Explication De Texte Study Guide

Chapter 3: Literary Criticism
Summary
"Literary criticism is simply the study of literature, the French called "explication de texte": "the attempt to read the text in such a way as to bring out its inner coherence, the techniques of style and composition used by the author, all that makes it a piece of literary art" (pg.20). For biblical studies, literary criticism is used narrow sense. For biblical scholar literary criticism is a method used in managing text that has been mixing with the older text. Therefore for biblical studies, literary criticism is the "endeavor to separate the writings into their segment parts, and to survey the relative periods of these parts, rather as archeologists date the different strata of a site". According

From its starts point form criticism was understood both "affording insight into the biblical text by isolating pre-literary stages in its growth, and also a tool in reconstructing the social life and institution (both sacred and secular) of ancient Israel" (pg.31). Form criticism was developed in the German context, but it did not provide satisfactory English equivalents. But the main idea of method Form or Gattung in German is captured by "genre" (pg. 31) than any other contemporary term in normal English. Many English speakers preferred to use Gattung for their form criticism because in the English usages genre tends to imply a literary type and it tends to a larger scope. According to the author, Gattung or genre is a conventional pattern, unmistakable by certain formal criteria (style, shape, tone, specific syntactic or even linguistic structures, repeating predictable examples), which is utilized as a part of a specific culture in a social setting which is administered by certain formal

In literary criticism, the Psalms were assumed as "poem" written individual "poet" to express their thought, desires, and praises. According to the Book of Chronicles, the Psalms were already used as in public worship since in the post-exilic age. Today some Christian churches use lyric poems as hymns. Barton mentions that a correct reading of the Psalms would be to understand them as the "personal outpouring of thanksgiving, penitence, grief" etc. it was not David as "pre-critical exegetes had assumed"(pg. 35). It was still an individual "poet" and not a group or a community. Gunkel, the founder of biblical form criticism also fully supported this view. But in some Psalms (e.g., Ps 44, 74, 79) were used as a public prayer for their deliverance from their enemies and prayed for help in their national crisis. In addition, the author mentions that form critic gives a better conventional and stylized language of the Psalms to interpret in terms of the psalmist's personal psychology or his spirituality. There are two developments in Gunkel's form criticism. The first is, in form critic the text and its Sitz im Leben are mutually illustrating. The Psalms themselves become our witnesses to see what was happened in the Israelite