Scriptural authority and biblical criticism in the Dutch Golden Age: God's word questioned [First edition] 9780198806837, 0198806833

Table of contents :
Cover......Page 1
Scriptural Authority and Biblical Criticism in the Dutch Golden Age: God’s Word Questioned......Page 4
Copyright......Page 5
Preface......Page 6
Contents......Page 8
List of Illustrations......Page 12
Abbreviations......Page 14
List of Contributors......Page 16
BIBLICAL CRITICISM AS AN INNOVATIVE DISCIPLINE......Page 18
THEMES AND ISSUES......Page 22
GATHERING THE STRANDS......Page 29
1: Biblical Philology in the Long Seventeenth Century: New Orientations......Page 33
Biblical Philology......Page 34
Literary Conservatism......Page 40
Interconfessional Strife and the Status of the Bible......Page 45
The Epistemic Downgrading of Revealed Doctrines by Irenic Writers......Page 55
The Eccentric Position of Innovative Exegetes......Page 59
Dismantling the Divine Mesage: Thomas Hobes and Lodewijk Meyer......Page 63
The Bible Seen from Outside the Christian Tradition: Spinoza as a Biblical Critic......Page 68
By Way of Conclusion: An Evaluative Note......Page 73
Part I: Famous Cases of pia fraus......Page 76
2: The Johannine Comma from Erasmus to Westminster......Page 78
INTRODUCTION......Page 90
THE ‘VELESIAN READINGS’: THE SHORT VERSION......Page 92
THE ORIGIN OF THE ‘VELESIAN READINGS’......Page 93
THE SOURCES......Page 94
DISSEMINATION AND INCIDENTAL CRITICISM......Page 96
COMPLETE DEMISE......Page 100
WHAT DID FAJARDO WANT?......Page 102
CONCLUSION: LONG-TERM CONSEQUENCES......Page 104
Part II: The Boundaries of Early Modern Orthodoxy Challenged......Page 106
INTRODUCTION......Page 108
JOSEPH SCALIGER: ‘I WISH I WERE A GOOD GRAMMARIAN’......Page 109
DANIEL HEINSIUS: BASHING BEZA AND HELPING HELLENISM......Page 113
HUGO GROTIUS: IRENICISM AND ECUMENISM......Page 118
THE EMBODIED BIBLICAL PHILOLOGIST......Page 123
5: The Naked Truth of Scripture: André Rivet between Bellarmine and Grotius......Page 126
Part III: The Bible in Early Modern Judaism......Page 148
PREAMBLE: THE RABBIS AND THE TEXT......Page 150
THE MORAL BIBLE OF EARLY MODERN ASHKENAZ......Page 152
SEPHARDI EXPERIENCE AS INTELLECTUAL PARADIGM......Page 154
(RE)JUDAIZING SCRIPTURE......Page 157
Defining the Stakes: The Da Costa–Da Silva Controversy......Page 159
Understanding the Law through the Law: Aboab’s Nomologia......Page 163
A Format in Search of Content: The Conciliador by Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel......Page 165
SUMMING UP: AUTHORITY, TRUTH, AND TEXT IN EARLY MODERN JUDAISM......Page 170
INTRODUCTION......Page 172
BIBLICAL CONTRADICTIONS AND INFALLIBILITY: JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN CONTEXTS......Page 175
MATHEMATICAL PRECISION, BIBLICAL INFALLIBILITY, AND THE ISRAELITE JUDGES......Page 181
THE GREATEST PROBLEM THAT THERE IS IN SCRIPTURE......Page 185
CONCLUSION: THE REVERBERATIONS OF JEWISH BIBLICAL CHRONOLOGY......Page 189
