Tradition history or criticism is a methodology of Biblical criticism that was developed by Hermann Gunkel. Tradition history seeks to analyze biblical literature in terms of the process by which biblical traditions passed from stage to stage into their final form, especially how they passed from oral tradition to written form. Tradition history/criticism is a sister discipline of form criticism--also associated with Gunkel, who used the results of source and form criticism to develop the history of tradition interpretation. Form criticism and tradition criticism thus overlap, though the former is more narrow in focus. Tradition history is connected with secular folklore studies, especially Axel Olrik's analysis of Scandinavian folklore and the "laws" which he established concerning the nature of such folklore. The stories in the Bible were then analyzed on the basis of these "laws".
Read more about Tradition History: Strengths and Weaknesses of Tradition History
Famous quotes containing the words tradition and/or history:
“And hereby hangs a moral highly applicable to our own trustee-ridden universities, if to nothing else. If we really wanted liberty of speech and thought, we could probably get it—Spain fifty years ago certainly had a longer tradition of despotism than has the United States—but do we want it? In these years we will see.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“English history is all about men liking their fathers, and American history is all about men hating their fathers and trying to burn down everything they ever did.”
—Malcolm Bradbury (b. 1932)