Historical Criticism and the Bible

Barton, "Strategies for Reading Scripture" (HCSB [HarperCollins Study Bible], xxxix–xliii)

Don Hagner’s “Ten Guidelines for Evangelical Scholarship”

Levenson, "The Bible: Unexamined Commitments of Criticism"

"The Interpretation of the Bible from the Nineteenth to the Mid-Twentieth Centuries" (NOAB, 2221-24)

Meeks, "Introduction to the HarperCollins Study Bible" (HCSB, xiii-xix)

A Comparative Study of Varying Contemporary Approaches to Biblical Interpretation: A Report of the Commission on Theology and Church Relations, The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, March 1973

This document has three columns that describe some ways the Bible can be interpreted.  The first column describes an ultra-conservative (some would say fundamentalist) "traditional" approach that disapproves of applying historical criticism to the Bible; the second column describes a strictly secular historical-critical approach which treats the Bible like any other piece of ancient literature; the third column describes a mediating approach that is committed to studying the Bible in the same historical-critical manner as other ancient documents but seeks to combine it in various ways and to varying degrees with faith, keeping faith and reason in a creative tension.