The Old Testament and Criticism

by Carl Armerding

Although many conservative scholars have had reservations about biblical criticism since its rise a century ago, Carl Armerding contends that critical rationalism need not be antithetical to belief in a divinely inspired Word of God. Indeed, says Armerding, the evangelical scholar — mediating the traditional conservative view and the rational critical view of Scripture — is able to use all the tools of historical, philological, and literary study, while still retaining biblical categories of revelation, inspiration, and history. / Armerding applies this synthesis of approaches — the traditional and the critical — to four major branches of literary (or source) criticism, form criticism, structural analysis, and textual criticism. Cautioning against misuse of these critical methods, he demonstrates how each method can be conscientiously used by faithful scholars to enrich their understanding of the Old Testament text. / Of great value to scholars, students, and pastors, Armerding's work promises to enrich study of the Old Testament much as George Eldon Ladd's book (The New Testament and Criticism) has enriched study of the New.

Genres: Old Testament

144 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1983

Reviews

[Batseba · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good book, that reviews OT criticism, and at times, NT. It is great in that it makes some case for OT criticism while holding a high view of Scripture as inerrant. Must read.

[Brett Mclaughlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was assigned as part of an Old Testament Introduction class. Armerding's book is basically a concise introduction to a moderate-to-conservative evangelical's view on matters of Old Testament criticism. Armerding does a good job of summarizing the issues, from textual and literary criticism to form and structural criticism.

His position is conservative-leaning, but he's willing to work in the realms of form and literary criticism more than true-blue conservatives. I think in most cases, he does a good job of finding a balance between ignoring a method simply because that method is often used by more liberal camps, and holding Scripture itself in high regard.

If you're unfamiliar with the various methods for examining texts in the Bible, this really is a good introduction, and will help you start from a conservative position without immediately disregarding some really helpful approaches (literary criticism being one of the most notable). I would say that the section on structuralism and structural criticism was weak, largely because it assumed so much pre-knowledge of that discipline as to be far more difficult to take in than the other sections.

[Lu Tsun · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this books several years ago, and I get curious again how conservative evangelical can define the boundary between revelation and critical reading of the Scripture. But the critical methods mentioned in this book are still too narrow and out-of-date.