Page "Historicity of Jesus" Paragraph 36

The first Quest which started in 1778 was almost entirely based on biblical criticism.

This was supplemented with form criticism in 1919 and redaction criticism in 1948.

Form criticism began as an attempt to trace the history of the biblical material before it was written down, and may thus be seen as starting when textual criticism ends.

Form criticism looks for patterns within units of biblical text and attempts to trace their origin based on the patterns.

Redaction criticism may be viewed as the child of text criticism and form criticism.

This approach views an author as a " redactor " i. e. someone preparing a report, and tries to understand how the redactor ( s ) has molded the narrative to express their own perspectives.