historicalcritical

Historical-critical, often written as historical-critical method or historical criticism, is a family of scholarly approaches used in the humanities to study texts and cultural artifacts by examining them in their historical context. It seeks to understand what a text meant in its original setting, how it came to be, and how later interpretations have shaped its reception. Key components include textual criticism to establish the most accurate form of the text, source criticism to identify predecessor documents or influences, form criticism to categorize literary units, and redaction criticism to analyze how editors shaped surviving materials. Evidence from philology, archaeology, archaeology, sociology, and anthropology is commonly integrated to situate the work within its historical milieu.

The method treats texts as products of their time, shaped by social, political, religious, and intellectual forces. By reconstructing authorship, dating, audience, purpose, and genre, historians and scholars attempt to separate original content from later edits or accretions, and to distinguish historical facts from theological or literary interpretive layers. Although widely associated with biblical criticism, the historical-critical approach has influenced studies in literature, law, philosophy, and social sciences.

Origins of the approach trace to early modern and modern scholarship, gaining prominence in the 18th through 20th centuries with the development of historiography, philology, and comparative studies. While influential for its rigorous caution about sources and context, it has faced critique for potentially downplaying genre, rhetorical craft, or symbolic meaning, and for varying standards of objectivity across disciplines. Contemporary practice often blends historical-critical methods with literary theory, reception studies, and other interpretive frameworks to address these tensions.