Part IV: Benedictus de Spinoza: Ancestry and Heritage......Page 192
8: Spinoza’s Hermeneutics: Some Heretical Thoughts......Page 194
9: How Did Spinoza Declare War on Theology and Theologians?......Page 214
Part V: Innovative Exegesis by Remonstrant, Mennonite, and Other Liberal Thinkers......Page 234
Preliminary Remarks......Page 236
The Biblical Hermeneutics of van Limborch in the 1680s—Its Origins and Challenges......Page 239
Van Limborch’s Anti-Cocceian Position in the Late Work Commentarius in Acta apostolorum et in epistolas ad Romanos et Hebraeos......Page 246
The Circle of Recipients......Page 249
Conclusive remarks......Page 256
11: Pierre Bayle and Biblical Criticism......Page 257
Close to the Bible, Far from Criticism......Page 258
First Discoveries and Ambivalence......Page 260
Bayle Promoter of a ‘Simonian’ Biblical Criticism......Page 265
Bayle Practitioner of Criticism......Page 269
Conclusion......Page 272
12: Bayle, the Bible, and the Remonstrant Tradition at the Time of the Commentaire philosophique......Page 274
13: Witches and Forgers Anthonie van Dale on Biblical History and the Authority of the Septuagint......Page 287
An Experiment in Divining......Page 288
Into the Republic of Letters......Page 289
Libertines and Sceptics......Page 292
By the Book: Witches and Oracles......Page 295
Experiments with Witchcraft: Local Knowledge......Page 299
Medicine and Truth......Page 301
The Bounds of Friendship......Page 303
Honesty, Faith, and Forgery......Page 308
Van Dale’s Religion......Page 314
Publish or Perish......Page 317
Delay or Plagiarize: At Work on Aristeas......Page 319
Conclusion......Page 323
Part VI: Orthodox Reformed Exegetes Enter the Fray......Page 324
14: Biblical Criticism, Knowledge, and the First Commandment in Gisbertus Voetius (1589–1676)......Page 326
BIBLICAL CRITICISM (CRITICA)......Page 327
BIBLICAL EXEGESIS AND SECULAR KNOWLEDGE......Page 333
THE ETHICS OF KNOWLEDGE AND IGNORANCE: THE FIRST COMMANDMENT......Page 338
CONCLUSION......Page 340
INTRODUCTION......Page 342
COCCEJANISM AND SCRIPTURARIANISM......Page 344
SCRIPTURARIANISM CONTROVERSIAL......Page 348
‘TO SAFEGUARD SCRIPTURE FROM THE ACCUSATION OF CORRUPTION’......Page 353
VAN LEENHOF: SCRIPTURARIAN TURNED SPINOZIST......Page 359
CONCLUDING REMARKS......Page 362
Part VII: Biblical Criticism in the Eighteenth Century......Page 366
16: The Bible as Secular Story: The Northern War and King Josias as Interpreted by Hermann von der Hardt (1660–1746)......Page 368
17: Critics of the Critics: Johann Scheuchzer and His Followers in Defence of the Biblical Miracle......Page 391
TOSTADO RIBERA Y MADRIGALAND THE SUN MIRACLE......Page 393
THE SUN MIRACLE DOUBTED......Page 396
SCHEUCHZER AND THE DEFENDERS OF THE MIRACLE......Page 399
SCHEUCHZER AS A TRENDSETTER OF PHYSICO-THEOLOGY......Page 405
CONCLUSION......Page 407
Bibliography......Page 410
Index Locorum Biblicorum......Page 448
Index of Names and Subjects......Page 450

