REL 630 – Spring
2006 Victor
Matthews
Methods
of Tradition Criticism
1. Inquires about
the community or group responsible for the shaping and transmission of a
particular tradition.
- even creative
individuals would be more apt to reflect the themes and memories important for
the
group to which they belonged.
- writers tend to
employ a certain kind of language and formulaic speech at home among their
special group.
- we find deposits of tradition in the text,
such as information about sacrifice, rubrics for cultic
practices, and details of priestly
equipment and activity -- the narrative sections of the Pentateuch
are frequently interrupted by blocks
of material deriving from priestly circles (Exod 35-40; Num
1:1-10:10).
2. A second area of
importance is the particular geographical location with which a tradition was
associated.
- If a tradition can be isolated as being
connected with a particular locale, then a thorough study of
that site or area, along with the
circles most intimately associated with it, can often produce
significant new dimensions of
interpretation.
- Examination of texts centering on a
particular site (
their cultic significance, as well as
the types of literature which are associated with them
- Particular regions may also be identified as
the locus of particular traditions -- certain themes were
preserved by the northern Israelites
which were not contained in the corpus of traditions
preserved in the southern kingdom.
3. There is also a
concern for certain dynamics that are present in the origin and reformulation
of a
tradition, including sociological,
political, or cultic influences which might have been operative in
the production of a particular
literature.
- examine the features in the life of the
circles who produced and transmitted a tradition
- elements such as holy war ideology and
covenant terminology and ritual can be traced by
examining political and social
conditions which produced particular traditions
4. Study of various
themes of the Old Testament involving an intricate search for the way
particular
themes came to be formulated, and the
role they continued to play as they were brought into
different contexts in the course of
time
- Each theme is viewed as having its own
history before it became a part of the larger literary
complex of the Pentateuch
- Eventually these separate themes were
brought into relation with each other, and they became key
elements in the framework of the
Pentateuch and other material is brought together around them.