Episode 7: Bible Criticism

This month, Minding Scripture, which brings together the life of the mind and the life of faith, asks guest speaker Nathan Eubank and one of our hosts, Tzvi Novick, how historical-critical scholarship in both the Hebrew Bible and in the New Testament has developed over the last two centuries and what its current place in our understanding of the Bible should be.  What is historical criticism and how did it begin? What is the enduring value of historical criticism, both intellectually and for the life of faith? What are some of its enduring achievements? What does the Epic of Gilgamesh, the psychology (or not) of Jesus, and the Jewishness of Paul have to do with all this? Our hosts discuss the progress and regress, tensions and achievements of historical criticism from the eighteenth century to the present.