Source Criticism and the Authority of the Bible

Mandy and I had an extremely interesting conversation today about source criticism. It actually started out as a discussion about text criticism and BHS (because we’re taking an exegesis class this semester), but it quickly moved from there into how we can talk of “autographs,” and if we have some kind of concept that the Bible was plunked down from heaven fully formed (it wasn’t). So, it was a fun little conversation. To some extent I think the question Mandy was asking – “Which is inspired, the final form or the earlier layers of sources?” – is unanswerable from a purely objective standpoint.

I came home and looked at my feed reader and behold! a post on the very topic. Kevin over at Blue Cord has some interesting things to say.

I think that I tend to see the entirety of the text as having some level of inspiration, down to the final decisions to canonize certain books. After all, the story of the Bible is, in some ways, our own story.

~ by Calvin on August 27, 2007.