Changes

One important example of the kind of work the historical-critical method pursued was the effort to establish the authorship and/or authenticity of the various books of the Bible.  Genesis, for instance, was traditionally attributed to Moses but critical scholars have established that it is in fact a collection of sources redacted by several editors.  This was quite disturbing to many conservatives who considered traditional assignments of authorship to be virtually part of the canon.  German scholarship also led to an historically important field of study known as the Quest for the Historical Jesus.  The underlying thesis for this movement was that the Jesus who is presented to us in the New Testament is already so overlaid with mythology as to be unrecognizable, and so the historical-critical method was employed by a number of scholars in the effort to discover the "real" Jesus underneath.  Harnack's search for the essence of Christianity can be seen as a variation of the Quest for the Historical Jesus. Typically the historical-critical method was accompanied by the denial of miracles such as the virgin birth and the resurrection.  The presence of miracles in the biblical narrative was attributed to the pre-scientific understanding of the biblical writers.  Not surprisingly, the church has sometimes gone to great lengths to distance itself from university theology over the years.   

One important example of the kind of work the historical-critical method pursued was the effort to establish the authorship and/or authenticity of the various books of the Bible.  Genesis, for instance, was traditionally attributed to Moses but critical scholars have established that it is in fact a collection of sources redacted by several editors.  This was quite disturbing to many conservatives who considered traditional assignments of authorship to be virtually part of the canon.  German scholarship also led to an historically important field of study known as the Quest for the Historical Jesus.  The underlying thesis for this movement was that the Jesus who is presented to us in the New Testament is already so overlaid with mythology as to be unrecognizable, and so the historical-critical method was employed by a number of scholars in the effort to discover the "real" Jesus underneath, with mixed results.  Harnack's search for the essence of Christianity can be seen as a variation of the Quest for the Historical Jesus.