by Sandy » Mon Sep 29, 2014 1:43 pm
There's a broader subject of "Textual criticism" that compares manuscript evidence. Actually, what I got at an SBC seminary, prior to the resurgence, was a distinction between things that establish the existing manuscripts and make comparisons (and compared to other ancient literature, the New Testament in particular has very few variants), and various theories such as redactionism, the Documentary Hypothesis, and other theories related to existing manuscripts that tend to dismiss existing historical evidence,but get applied anyway.
For example the criticism that the Pentateuch was a product of a much later date than the time of Moses, based on the claim that the literary level of the work is too high for Moses' day. The idea that the gospel accounts were "redacted" and that a divine Jesus was created out of the written work of his original disciples, who saw him as a great teacher, and rabbi, but not as messiah. Or you can go down the road of the Jesus Seminary, and individuals such as Marcus Borg, Robert Funk, and others, who say that if part of the narrative of Jesus in the gospels is authentic, then literary criticism can prove other parts of it were added later.