Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-13T10:28:42.521Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

17 - Lives of Jesus and Historico-critical Skepticism

from Part III - Reformation, Renaissance, Enlightenment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 September 2021

Michael Ruse
By
Jeffrey L. Morrow
Edited by
Stephen Bullivant
Michael Ruse
Affiliation:
Florida State University
Stephen Bullivant
Affiliation:
St Mary's University, Twickenham, London
Get access

Summary

Historical critical biblical scholarship, particularly as it pertained to the study of the historical Jesus and the many “lives” of Jesus that were published and that popularized this scholarship, contributed to the broader skeptical culture of the radical Enlightenment. Although in this chapter I will refer to the radical more skeptical Enlightenment as “Enlightenment,” in reality we could speak more accurately of several “Enlightenments,” including Catholic, Jewish, and other religious Enlightenments that all occurred from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries (Brown 1990, 286; Hess 1999; Sorkin 2008; Lehner 2010, 166–78; 2016). The more radical form of the Enlightenment was marked by its skepticism, and this skepticism spread outside of academic circles to a more popular audience, not least by way of the popularizations of more skeptical biblical scholarship in works like David Friedrich Strauss’ famous 1835 Life of Jesus.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Atheism , pp. 308 - 326
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References

Arnaldez, R. 1956. Grammaire et théologie chez Ibn Hazm de Cordoue: Essai sur la structure et les conditions de la pensée musulmane. Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin.Google Scholar
Asín Palacios, M. 1927–32. Abenházam de Córdoba y su historia crítica de las ideas religiosas IV. Madrid: Tipografía de la “Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos.”Google Scholar
Auvray, P. 1968. “Richard Simon et Spinoza,” in de Gaiffier, B., Neveu, B., Voeltzel, R., and Solé, J. (eds.) Religion, érudition et critique à la fin du XVIIe siècle et au début du XVIIIe. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 201–14.Google Scholar
Baird, W. 1992. History of New Testament Research Volume One: From Deism to Tübingen. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.Google Scholar
Berman, J. 2019. “The biblical criticism of Ibn Hazm the Andalusian: a medieval control for modern diachronic method.” Journal of Biblical Literature 138(2), 377–90.Google Scholar
Bernier, J. 2010. La critique du Pentateuque de Hobbes à Calmet. Paris: Honoré Champion.Google Scholar
Brown, C. 1985. Jesus in European Protestant Thought: 1778–1860. Durham, NC: Labyrinth Press.Google Scholar
Brown, C. 1990. Christianity and Western Thought: A History of Philosophers, Ideas & Movements Volume 1: From the Ancient World to the Age of Enlightenment. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.Google Scholar
Bultmann, C. 2012. Bibelrezeption in der Aufklärung. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.Google Scholar
Carbajosa, I. 2014. “A los 500 años de la Biblia Políglota Complutense. Enseñanzas de un gran proyecto editorial,” in Carbajosa, I. and Serrano, A. G. (eds.) Una Biblia a varias voces: Estudio textual de la Biblia Políglota Complutense. Madrid: Ediciones Universidad San Dámaso, 15–42.Google Scholar
Cavanaugh, W. T. 1995. “‘A fire strong enough to consume the house’: the wars of religion and the rise of the state.” Modern Theology 11, 397–420.Google Scholar
Cavanaugh, W. T. 2009. The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davidson, I. 1915. Saadia’s Polemic against Hiwi al-Balkhi: A Fragment Edited from a Genizah Ms. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America.Google Scholar
Droge, A. J. 1989. Homer or Moses? Early Christian Interpretation of the History of Culture. Tübingen: Mohr.Google Scholar
Epp, E. J. 2016. “Critical editions of the New Testament, and the development of text-critical methods: from Erasmus to Griesbach (1516–1807),” in Cameron, E. (ed.) The New Cambridge History of the Bible Volume III: From 1450 to 1750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 110–37.Google Scholar
Fabisiak, T. 2015. The “Nocturnal Side of Science” in David Friedrich Strauss’s Life of Jesus Critically Examined. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature Press.Google Scholar
Frampton, T. L. 2006. Spinoza and the Rise of Historical Criticism of the Bible. New York: T&T Clark.Google Scholar
Fukuoka, A. 2018. The Sovereign and the Prophets: Spinoza on Grotian and Hobbesian Biblical Argumentation. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Gibert, P. 2010. L’invention critique de la Bible: XVe – XVIIIe siècle. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Grafton, A. 1983. Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship I: Textual Criticism and Exegesis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Grafton, A. 1993. Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship II: Historical Chronology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Grafton, A. 2017. “Spinoza’s hermeneutics: some heretical thoughts,” in van Miert, D., Nellen, H., Steenbakkers, P., and Touber, J. (eds.) Scriptural Authority and Biblical Criticism in the Dutch Golden Age: God’s Word Questioned. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 177–96.Google Scholar
