Tradition history 

or tradition criticism is a methodology of biblical criticism that situates a text

within a stream of a specific tradition in history and attempts to describe the development of
the tradition over the course of time. Tradition criticism was developed by Hermann Gunkel.
Tradition history seeks to analyze biblical literature in terms of the process by which biblical
traditions passed from stage to stage into their final form, especially how they passed from oral
tradition to written form. Tradition history/criticism is a sister discipline of form criticism—also
associated with Gunkel, who used the results of source and form criticism to develop the history
of tradition interpretation. Form criticism and tradition criticism thus overlap, though the former
is more narrow in focus. Tradition history is connected with secular folklore studies,
especially Axel Olrik's analysis of Scandinavian folklore and the "laws" which he established
concerning the nature of such folklore. The stories in the Bible were then analyzed on the basis
of these "laws".

Tradition history forces interpreters to consider the possibility that some texts may have
had an oral prehistory. It also notes that past traditions were retold and used for a
present purpose; that it was made real, vital, or relevant for each successive generation.
The method also has weaknesses. Tradition history creates highly speculative
reconstructions, often built on the speculative deductions from source criticism.
Moreover, tradition history may exaggerate the role of oral tradition. If texts were
written soon after they were spoken so that there was not a long oral prehistory, then
the assumptions of tradition history fall to the ground. The use of Olrik's laws is also
dubious: It may be a false analogy to compare Icelandic folklore with Hebrew
folklore since they are very different cultures. Some folklorists question whether Olrik's
laws apply even to Scandinavian literature much less any other (Gunkel admitted they did
not apply to all stories in Genesis).