The mainstream scholarly method of analysing the Bible is known as the “historical-critical method”, or “historical criticism”. The traditional name for this method of interpretation was "Higher Criticism". Higher Criticism is simply the collection of methods used to study the background of the Bible, in order to gain useful information about its context before studying the text itself.
As the conservative scholar Dyson Hague said over 100 years ago, Higher Criticism is the same kind of research carried out by most people as they prepare to study the Bible; it is the identification of "the author, the date, the circumstances, and the purposes of its writing".
Faithful Bible students have nothing to fear from this method of interpretation.
