Historical Criticism

Abstract

This article is the seventh chapter of the collected volume presented and published by Ian Howard Marshall. The book contains eighteen articles by professors from various European and American universities. It was published under the direction of Marshall himself in order to address a topic that had arisen in the absence of a literature that summarised the results of discussions on the interpretation of the New Testament, in order to provide a comprehensive and practical guide to the task of interpretation. In this chapter, Marshall introduces the field of New Testament interpretation and the subject of understanding and comprehension for the modern reader of the ancient text by clarifying the religious text and making it more accessible by placing it in its historical context, accurately and narratively, using historical science and its methodology, so that each narrative is treated separately and placed in comparative forms and hypothetical formulations. He also enumerates the historical problems arising from the differences between miraculous narratives and those subject to the method of historical criticism, and the challenges this poses to the historian. Marshall concludes with an obligatory consideration of the aims of the writers of religious texts.