The New Testament and Criticism

by George Eldon Ladd

Publisher:

Eerdmans

, 1967

Overview

One unfortunate consequence of the bitter fundamentalist-modernist controversy which raged in the early twenties has been the strongly negative attitude toward biblical criticism assumed by some of the successors to the fundamentalists of the 1920s. Such people, according to Professor George Eldon Ladd, insist that the critical method is basically hostile to the evangelical faith, and they have continued to oppose any use of it. Others, however, claiming the same heritage, believe that the orthodox interpretation of the Gospel can be defended positively and constructively only with the aid of a sound critical method and the results of critical scholarship.

The author believes that an evangelical biblical criticism is not only possible but necessary. The central thesis of his book is that “the Bible is the Word of God given in the words of men in history,” and as such its historical origins must be reconstructed as far as possible. In this way a richer understanding of the Scriptures can be achieved. The New Testament and Criticism provides the serious student of the Scriptures with valuable guidelines for such an understanding.

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Key Features

• Provides valuable guidelines for the understanding of Scripture
• Discusses the necessity of evangelical biblical criticism

Contents

• How Is the Bible the Word of God?
• What Is Criticism?
• Textual Criticism
• Linguistic Criticism
• Literary Criticism
• Form Criticism
• Historical Criticism
• Comparative Religions Criticism

Top Highlights

“The New Testament books are, like the Old Testament, both history and revelation. They record the mission of Jesus Christ and what happened as a result of His life, death, and resurrection. But they embody also the divinely given Word of God, interpreting His future coming to establish the eternal Kingdom of God. Thus the entire Bible is both history and interpretation, deed and word.” (Pages 31–32)

“The Word of God has been given to men through historical events and historical personages; and this very fact demands historical criticism, unless the true nature of the Bible is to be ignored.” (Page 37)

“To be a critic means merely to ask questions about the authorship, date, place, sources, purpose, and so on, of any ancient literary work. The opposite of a properly ‘critical’ approach to the study of the Bible is, therefore, an unthinking, unquestioning acceptance of tradition. To be non-critical means simply to ignore altogether the historical dimensions of the Bible and to view it as a magical book. If the Bible has come to us through historical events, persons, and situations, criticism is necessary to understand the historical process through which the sovereign God has been pleased to accomplish both self-revelation and the salvation of men.” (Page 38)

“This does not mean, however, that the Bible was given to men by some sort of unhistorical, magical process, like the Book of Mormon, believed to have been discovered by Joseph Smith, who received a vision which led him to a book of golden pages buried in the ground, whose ‘old Egyptian’ language he could translate only by the use of divinely given magical spectacles, called ‘Urim and Thummim.’ Such a supernatural book, if it ever existed, is obviously exempt from any kind of criticism.” (Page 36)

Praise for the Print Edition

Ladd has done well what he set out to do: to show those on the right the values to critical study and to give pause to some on the left in their methodology.

—Interpretation

Product Details

• Title: The New Testament and Criticism
• Author: George Eldon Ladd
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Publication Date: 1967
• Pages: 227
• Christian Group: Evangelicals
• Resource Type: Systematic Theologies
• Topic: Textual Criticsm

About George Eldon Ladd

Ladd, professor of New Testament exegesis and theology at Fuller Theological Seminary since 1950, was educated at Gordon College and Gordon Divinity School (B.D.) and received the Ph.D. from Harvard University. He also did postdoctoral study at Heidelberg and Basel Universities. Ordained as an American Baptist minister, Ladd served several churches in the denomination. He was professor of Greek at Gordon College (1942-45) and head of the department of New Testament at Gordon Divinity School (1946-50). His writings include Crucial Questions about the Kingdom of God (1952), The Blessed Hope (1956), The Gospel of the Kingdom (1959), Jesus Christ and History (1963), The New Testament and Criticism (1965), The Pattern of the New Testament (1968), Commentary on The Revelation (1972) and The Theology of the New Testament (1974).