Scholars from the early modern Low Countries played an important role in biblical criticism, which also challenged the authority of the Holy Writ. The four editors in the introduction sketch biblical criticism as an innovative force. Humanists’ philological criticism of the Bible contributed to the decline of ecclesiastical truth claims, whereas until recently only the rise of the sciences was attributed this role. Synchronic with this shift, awareness grew that we cannot think in terms of a “post-Spinozist period” as constituting the rise of biblical criticism, but Spinoza's contribution rather fits in an ongoing development. Philology, historical criticism, historicism, and the increasing knowledge of Oriental languages contributed to this development. Nellen and Steenbakkers, in their magisterial chapter that serves as an introduction (“Biblical Philology in the Long Seventeenth Century: New Orientations”), discuss this role (or, rather, these roles) in a broad and in-depth study. They treat the role of biblical philology and its ways of working, starting with Lorenzo Valla and, particularly, Desiderius Erasmus in the sixteenth century. However, this philology was moderated by practical circumstances and theological demands, and philology was used by both orthodox theologians and radical libertines to prove their points. Such discussions were of the highest importance, since they hit the heart of the sacrosanct status of the Bible, and the issue of the primacy of reason or revelation, and of fact or faith. Between orthodox and libertines, irenic authors steered a middle course, and strived in some way or another at reconciliation and unity of the church, the very position that paradoxically put them outside the established church.

An excellent passage in the introduction is devoted to the remarkable Lodewijk Meyer (1629–81), a physician, poet, translator, theater manager and playwright, literary critic, grammarian and lexicographer, and philosopher in the entourage of Spinoza. In the words of Nellen and Steenbakkers, he was one of the scholars who “dismantled the divine message” in a way similar to Thomas Hobbes. The two authors also discuss the position of Spinoza in the field, discussing the findings of Grafton and Israel in the volume.

The volume is arranged in seven parts. Part 1 is “Famous Cases of pia fraus,” featuring Erasmus and the forged Cambridge manuscript that contained the Johannine Comma by McDonald, thus saving the biblical status of the doctrine of Trinity; and Krans on the “Velesian Readings,” textual variants of the Greek New Testament collected by Pedro Fajardo, Marquis of los Vélez, which should confirm the status of the Vulgate. Part 2, “The Boundaries of Orthodoxy Challenged,” on Heinsius and Grotius (van Miert), and a chapter on Grotius's adversary, the orthodox Calvinist French Hebraist André Rivet (Ossa-Richardsons). Part 3 discusses the Bible in early modern Judaism by Kromhout and Zwiep (“God's Word Confirmed”), and Benjamin Fisher (on the controversial Jewish scholar Menasseh ben Israel). Part 4 is the heart of the volume with two challenging chapters by Grafton and Israel, who argue that the philological passages of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus were unoriginal and that Spinoza's most original contribution was the distinction between factual truth and authorial meaning, respectively. Part 5 discusses “Innovative Exegesis by Remonstrant, Mennonite, and Other Liberal Thinkers,” such as Philip van Limborch (Daugirdas), Pierre Bayle (Bernier, and Pitassi), and Anthonie van Dale (Mandelbrote). Part 6 deals with orthodox Reformed exegetes: Gisbertus Voetius (Goudriaan) and the second half of the seventeenth century in general, by Touber. The final part, 7, turns to biblical criticism in the eighteenth century by German theologians who had connections with the republic: Hermann von der Hardt (Mulsow) and Johann Scheuchzer (1672–1733) (Roling).

Thus the volume gives a wonderful overview of Dutch seventeenth-century biblical scholarship in the Golden Age, from orthodox, libertine, and Jewish points of view, and even in the period after the Golden Age Republic had waned in the 1670s. Of course, not everything or everybody is covered, but those who want to learn about seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century biblical scholarship will find much valuable in this collection of essays.