Citation preview

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S C R I P T U R A L AU T HO R I T Y A N D B I B L IC A L C R I T IC I SM I N T H E D U T C H G O L D E N AG E

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Scriptural Authority and Biblical Criticism in the Dutch Golden Age God’s Word Questioned

Edited by D I R K VA N M I E RT HENK NELLEN P I E T S T E E N BA K K E R S J E T Z E T OU B E R

1

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1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Oxford University Press 2017 Edited by Dirk van Miert, Henk Nellen, Piet Steenbakkers and Jetze Touber The moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition published in 2017 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2017931328 ISBN 978–0–19–880683–7 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

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Preface In 2009, we began to study the changes in the status of the Bible in our research project ‘Biblical Criticism and Secularization in the Seventeenth Century’. In the application for funding in 2008, submitted to the Netherlands Organization of Scientific Research, we proposed to address the problem from an angle that was quite different from the usual explanations, which point at certain developments in science and philosophy (on which see our introduction). It was our contention that a radical shift in the view of the Bible was due, at least in part, to philological criticism of the biblical text. In order to examine our hypothesis, we have been exploring the activities of Dutch scholars, preachers, and pamphleteers in the period from 1575 to 1725, in particular the contributions made by luminaries such as Joseph Scaliger, Hugo Grotius, Isaac de La Peyrère, Isaac Vossius, Benedictus de Spinoza, Pierre Bayle, and Jean Le Clerc. The geographical concentration on the United Provinces, and especially Holland, is intentional: Dutch scholarship was profoundly engaged in Bible study, Holland was the centre of the book trade in that period, and the public debates in the Netherlands were to be a hotbed for ‘enlightened’ ideas. By analysing tracts, pamphlets, and collections of letters, both in Latin and in the vernacular, we have traced how an originally academic debate gradually broadened into a maelstrom of public controversy. In the course of our project we organized an international conference which took place in Utrecht from 30 August to 1 September 2012, under the title ‘God’s Word Questioned: Biblical Criticism and Scriptural Authority in the Dutch Golden Age’. We invited expert colleagues from the Netherlands and abroad in order to exchange and develop our views of the impact of philology on the authority of the Bible. The present volume offers the harvest of that lively and stimulating event. It incorporates edited versions of most of the papers read at the conference, as well as some invited chapters by other scholars. It reflects the present state of affairs in this area of research, and also includes a couple of contributions on activities of biblical scholars outside the Netherlands, in particular Germany. We are proud to have been able to bring together a collection of excellent contributions on important early modern scholars, written by eminent historians. Apart from the authors, to whom we are grateful for the care with which they have composed their essays, we take this opportunity to thank a number of other people and organizations, without whom neither the conference nor the volume would ever have been realized. We express our gratitude to the Netherlands Organization of Scientific Research, the Huygens Institute for the History of the

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vi Preface Netherlands, the Descartes Centre, Annemarieke Blankesteijn, Albert Gootjes, Koen Hilberdink, Wijnand Mijnhardt, Tom Perridge, Theo Verbeek, Henk Wals, Mark Wijers, and two anonymous referees. D.v.M., H.N., P.S., and J.T. The Hague, Utrecht, 30 November 2016

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Contents List of Illustrations Abbreviations List of Contributors

xi xiii xv

Editors’ Introduction 1. Biblical Philology in the Long Seventeenth Century: New Orientations Henk Nellen and Piet Steenbakkers

3. Stronger than Fiction: The ‘Velesian Readings’ of the Greek New Testament Jan Krans

61

73

Part II:  The Boundaries of Early Modern Orthodoxy Challenged

4. The Janus Face of Scaliger’s Philological Heritage: The Biblical Annotations of Heinsius and Grotius Dirk van Miert 5. The Naked Truth of Scripture: André Rivet between Bellarmine and Grotius Anthony Ossa-Richardson

16

Part I:  Famous Cases of pia fraus

2. The Johannine Comma from Erasmus to Westminster Grantley McDonald



1

91

109

Part III:  The Bible in Early Modern Judaism

6. God’s Word Confirmed: Authority, Truth, and the Text of the Early Modern Jewish Bible David Kromhout and Irene E. Zwiep

133

7. God’s Word Defended: Menasseh ben Israel, Biblical Chronology, and the Erosion of Biblical Authority Benjamin Fisher

155

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viii Contents

Part IV:  Benedictus de Spinoza: Ancestry and Heritage

8. Spinoza’s Hermeneutics: Some Heretical Thoughts Anthony Grafton

177

9. How Did Spinoza Declare War on Theology and Theologians? Jonathan Israel

197



Part V:  Innovative Exegesis by Remonstrant, Mennonite, and Other Liberal Thinkers

10. The Biblical Hermeneutics of Philip van Limborch (1633–1712) and its Intellectual Challenges Kęstutis Daugirdas 11. Pierre Bayle and Biblical Criticism Jean Bernier

219 240

12. Bayle, the Bible, and the Remonstrant Tradition at the Time of the Commentaire philosophique 257 Maria-Cristina Pitassi 13. Witches and Forgers: Anthonie van Dale on Biblical History and the Authority of the Septuagint Scott Mandelbrote

270

Part VI:  Orthodox Reformed Exegetes Enter the Fray

14. Biblical Criticism, Knowledge, and the First Commandment in Gisbertus Voetius (1589–1676) Aza Goudriaan

309

15. Biblical Philology and Hermeneutical Debate in the Dutch Republic in the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century Jetze Touber

325



Part VII:  Biblical Criticism in the Eighteenth Century

16. The Bible as Secular Story: The Northern War and King Josias as Interpreted by Hermann von der Hardt (1660–1746) Martin Mulsow

351

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Contents

ix

17. Critics of the Critics: Johann Scheuchzer and His Followers in Defence of the Biblical Miracle Bernd Roling

374

Bibliography Index Locorum Biblicorum Index of Names and Subjects

393 431 433

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List of Illustrations Figure 15.1. Jacobus Alting, Opera omnia, ed. Balthasar Bekker, 5 vols (Amsterdam: G. Borst, 1685–1687), vol. 5, p. 382.

