Editors’ Introduction

The Editors’ Introduction explains that seventeenth-century philology covered a wide range of positions in the realm of biblical scholarship. As an innovative discipline, practised across a large confessional landscape, from orthodox theologians to radical philosophers, it produced a shift in the appreciation of the authority of God’s Word by stimulating awareness of the historical situation of the Bible and a concomitant sensitivity for rational arguments. Furthermore, the Editors’ Introduction gives a short survey of the chapters in the book and finishes with a general conclusion that argues for a nuanced view of the shift in the supernatural status of the Bible. Biblical criticism was also, and even first, embraced within the established confessions by prominent, often impeccably orthodox theologians, historians, and philologists. Many believers continued to study Scripture through a primarily dogmatic lens, while drawing on prior critical exegesis.