Lower Criticism
Lower criticism also developed from unbelief in the inspired scriptures. They evaluated the Bible just as any other book. We need to be very careful of the assumptions of those who do these critical studies. Westcott and Hort in the 1800s were scholars indeed, but with a bias. They did not believe in God's authoritative Word. Many others of the Liberalism persuasion follow their trail and do not believe in the inspiration of the original autographs.
We have spoken of their bias. Is there any value in their methodology then? We think so. The methodology needs to be separated from their assumptions. They thought that only a few major texts were old and so based their conclusions on only a few manuscripts. They claimed to be eclectic but in fact were rather prejudiced. Today we have others who do hold to the veracity of the scriptures and fine-tune the research on determining the original text.
We need to remember that most of the text is not in questing. We are not 'recovering' a lost text. The biblical text is in the majority of cases clear and unquestioned. Today's studies focus on seeing if we can through research detect which variance was actually the original.
Source Criticism
Source criticism has a long history, and is one of the foundational methodologies of the historical critical method. Spinoza's preliminary analysis of the Bible was an early form of this method combined with elements of what would now be termed 'redaction criticism' (a study of how the documents were edited and came to their final form). The early conclusions of the source critics of the Jewish Testament, which were widely accepted until recent times, became known as the Documentary Hypothesis, the contribution of Wellhausen (Alan, 1961).
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