Form Criticism

Form criticism is a method of biblical criticism that classifies units of scripture by literary pattern and that attempts to trace each type to its period of oral transmission. Form criticism seeks to determine a unit's original form and the historical context of the literary tradition. Hermann Gunkel originally developed form criticism to analyze the Hebrew Bible. It has since been used to supplement the documentary hypothesis explaining the origin of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament) and to study the Christian New Testament.

Read more about Form Criticism:  The Evangelists, Demythologising, Literary Forms and Sociological Contexts, Scholars of Form Criticism, Bibliography

Famous quotes containing the words form and/or criticism:

    The Divine Vision still was seen,
    Still was the human form divine
    Weeping in weak & mortal clay;
    O Jesus, still the form was thine!
    William Blake (1757–1827)

    The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.
    Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)