TY - BOOK AU - Barton,John TI - The nature of biblical criticism SN - 9780664225872 AV - BS511.B293.N388 2007 PY - 2007/// CY - Louisville PB - Westminster John Knox Press KW - Bible KW - Criticism, interpretation, etc N1 - 1 (pages 191-201) and index; Introduction --; Difficulties in the text --; The "historical-critical method" --; The plain sense --; The origins of biblical criticism --; Biblical criticism and religious belief --; Conclusion; 2 N2 - Biblical criticism faces increasing hostility on two fronts: from biblical conservatives, who claim it is inherently positivistic and religiously skeptical, and from postmodernists, who see it as driven by the falsities of objectivity and neutrality. In this overview of the key factors and developments in biblical studies, John Barton demonstrates that these evaluations of biblical criticism fail to do justice to the work that has been done by critical scholars over many generations. Traditional biblical criticism has had as its central concern a semantic interest: a desire to establish the "plain sense" of the biblical text, which in itself requires sensitivity to many literary aspects of texts. Therefore, he argues, biblical criticism already includes many of the methodological approaches now being recommended as alternatives to it and, further, the agenda of biblical studies is far less fragmented than often thought. --From publisher's description UR - http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/toc/ecip078/2007001537.html ER -