For Kenneth: “Textual Criticism”

[Jason Hare]

Kenneth,

I took a look at your book excerpts as you’ve posted them on your website.

I notice that you talk about “textual criticism” and what you’ve learned from it, but I don’t see any textual criticism in the book. It’s just your interpretations of various passages and explanations of things that people may consider difficult in the Bible.

What definition do you use for “textual criticism”? Is that just your way of saying “hermeneutics” or “interpretation”? We normally use the word to refer to lower criticism (trying to determine what the most likely original reading of the text would have been) or higher criticism (trying to determine the sources from which a text may have been constructed). Do you mean something else by the term?

[Kenneth Greifer]

Jason,
My version of textual criticism is in my chapter on Isaiah 53 and Zechariah 4:6-7 where I divide the letters into words differently. Those are considered textual emendations and I think they call that word division problems. Those are part of textual criticism. I don't do it exactly like scholars do it. I don't have access to their expensive books and articles very much. I can see some of that stuff. Also, I would have to write an extra 10 pages of information on each quote if I did it like scholars do it. Mine is more to the point. I have shown many examples of my "textual criticism" involving dividing the letters into words differently here.
I also analyze quotes without doing textual criticism. I just put the most controversial topics on my site in case some people are interested in that stuff too. I am fascinated by how people explain different quotes. I have many chapters on non-controversial topics too.
I warn people that I am an amateur researcher, so it is not like I am tricking anybody, in my opinion.

[Kenneth Greifer]

Jason,
I think I explain on my site that I have more information than textual criticism. Now that you point this out, I guess I should fix my signature here.

[Kenneth Greifer]

Jason,
Maybe I missed something, but when you change your signature, it counts the characters and there is a limit, but I didn't notice anyway to see how many you are using until you are done, if it rejects your signature or not. Is there some place where it gives you the count or do you have to count the characters yourself? Maybe I didn't see that information.