Exploring Historical Criticism - Research Paper Sample

Introduction

Research refers to a detailed and careful investigation of a specific issue, concern, or a problem using definitive means, commonly termed as scientific methods. In religious research, most of the researchers study the Bible, particularly the New Testament, to understand the history and literary concerns. These scholars employ numerous methods to fulfill various interests. This article will review some of the best techniques and compare the same with the least appealing.

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Historical Criticism

“You cannot know where you are going if you do not know where you are coming from,” Maya Angelou. Therefore, this might be the primary reason why some scholars seek to understand the history of Christianity by reconstructing the lives and the beliefs of the most significant individuals like Jesus Christ. This method enables the researchers to use their historical-critical analysis to determine what might have transpired, giving them a better edge at understanding Christianity, and making the method one of the most interesting.

Archaeology

The modern times have witnessed a rising number of unbelievers, with most questioning the context and the existence of significant individuals and cities. Therefore, the archaeology researchers attempt to excavate the traditional cities, particularly those in the New Testament, a process that has led to them unearthing enormous evidence that answers the skeptics' questions. This is an interesting method because the scholars discover the lost items, and cities, as stated in the Bible, thereby providing an exciting overview, and an actual comparison with what is stated in the Bible.

Social-Scientific Criticism

The context of social-scientific criticism applies sociology aspects such as the migration pattern, military occupation, and invasion, relationships, and kinship to understand new testament. The method is interesting as it enables the researchers to key the evidence about the most questioned migrations, Jesus Lineage, and even understand the Jewish culture to contextualize with the ancient culture.

Text Criticism

As much as it is good to analyze concerns to develop a better understanding, the act of researchers locating all the preserved manuscripts to determine the most reliable, to reconstruct the new testament is wrong. The researcher may find information that was omitted for the betterment, and alignment of Christianity as religion and determine to reincorporate. The results could be detrimental, as they could introduce alternative teaching, deconstructe the whole belief system, and make it seem, unreliable. Researchers should only concentrate on finding information relevant to the New Testament as it is, to firm up the belief and increase reliability, amid a period where there is a rising number of skeptics drawn mainly from Christianity.

Conclusion

My instructor is a critical individual as their approach follows, the overview of the text, how the text is arranged, and why it is depicted in such a way. Therefore, my guess is, the instructor uses the redaction method in their research method. The redaction approach is mainly used in the Gospel studies to determine the authors of the New Testament's specific intentions through an analysis of how the sources of the materials are organized and edited. This relates to how my instructor offers the lectures as it revolve around how the various textual units are arranged, while critically analyzing any change that an author may have made on the actual source material.