“Historical Criticism” is the label usually applied to what might be termed “mainline” biblical scholarship over the last two centuries or so. As James Barr has insisted, historical criticism is not strictly a method, but a loose umbrella that covers a range of methods (source criticism, form criticism, sociological criticism, etc.) that may sometimes be at odds with each other.8 In fact, it is not unusual to narrate the history of biblical scholarship as a succession
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