Research Guides: Religious Studies: Critical Theory

Biblical Criticism

Religious Studies is often less about theology and more about the historical and archeological evaluation of religious texts and artifacts. By studying the ways which religious texts were constructed, scholars can learn more about the history and progress of religious concepts, societies, and institutions. These disciplines go hand-in-hand with other fields in Religious Studies like philosophy and theology.

Biblical Criticism is about applying Literary Critical Theory to biblical texts, but this approach can be used for any religious texts. For more on Biblical Criticism, look here.

Biblical Construction

How the Bible Actually Works by Peter Enns
ISBN: 9780062686770
Publication Date: 2019-02-19
When we come to the Bible expecting it to be a textbook intended by God to give us unwavering certainty about our faith, we are actually creating problems for ourselves. How the Bible Actually Works makes clear that there is no one right way to read the Bible.
The Bible and the Believer by Marc Zvi Brettler; Peter Enns; Daniel J. Harrington
ISBN: 9780199863006
Publication Date: 2012-09-24
Can the Bible be approached both as sacred scripture and as a historical and literary text? For many people, it must be one or the other. The Bible and the Believer brings together three distinguished biblical scholars - one Jewish, one Catholic, and one Protestant - to illustrate how to read the Hebrew Bible/ Old Testament critically and religiously.
Inheriting Abraham by Jon D. Levenson
ISBN: 9781400844616
Publication Date: 2012-09-30
How Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have reimagined Abraham in their own images Jews, Christians, and Muslims supposedly share a common religious heritage in the patriarch Abraham, and the idea that he should serve only as a source of unity among the three traditions has become widespread in both scholarly and popular circles. But in Inheriting Abraham, Jon Levenson reveals how the increasingly conventional notion of the three equally "Abrahamic" religions derives from a dangerous misunderstanding of key biblical and Qur'anic texts, fails to do full justice to any of the traditions, and is often biased against Judaism in subtle and pernicious ways.