The reason for these direct contradictions are a matter of great debate. Modern biblical criticism is the attempt to study the NT's literary, stylistic, rhetorical, and doctrinal patterns in order to understand what its human authors are expressing. If the study of the Bible must agree with doctrinal norms, then the enterprise is a mere pretense from the start. Criticism is a tool for looking at the NT from many fresh and exciting directions in order to better understand what its authors were trying to communicate. Although we take the critical study of the NT for granted today, it was once a very dangerous practice.
Ideas can challenge the imagination but they can also threaten the established authority.
On the Intention of Jesus and His Teaching . Reimarus disputed the resurrection of Jesus and argued that the disciples stole Jesus's body and fabricated the entire story. Reimarus's challenge to traditional dogma forced theologians to look closer at the gospel acounts. David Friedrich Strauss of T bingen University did not wait until his death to publish The Life of Jesus in 1835. Others, like Woolston and Aikenhead were imprisoned or hung for publishing controversial ideas about the NT texts.