(November 10, 2022 at 9:45 am)Jehanne Wrote: This goes back to the dawn of higher criticism and the work of scholars such as Rudolf Bultmann. For instance, Dr. Bultmann pointed out the fact that you or I can observe in our day exorcisms; we don't observe people walking on liquid water. Likewise, we can observe family members going after one of their own who has gone off the "religious deepend"; we don't hear spirits talking to them. And, so, higher criticism is about separating what probably did happen from that which almost assuredly did not.
Thomas Jefferson did that, basically he created a New Testament with all the supernatural stuff deleted. That's easy peasy. The more respectable branch of this is source criticism. That's where you date, say, the Book of Acts to the 90s by showing that it uses material from the works of Josephus, or where you decide such questions as whether Matthew used Luke as a source or the other way around, or both used a lost "Q" source.
