Book contents
- The Cambridge History of Atheism
- The Cambridge History of Atheism
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Preliminaries
- Part II Atheisms in History
- Part III Reformation, Renaissance, Enlightenment
- 10 Reformation
- 11 Early Modern England
- 12 Spinoza and the Low Countries
- 13 Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century France
- 14 The Scientific Revolution
- 15 The Scottish Enlightenment
- 16 Al-Ghazālī
- 17 Lives of Jesus and Historico-critical Skepticism
- Part IV Classical Modernity: Philosophical and Scientific Currents
- Part V Classical Modernity: Social and Political Currents
- Part VI Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries: Intellectual and Artistic Currents
- Part VII Lived Atheism in the Twentieth- and Twenty-First Centuries: Case-Studies
- Part VIII Emerging Atheisms in the Twenty-First Century
- Part IX Conclusion
- Index
- References
17 - Lives of Jesus and Historico-critical Skepticism
from Part III - Reformation, Renaissance, Enlightenment
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 September 2021
Book contents
- The Cambridge History of Atheism
- The Cambridge History of Atheism
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Preliminaries
- Part II Atheisms in History
- Part III Reformation, Renaissance, Enlightenment
- 10 Reformation
- 11 Early Modern England
- 12 Spinoza and the Low Countries
- 13 Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century France
- 14 The Scientific Revolution
- 15 The Scottish Enlightenment
- 16 Al-Ghazālī
- 17 Lives of Jesus and Historico-critical Skepticism
- Part IV Classical Modernity: Philosophical and Scientific Currents
- Part V Classical Modernity: Social and Political Currents
- Part VI Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries: Intellectual and Artistic Currents
- Part VII Lived Atheism in the Twentieth- and Twenty-First Centuries: Case-Studies
- Part VIII Emerging Atheisms in the Twenty-First Century
- Part IX Conclusion
- Index
- References
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.
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- Information
- The Cambridge History of Atheism , pp. 308 - 326Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021
References
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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