Changes

==The Method==

==The Method==

[[Image:bible3.jpg|left|frame]]Based on this understanding of the primacy of reason for Christian faith and theology, the German liberals introduced the historical-critical method to the field of biblical studies.  Basically this academic approach to the Bible has two components:  (1) the Bible, like any other document,  is a product of history and therefore can only be properly studied and understood within its own historical context, and (2) the Bible must be subjected to the critical scrutiny of reason in the same way that we would treat any other object of examination.  In summary we could say that where the church regarded the words of scripture as face-value truth, the liberals saw those same words as reflecting the historical limitations and cultural conditioning of their authors.  The truth was something to be discovered beneath the words.  This line of thinking obviously presented a formidable challenge to the popular and devotional use of the Bible in which it is read purely in the context of one's personal faith or community of faith.  One important example of the kind of work the historical-critical method pursued was the effort to establish the authorship and/or authenticity of the various books of the Bible.  Genesis, for instance, was traditionally attributed to Moses but critical scholars have established that it is in fact a collection of sources redacted by several editors.  This was quite disturbing to many conservatives who considered traditional assignments of authorship to be virtually part of the canon.  German scholarship also led to an historically important field of study known as the Quest for the Historical Jesus.  The underlying thesis for this movement was the idea that the Jesus who is presented to us in the New Testament is already so overlaid with mythology as to be unrecognizable, and so the historical-critical method was employed, with mixed results, by a number of scholars in the effort to discover the "real" Jesus behind the myth.  Harnack's search for the essence of Christianity can arguably be seen as a variation of the Quest for the Historical Jesus.

[[Image:bible3.jpg|left|frame]]Based on this understanding of the primacy of reason for Christian faith and theology, the German liberals introduced the historical-critical method to the field of biblical studies.  Basically this academic approach to the Bible has two components:  (1) the Bible, like any other document,  is a product of history and therefore can only be properly studied and understood within its own historical context, and (2) the Bible must be subjected to the critical scrutiny of reason in the same way that we would treat any other object of examination.  In summary we could say that where the church regarded the words of scripture as face-value truth, the liberals saw those same words as reflecting the historical limitations and cultural conditioning of their authors.  The truth was something to be discovered beneath the words.  This line of thinking obviously presented a formidable challenge to the popular and devotional use of the Bible in which it is read purely in the context of one's personal faith or community of faith.  One important example of the kind of work the historical-critical method pursued was the effort to establish the authorship and/or authenticity of the various books of the Bible.  Genesis, for instance, was traditionally attributed to Moses but critical scholars have established that it is in fact a collection of sources redacted by several editors.  This was quite disturbing to many conservatives who considered traditional assignments of authorship to be virtually part of the canon.  German scholarship also led to an historically important field of study known as the Quest for the Historical Jesus.  The underlying thesis for this movement was the idea that the Jesus who is presented to us in the New Testament is already so overlaid with mythology as to be unrecognizable and so the historical-critical method was employed, with mixed results, by a number of scholars in the effort to discover the "real" Jesus behind the myth.  Harnack's search for the essence of Christianity can arguably be seen as a variation of the Quest for the Historical Jesus.

==The Answer==

==The Answer==