When it comes to the Bible(both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament), we have an entire field of critical biblical scholarship. There is source criticism, form criticism, tradition criticism and redaction criticism.
Is there any similar field for critical Buddhist scholarship? I'm primarily looking for historical criticism into the Buddhist scriptures. As in coming up with rough time periods for when the various scriptures were written, identifying any conflicting ideas among the different scriptures and positing theories about how the scriptures came to be(sorta like the Documentary Hypothesis for the Hebrew Bible) Also, who are the top scholars in such fields and what books can one use to read up on this kind of scholarship(if it exists)?
From my personal experience, your best bet, at least in English (there is a lot of Japanese scholarship about this issue), is anything written by Jan Nattier, who writes about Mahayana Buddhist scriptures. I have only read one of her books personally (A Few Good Men: The Bodhisattva Path according to The Inquiry of Ugra (Ugraparipṛcchā)), but it is a detailed analysis of how the Ugraparipṛcchā was modified over the centuries, as well as an attempt to reconstruct the religious and social forces that created the sutra - as well as forces that have led the Ugraparipṛcchā to be so obscure to modern Buddhists.
Nattier has also written a book about the Heart Sutra in which she argues that it was written in China rather than in India (as the traditional account argues).
From the Theravada Buddhist perspective, there is is Sujato, Bhikkhu, and Bhikkhu Brahmali. 2015. The Authenticity of the Early Buddhist Texts. S.l.: lulu.com. https://ocbs.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/authenticity.pdf
That having been said, their writing has been criticized here: https://vridar.org/2019/01/10/scholars-of-christianity-are-not-alone/