Literary criticism developed to examine the literary
characteristics (including narrative technique, tone, theme,
structure, and imagery) of the Bible. Though source criticism
has contributed a great deal to our understanding of the growth
of biblical traditions, by definition it ignores the literary
unity of the final form of a text. In reaction, literary
criticism developed, to examine the literary characteristics
(including narrative technique, tone, theme, structure, imagery,
repetition, reticence, and character) of the texts. In simple
terms, source criticism is interested in cutting up the texts to
find the different layers of tradition; literary criticism
considers the text as it stands now, as a whole, not as it once
may have been. Literary criticism is both like and unlike
traditional Jewish commentary. It looks at the Bible as a
unified whole but has no theological commitment and sees it as
the creation of human authors. Source criticism is interested in
the process that wove the different texts, by