Joseph Scaliger

Chapter 1 shows that in Leiden around 1600 the type of philology that undermined the stability of the biblical text was kept indoors or was restricted to private correspondence. The independently minded Joseph Scaliger focused on chronology and history, and the history of the Bible was part of his studies, although it did not stand at the centre of his attention. Scaliger was reluctant to publish his philological annotations on the Bible. He adopted different levels of openness, depending on the medium. Scaliger observed that the text of the Bible was often not stable and irretrievably lost. He inculcated his textual-critical, linguistic and historical methods in his students Daniel Heinsius and Hugo Grotius. He exerted a profound influence on antiquarians such as Selden and Saumaise, not through a published work or an organized selection of biblical annotations, but through a number of methods and themes, which the next generation developed.