Higher Criticism in an intellectual exercise which makes scholars feel themselves above the text. It is made up of assumptions and inferences and deductions from inferences of others and is ultimately a speculative game. When it is applied to some other text, we can see just how silly this process is:

Composite authorship is clearly indicated by a number of linguistic peculiarities and literary unevennesses.[2] We observe the oscillation between various names for Pooh, an unerring pointer to diversity of authorship. He is called within the space of half a page (W 3.31)[3]:

Pooh
Pooh
Winnie-the-Pooh
Winnie-the-Pooh
Winnie-the-Pooh
Bear

This is brilliant — read it all