Grant, R. M. 1945. “Historical criticism in the ancient church.” Journal of Religion 25(3), 183–96.Google Scholar
Gregory, B. S. 2017. Rebel in the Ranks: Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the Conflicts that Continue to Shape Our World. New York: HarperCollins.Google Scholar
Hahn, S. W. and Morrow, J. L. 2020. Modern Biblical Criticism as a Tool of Statecraft (1700–1900). Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic.Google Scholar
Hahn, S. W. and Wiker, B. 2013. Politicizing the Bible: The Roots of Historical Criticism and the Secularization of Scripture 1300–1700. New York: Herder & Herder.Google Scholar
Hammill, G. 2012. The Mosaic Constitution: Political Theology and Imagination from Machiavelli to Milton. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hardy, N. 2017. Criticism and Confession: The Bible in the Seventeenth Century Republic of Letters. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hartlich, C. and Sachs, W. 1952. Der Ursprung des Mythosbegriffes in der Modernen Bibelwissenschaft. Tübingen: Mohr.Google Scholar
Hess, J. M. 1999. Reconstituting the Body Politic: Enlightenment, Public Culture and the Invention of Aesthetic Autonomy. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press.Google Scholar
Israel, J. I. 2001. Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650–1750. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Israel, J. I. 2006. Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man 1670–1752. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, A. W. 2017. Before Church and State: A Study of Social Order in the Sacramental Kingdom of St. Louis IX. Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic.Google Scholar
Klepper, D. C. 2016. “Theories of interpretation: The Quadriga and its successors,” in Cameron, E. (ed.) The New Cambridge History of the Bible Volume III: From 1450 to 1750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 418–38.Google Scholar
Kofsky, A. 2000. Eusebius of Caesarea Against Paganism. Leiden: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lazarus-Yafeh, H. 1992. Intertwined Worlds: Medieval Islam and Bible Criticism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Legaspi, M. C. 2010. The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lehner, U. L. 2010. “What is Catholic Enlightenment?” History Compass 8, 166–78.Google Scholar
Lehner, U. L. 2016. The Catholic Enlightenment: The Forgotten History of a Global Movement. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Linde, C. 2011. How to Correct the Sacra Scriptura?: Textual Criticism of the Latin Bible Between the Twelfth and Fifteenth Century. Oxford: Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature.Google Scholar
Lynch, C. 2008. “Machiavelli on reading the Bible judiciously,” in Schochet, G., Oz-Salzberger, F., and Jones, M. (eds.) Political Hebraism: Judaic Sources in Early Modern Political Thought. Jerusalem: Shalem Press, 29–55.Google Scholar
MacCulloch, D. 2005. The Reformation: A History. New York: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Malcolm, N. 2002. Aspects of Hobbes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mandelbrote, S. 2016. “The Old Testament and its ancient versions in manuscript and print in the west, from c. 1480 to c. 1780,” in Cameron, E. (ed.) The New Cambridge History of the Bible Volume III: From 1450 to 1750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 82–109.Google Scholar
Masuzawa, T. 2005. The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mews, C. J. 2007. “Abelard and Heloise on Jews and hebraica veritas,” in Frassetto, M. (ed.) Christian Attitudes Toward the Jews in the Middle Ages: A Casebook. London: Routledge, 83–108.Google Scholar
Mews, C. J. and Perry, M. J. 2011. “Peter Abelard, Heloise and Jewish biblical exegesis in the twelfth century.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 62(1), 3–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Minnis, A. J. 2003. “Material swords and literal lights: the status of allegory in William of Ockham’s Breviloquium on papal power,” in McAuliffe, J. D., Walfish, B. D., and Goering, J. W. (eds.) With Reverence for the Word: Medieval Scriptural Exegesis in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 292–308.Google Scholar
Mirri, F. Saverio. 1972. Richard Simon e il metodo storico–critico di B. Spinoza. Storia di un libro e di una polemica sulla sfondo delle lotte politico–religiose della Francia di Luigi XIV. Florence: Felice Le Monnier.Google Scholar
Morrow, J. L. 2016. Three Skeptics and the Bible: La Peyrère, Hobbes, Spinoza, and the Reception of Modern Biblical Criticism. Eugene, OR: Pickwick.Google Scholar
Morrow, J. L. 2017. Theology, Politics, and Exegesis: Essays on the History of Modern Biblical Criticism. Eugene, OR: Pickwick.Google Scholar
Morrow, J. L. 2019a. Alfred Loisy and Modern Biblical Studies. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press.Google Scholar
Morrow, J. L. 2019b. “Thy kingdom come: the Church and the Kingdom of God in Loisy’s L’Évangile et l’Église.” Downside Review 137(1), 3–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morrow, J. L. 2019c. Pretensions of Objectivity: Toward a Criticism of Biblical Criticism. Eugene: Pickwick.Google Scholar
