How can modern readers of the Bible discover the meaning of the original text? This question has been asked of preachers, theologians, and biblical scholars for centuries. In the recent history of biblical scholarship, form criticism has attempted to answer this question by meaningfully examining the implications of literary forms and oral traditions surrounding the text of the Bible—helping modern readers interpret God’s word, exegete the text, and understand the meaning of Scripture for preaching and Bible study.
The 2-volume Form Criticism Collection from Continuum helps readers identify literary patterns of Scripture for exegesis and interpretation. The authors attempt to understand the content and the context of particular literary forms (the Sitz im Leben), and then identify methods of interpretation for texts, helping modern readers rediscover the meaning in its original context, as well as the connections between literary and oral traditions.
In addition to Martin J. Buss’s landmark volume on the forms of biblical literature, this collection also contains an edited volume of twenty essays, articles, and short scholarly works on form criticism. The contributors examine particular texts and pericopes in Scripture, providing penetrating studies from texts in Isaiah, Job, Hosea, and other sections of the Bible. Contributors also approach form criticism from the perspective of a variety of disciplines.
