second century B.C. shows that most of these divergences are to be attributed to the Greek translator. The few ancient witnesses thus leave a relatively wide field open to conjectural emendation. Such conjectures abound in the critical apparatus of the edition by R. Kittel and P. Kahle (3rd ed., Stuttgart, 1937), and are not lacking even in the Latin Psalter edited by the Pontifical Biblical Institute (Rome, 1943), nor in the Italian Bible translation edited by A. Vaccari (Florence, 1943 ff.).
Unlike the Old Testament, the difficulty of New Testament textual criticism arises chiefly from the sheer number of witnesses: papyri, manuscripts, versions, patristic citations. No profane work possesses so many. While of the work most copied throughout antiquity, the *Iliad*, only 190 manuscripts survive, and of these only two are uncials (Plato has 23, Thucydides 21, Hesiod 20, etc.), for the New Testament 2,641 manuscripts (complete or partial) have been catalogued, of which no fewer than 212 are uncials, not counting 51 papyri. What is more, many of these manuscripts are far less remote from the original than those of classical authors, and among them one, Papyrus 52 (P. Rylands 457), is almost contemporary: it is a leaf of a codex found in Egypt bearing on the verso John 18:31–33 and on the recto John 18:37–38, dated by specialists to the second century, more probably to the first half of that century. It thus goes back almost to the time when Catholic tradition places the composition of the Gospel of St. John (end of the first century).
For the New Testament even more than for the Old, the variants, though numerous, relate only to details often quite minor, and most modern critical editions, whether by Catholics (e.g., H. Vogels, A. Merk, J. Bover) or by non-Catholics (e.g., C. Tischendorf, B. F. Westcott–F. J. A. Hort, H. von Soden, E. Nestle), offer a text that is roughly similar.
Current critical effort is directed chiefly toward reconstructing the textual history of the New Testament, and for this purpose ancient versions and patristic citations occupy a place of prime importance; hence even a manual edition such as Merk’s accords them a prominent place.
III. C. LITERARY.—The first question ordinarily posed by the exegete in approaching a biblical book (or a passage within it) is to determine, as far as possible, the human author whom the Holy Spirit employed as an instrument—that is, to establish the work’s authenticity.
The Council of Trent declared the books preserved in the ancient Latin Vulgate authentic cum omnibus suis partibus (v. VOLGATA); yet it is known that the Council intended to speak only of canonical or dogmatic authenticity, not literary authenticity. The Catholic exegete must hold these parts “sacred and canonical,” as in the New Testament the pericope of the woman taken in adultery (Jn 7:53–8:11), the verses on the bloody sweat and the consoling angel (Lk 22:43–44), and the ending of the Gospel of St Mark (16:9–20); in the Old Testament, the additions to Esther and Daniel not found in the Hebrew text. Yet he is not obliged to affirm that these passages belong, in a literary sense, to the books in which they are now incorporated; in fact, Merk’s critical edition suggests that this is probably not the case for Mk 16:9–20 and Jn 7:53–8:11.
Now, to interpret a given passage it is not a matter of indifference to know its author, date, and, if possible, the circumstances of its composition. Indeed, the historical value of a book will depend more or less directly upon such knowledge; hence it is understandable that in certain cases—admittedly rare—the Church has intervened to give precise directives. Nevertheless, the relationship between a writer and what may rightfully be called his work admits of many nuances that the Catholic exegete is careful not to overlook: St Paul is probably not, in the commonly accepted view, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews in the same sense as he is of the Epistle to the Galatians; as for Moses, whom tradition holds to be the author of the Pentateuch, the aforementioned letter from the Biblical Commission treats this matter with great care, alluding to “the large part and profound influence that he exercised as author and legislator.”
The same document likewise refers to the sources of the Pentateuch, “the existence of which no one today seriously doubts.” Precisely the investigation of sources is, after questions of authenticity, one of the chief objects of literary criticism. Catholic scholars are expressly invited “to study these problems without prejudice, in the light of sound principles and of the findings of those sciences that bear upon these matters”—a delicate task, especially since recourse must generally be had to internal rather than external criticism, that is, to the examination of style, language, vocabulary, and so forth. This is all the more true inasmuch as, for the Old Testament, most books have not escaped a process of updating: as H. Höpfl observed, “there can be no doubt that from the time of the exile onward the Sacred Text was read publicly in the synagogues and was adapted to the conditions of the Holy Land and to contemporary modes of expression” (DBs, col. 109). The exegete must also beware of attributing to diverse sources what may be merely a literary device, and more generally of interpreting Scripture without sufficient regard for the thought-patterns and writing conventions of the ancient Near Eastern peoples (v. GENERAL LETTERARI).
Of course, in all this research the Catholic exegete will be guided by the teaching of the Church and by Tradition. Yet here too the encyclical Divino afflante Spiritu rightly warns that “among the many things contained in the sacred books—legal, historical, sapiential, and prophetic—few are those whose meaning the Church has declared by her authority, and not many more are those about which there is a unanimous consensus among the Fathers.”
One may therefore conclude how false and unjust it is to claim, as some have done, that Catholic doctrine “excludes every form of critical and historical exegesis of the Bible.”