Morrow, J. L. 2019d. “Religion and the secular state: Loisy’s use of ‘religion’ prior to his excommunication,” in King, J. and Werner, W. J. (eds.) Constructing Nineteenth-Century Religion: Literary, Historical, and Religious Studies in Dialogue. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 25–45.Google Scholar
Muller, R. A. 1996. “The hermeneutic of promise and fulfillment in Calvin’s exegesis of the Old Testament prophecies of the kingdom,” in Steinmetz, D. C. (eds.) The Bible in the Sixteenth Century. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 68–82.Google Scholar
Müller, S. 2004. Kritik und Theologie: Christliche Glaubens und Schrifthermeneutik nach Richard Simon. St. Ottilien: EOS.Google Scholar
Nellen, H. and Steenbakkers, P. 2017. “Biblical philology in the long seventeenth century: new orientations,” in van Miert, D., Nellen, H., Steenbakkers, P., and Touber, J. (eds.) Scriptural Authority and Biblical Criticism in the Dutch Golden Age: God’s Word Questioned. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 16–57.Google Scholar
Oergel, M. 1998. The Return of King Arthur and the Nibelungen: National Myth in Nineteenth-Century English and German Literature. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Olender, M. 1989. Les langues du Paradis. Aryens et sémites; un couple providential. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
O’Neill, J. C. 1991. The Bible’s Authority: A Portrait Gallery of Thinkers from Lessing to Bultmann. Edinburgh: T&T Clark.Google Scholar
Ong, H. T. 2016. “Ferdinand Christian Baur’s historical criticism and Tendenzkritik,” in Porter, S. E. and Adams, S. A. (eds.) Pillars in the History of Biblical Interpretation Volume 1: Prevailing Methods before 1980. Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 118–38.Google Scholar
Pacchi, A. 1988. “Hobbes and biblical philology in the service of the state.” Topoi 7, 231–9.Google Scholar
Pietsch, A. N. 2012. Isaac La Peyrère: Bibelkritik, Philosemitismus und Patronage in der Gelehrtenrepublik des 17. Jahrhunderts. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Popkin, R. H. 2001. “Millenarianism and nationalism – a case study: Isaac La Peyrère,” in Laursen, J. C. and Popkin, R. H. (eds.) Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European Culture Volume IV: Continental Millenarians: Protestants, Catholics, Heretics. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 74–84.Google Scholar
Popkin, R. H. 2003. The History of Scepticism: From Savonarola to Bayle. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Quennehen, E. 2000. “Lapeyrère, la Chine et la chronologie biblique.” La Lettre clandestine 9, 243–55.Google Scholar
Reventlow, H. G. 1980. Bibelautorität und Geist der Moderne, Die bedeutung des Bibelverständnisses für die geistesgeschichtliche und politische Entwicklung in England von der Reformation bis zur Aufklärung. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.Google Scholar
Reventlow, H. G. 2001. Epochen der Bibelauslegung Band IV: Von der Aufklärung bis zum 20. Jahrhundert. Munich: Beck.Google Scholar
Rif‘at, N. 1988. “Ibn Ḥazm on Jews and Judaism.” PhD diss., Exeter University.Google Scholar
Rogerson, J. W. 1984. Old Testament Criticism in the Nineteenth Century: England and Germany. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press.Google Scholar
Rosenthal, J. 1949. Hiwi al-Balkhi. Philadelphia, PA: Dropsie College.Google Scholar
Scribner, R. W. and Dixon, C. S. 2003. The German Reformation, 2nd edition. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Simon-Nahum, P. 2007. “Le scandale de la Vie de Jésus de Renan: Du succès littéraire comme mode d’échec de la science.” Mil neuf cent 25(1), 61–74.Google Scholar
Sorkin, D. 2008. The Religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Jews, and Catholics from London to Vienna. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Talar, C. J. T. 2000. “Innovation and biblical interpretation,” in Jodock, D. (ed.) Catholicism Contending with Modernity: Roman Catholic Modernism and Anti-Modernism in Historical Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 191–211.Google Scholar
Théobald, C. 1985. “L’exégèse catholique au moment de la crise moderniste,” in Savart, C. and Aletti, J.-N. (eds.) Le monde contemporain et la Bible. Paris: Beauchesne, 387–439.Google Scholar
van Miert, D. 2018. The Emancipation of Biblical Philology in the Dutch Republic, 1590–1670. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wiker, B. 2002. Moral Darwinism: How We Became Hedonists. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.Google Scholar
Wilken, R. L. 1984. The Christians as the Romans Saw Them. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Williamson, G. S. 2004. The Longing for Myth in Germany: Religion and Aesthetic Culture from Romanticism to Nietzsche. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Woodbridge, J. D. 1988. “German responses to the biblical critic Richard Simon: From Leibniz to J. S. Semler,” in Reventlow, H. G., Sparn, W., and Woodbridge, J. (ed.) Historische Kritik und biblischer Kanon in der deutschen Aufklärung. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 65–87.Google Scholar
Yamauchi, E. M. 1970. Gnostic Ethics and Mandaean Origins. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Young, E. J. 1989 [1949]. An Introduction to the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.Google Scholar

