Critical Structural Method

Posted by wizanda on 1744036143

There are a couple of analytical methods that people use to assess religious texts:

The Historical Critical Method means they try to understand what the author meant within their historical setting, and to use as much information connected to that to build the best appraisal of what was intended.

The Historical Grammatical Method tries to use the history surrounding the texts, and to come to a conclusion of what the author meant based on the language used within their statements. This method can believe the texts are inspired by God, and so allows for intertextuality across time.

I personally find both methods why religious people are all arguing, as neither provide conclusive assessments of everything available to us.

I've always used my own method, which when asked I’ve called the Critical Structural Method. The reason for the naming is it does exactly that, it deals with all structuring available to us, even if the author might not have read it, to properly analyse if the authors statements have interconnecting ideas, we have to also know that data.

So for example: Biblical ideas had previous religions before, where Zoroastrianism could be seen as a thousand years older than Moses, and they discuss a child found in a basket, that will be called the Foundling, as they will create a great movement.

The wise men that came to Christ birth came from the East in the Bible, and came with gold, frankincense, and myrrh, based on Zoroastrian prophecy, where they were told a Saoshyant will be born under a great star.

To properly deal with what the Bible was implying, we have to deal with the structuring that came before it, not assume like with the Historical Critical Method, that the author is only specifically talking about what they knew, and limiting the data to something that neglects where the concepts came from.

The problem with the Historical Grammatical Method is it can assume that the texts are inspired, when some of them were forged by the religious institutions, and contradict the standards within the base material.

If they'd Critically dealt with what are the primary precepts, then they'd know the standards that should be within the later material.

This is where we have to build 'Precept upon Precept' (Isaiah 28:10+13) to come to a logical conclusion of what the texts mean, not only what the author intended, yet what is truly being relayed - as we don't know if the author within prophetic texts foresaw everything that would take place or if they were merely given something to write down.

Part of using the Critical Structural Method is that any equation shown within the texts, should work like Algebra, where a sum can be reversed to check our workings.

Where if we believe that a structuring shows a prophetic utterance was fulfilled in a later texts, does all the criteria match in all jurisdictions, and if not, why not, no part of the sum can be left unattended, so it is more based on logic, where everything has to add up.