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  • From: Lloyd Barre <barre AT c-zone.net>
  • To: "ANE" <ane AT oi.uchicago.edu>, "B-Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Cc:
  • Subject: Beyond Minimalism: On the Necessity of Composition Criticism
  • Date: 24 Apr 99 01:40:05 -0800


Dear List,

I think it would be timely to urge that the interpretation of Old Testament
necessarily involves what I call composition criticism, formerly and narrowly
defined as "source criticism" and sometimes "literary criticism." It is
necessary because it is well known that this literature has undergone
extensive editing over the long period of its development into its present
form. This process is most evident in the Book of Psalms with its
superscription, smaller collections, doxologies, broken acrostics, doublets
and similar phenomena. The same intensity of editorial activity is also
present in Old Testament narrative which the Documentary Hypothesis and
Noth's study of the Deuteronomistic History revealed. Accordingly, one must
have a firm grasp of a convincing compositional model for this literature and
bring it to bear when studying individual texts. Resistance to composition
criticism for some reason demands "extra-biblical" evidence, which has been
supplied by Jeffrey Tig!
ay's landmark work, The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic (1982).

An escape from compositional criticism has also been sought by the
hermeneutics informing the so-called "synchronic readings" of those who hold
that texts are consciousness entities with their own authorial will." Those
not finding this position compelling are called upon to embrace compositional
as a indispensable method on a par with textual criticism or linguistic
analysis. Texts must be compositionally defined before they can be
interpreted. For this, I would recommend the introductions of S.R. Driver
and O. Eissfeldt. Even better is the hard to find commentary by
Hartsford-Battersby. A fine recent analysis to the Pentateuch may be found
in the appendix to R. Friedman's, Who Wrote the Bible? In short, the
difficulties of composition criticism do not remove it from its place as an
indispensable exegetical concern and to ignore it is to abandon he critical
interpretation of the extremely complex literary composition of this body of
ancient literature. Only a embracing!
of subjective eisegesis can excuse this task.

L. M. Barre, Ph.D.

barre AT c-zone.net
www.angelfire.com/ca2/AncientIsrael





  • Beyond Minimalism: On the Necessity of Composition Criticism, Lloyd Barre, 04/24/1999

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