Further Reading

Colin Brown, Jesus in European Protestant Thought: 1778–1860. An essential guide to the philosophical background to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century historical Jesus research.Google Scholar
David Laird Dungan, A History of the Synoptic Problem: The Canon, the Text, the Composition, and the Interpretation of the Gospels. This volume is helpful in situating the history of the Synoptic Problem, which is closely bound to historical Jesus scholarship, within the broader social and political history behind the development of this New Testament criticism.Google Scholar
Scott W. Hahn and Benjamin Wiker, Politicizing the Bible: The Roots of Historical Criticism and the Secularization of Scripture 1300–1700. The most important volume to date on the early history of modern historical biblical criticism.Google Scholar
Scott W. Hahn and Jeffrey L. Morrow, Modern Biblical Criticism as a Tool of Statecraft (1700–1900). This is an important book covering the history of modern historical biblical criticism from the eighteenth through the nineteenth century.Google Scholar
Jeffrey L. Morrow, Theology, Politics, and Exegesis: Essays on the History of Modern Biblical Criticism. This book explores the early history of modern biblical scholarship, focusing on the broader historical and political context to biblical scholarship’s development.Google Scholar
Jeffrey L. Morrow, Pretensions of Objectivity: Toward a Criticism of Biblical Criticism. This book examines the early history of modern historical biblical criticism and looks at some of the philosophical and political concerns that shaped the methods.Google Scholar
J. C. O’Neill, The Bible’s Authority: A Portrait Gallery of Thinkers from Lessing to Bultmann. This provides a helpful overview of some of the key biblical exegetes involved in historical Jesus and related historical critical research.Google Scholar
Henning Graf Reventlow, The Authority of the Bible and the Rise of the Modern World. This is an important work uncovering the early modern history of biblical scholarship, showing especially the influence of English Deistic criticism on what would later emerge as German biblical criticism.Google Scholar
Henning Graf Reventlow, History of Biblical Interpretation Volume 4: From the Enlightenment to the Twentieth Century. This is one of the most important overviews of biblical scholars, including historical Jesus scholars, from the seventeenth through twentieth centuries, situating them within their historical contexts.Google Scholar
Jonathan Sheehan, The Enlightenment Bible: Translation, Scholarship, Culture. This is an important work pertaining to how eighteenth-century biblical scholarship transformed the Bible into an important cultural document that was redeployed during the Enlightenment based on the cultural and political concerns of the time.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×