Untitled Sermon (8)

One may subdivide redaction criticism into two complementary tasks: reading horizontally and reading vertically.71 Reading horizontally involves looking across a gospel synopsis to compare the differences among parallels and to determine how later writers altered their sources. Reading vertically refers to looking down the given column of a synopsis (and hence throughout the larger context of a specific Gospel) to see what themes and other editorial distinctives repeatedly recur and whether or not they are paralleled in the other Gospels.

Craig Blomberg

Thinking horizontally and thinking vertically amounts to studying the Gospels along the lines of modern redaction criticism. Redaction criticism is best defined as the attempt “to lay bare the historical and theological perspectives of a biblical writer by analyzing the editorial (redactional) and compositional techniques and interpretations employed in shaping and framing the written and/or oral traditions at hand (see Luke 1:1–4)

William W. Klein; Craig Blomberg; Robert L. Hubbard Jr.