The Old Testament Hebrew Scriptures in Five Minutes - Philippe Guillaume
77. What Are Literary and Form Criticism?
The Old Testament Hebrew Scriptures in Five Minutes - Philippe Guillaume
Kåre Berge [+]
Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo
Kåre Berge is Professor emeritus and guest researcher at the Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo. His studies cover the Pentateuch, especially Genesis, Exodus and Deuteronomy, focusing on cultural memory, politics of identity, didacticism, and symbolization of power-relations. In particular, “Dynamics of Power and the Re-invention of ‘Israel’ in Persian Empire Judah.” Pages 293–321 in Levantine Entanglements. Edited by T. Stordalen and Ø.S. LaBianca. Sheffield: Equinox, 2021; and “Cities in Deuteronomy: Imperial Ideology, Resilience, and the Imagination of Yahwistic Religion.” Pages 77–96 in Deuteronomy in the Making. Edited by D. Edelman, B. Rossi, K. Berge, P. Guillaume. BZAW 533; Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 2021.
Description
The “world” that interests literary critics is the imaginative world created by the text, not the world in which the writer lived. Form criticism tends to leave aside pre-textual interests and focuses on the text itself—its form, structure, and possible genres.