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History of Biblical Studies
The menu on the left has topics in mainly early Christian history ranging from the nature of the early church to historical investigations into the epistles and letters of the New Testament regarding authorship and date.
In 1845 F.C. Baur published his Paulus, der Apostel Jesu Christi, sein Leben und Wirken, seine Briefe und seine Lehre which is roughly the beginning of today's historical investigation into the New Testament. Although there were such attempts prior to Baur, such as Reimarus' reconstruction of the historical Jesus, their methodology was deeply flawed. Ultimately, it was realized that Baur's historical reconstructions were flawed too, with ideas about early Christianity superimposed over the texts when the evidences went against such. However, his research marked the beginning of the modern historical method regarding the New Testament.
Baur's ideas ultimately became a trend followed by many other German scholars, and this type of criticism tradition became known as the Tübingen School. In Baur's book, he placed all of the Pauline epistles as inauthentic, accepting only Galatians, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, and Romans, and Revelation as being by St. John. In these four Pauline epistles, known as the Hauptbriefe Baur saw the problem of the split between the Jewish Church and Pauline Christianity reflected. The Tübingen School's ideas had lasting influence throughout the 19th century, which ended by the late 19th/early 20th century, due to the realization that it held views about early Christianity which were too narrow, specifically seeing the need to see the split between Jewish and Pauline Christianity in any work written at the time.
Although many of the Tübingen School's ideas were abandoned, its influence lingered into the 20th century in the tendency to place most of the writings of the New Testament as inauthentic and toward the end of the 1st century.
In any case, here is an up-to-date analysis of arguments regarding different positions on various topics.
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