Comments on: Loan words and OT Dating http://www.masstheology.com/2008/08/08/loan-words-and-ot-dating/ Conversations in Theology and its interaction with Culture Sun, 07 Feb 2010 03:50:02 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 By: Hank http://www.masstheology.com/2008/08/08/loan-words-and-ot-dating/comment-page-1/#comment-6416 Hank Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:53:08 +0000 http://www.masstheology.com/2008/08/08/loan-words-and-ot-dating/#comment-6416 It amazes me how much biblical scholarship is moving away from much of what form criticism has argued strongly for over 100 years ago. As more light in linguistics, archaeology, history etc. has shown through, the more scholars are seeing that form criticism, in much of what it argued for, was just wrong due to the fact that those scholars did not have all the facts (which is not necessarily their fault, they made their theories with the information available; they just may have jumped the gun). I have really noticed this in both OT and NT scholarship, both in conservative and more moderate to liberal camps. Form criticism is loosing its grip on biblical scholarship in that the conclusions drawn from it are being seriously challenged and rejected. But, I still realize that form criticism isn't totally gone away as that discipline did shed some important light for scholars. Also, one cannot base the date of a text solely on linguistics. There are other factors. One just needs to take the linguistics into account when dating and studying a book. It amazes me how much biblical scholarship is moving away from much of what form criticism has argued strongly for over 100 years ago. As more light in linguistics, archaeology, history etc. has shown through, the more scholars are seeing that form criticism, in much of what it argued for, was just wrong due to the fact that those scholars did not have all the facts (which is not necessarily their fault, they made their theories with the information available; they just may have jumped the gun). I have really noticed this in both OT and NT scholarship, both in conservative and more moderate to liberal camps. Form criticism is loosing its grip on biblical scholarship in that the conclusions drawn from it are being seriously challenged and rejected.

But, I still realize that form criticism isn’t totally gone away as that discipline did shed some important light for scholars. Also, one cannot base the date of a text solely on linguistics. There are other factors. One just needs to take the linguistics into account when dating and studying a book.

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