339

Figure 16.1. Hermann von der Hardt, ‘Monumentum Caroli XII Suecorum regis’, in Aenigmata prisci orbis (Helmstedt: Salomon Schnorrius, 1723), p. 28 (fragment).

354

Figure 16.2. Medal s.a. (1706), by Georg Hautsch, Nuremberg (Bror Emil Hildebrand, Sveriges och svenska konungahusets minnespenningar, praktmynt och belöningsmedaljer, vol. 1 (Stockholm: Kongl. Vitterhets Historie och Antiquitets Akademiens Förlag, 1874), p. 541, no. 106).

365

Figure 16.3. Page of a manuscript owned by Von der Hardt, representing the Bible in eight symbols (Badische Landesbibliothek Karlsruhe, Ms. 324, fol. 3).

367

Figure 16.4. Claude-François Menestrier, Histoire du Roy Louis le Grand par les medailles, emblêmes, devises […] (Paris: I.B. Nolin, 1691), p. 47.

370

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Abbreviations ASD

Opera Omnia Desiderii Erasmi (Amsterdam: North HollandElsevier, 1969–2008; Leiden: Brill, 2009– ).

BAV

Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, Rome

BLGNP

Biografisch lexicon voor de geschiedenis van het Nederlands protestantisme, eds Doede Nauta and Johannes van den Berg, 6 vols (Kampen: Kok, 1978–2006)

CE

Contemporaries of Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and Reformation, eds Peter G. Bietenholz and Thomas B. Deutscher, 3 vols (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1985–1987)

CSEL

Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum, 96 vols (Vienna: Tempsky, 1866– ).

Correspondence The Correspondence of Erasmus, trans. R.A.B. Mynors and D.F.S. Thompson, annotat. Wallace K. Ferguson and Peter G. Bietenholz (Toronto Toronto University Press, 1974–1994) EBR

Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception, vol. 1– (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009– )

LThK

Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, third edn, 11 vols (Freiburg i. B.: Herder, 1993–2001)

LThK2

Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, second edn, 14 vols (Freiburg i. B.: Herder, 1957–1968)

Opus Epist.

Erasmus, Desiderus. Opus Epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, eds P.S. Allen, H.M. Allen, and H.W. Garrod (Oxford Oxford University Press, 1906–1958)

RGG Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, fourth edn, ed. Hans Dieter Betz, 9 vols (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998–2007) PG

Patrologiae cursus completus: Series Graeca, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne, 161 vols (Paris: Seu Petit-Montrouge, 1857–1866)

PL

Patrologiæ cursus completus: Series Latina, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne, 221 vols (Paris: Garnier, 1844–1905).

SDTh

Selectae disputationes theologicae, 5 vols (Utrecht, 1648–1669)

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List of Contributors Jean Bernier is an associate researcher at the Institute of Reformation History at the University of Geneva. Kęstutis Daugirdas is a researcher at the Leibniz-Institute for European History, Mainz, and in the Evangelical Theology Faculty at Eberhard Karls University, Tübingen. Benjamin Fisher is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Towson University, Maryland. Aza Goudriaan is Associate Professor of Historical Theology at Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. Anthony Grafton is Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey. Jonathan Israel is Emeritus Professor of Modern History in the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey. Jan Krans is Lecturer of New Testament Studies in the Faculty of Theology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam. David Kromhout obtained his doctorate at the University of Amsterdam in 2016 with a thesis ‘Clashes of Discourses: Calvinists and Humanists in Seventeenth-Century Leiden’. Scott Mandelbrote is a Fellow, Director of Studies in History, and Perne Librarian at Peterhouse, University of Cambridge. Grantley McDonald is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Vienna. Dirk van Miert is Assistant Professor of Early Modern Cultural History at Utrecht University. Martin Mulsow is Director of the Research Centre of Gotha and Endowed Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Chair at the at the University of Erfurt, Gotha. Henk Nellen is Senior Research Member at the Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands, and Emeritus Professor of the History of Ideas of Early Modern Times at Erasmus University, Rotterdam. Anthony Ossa-Richardson is a Lecturer in English at the University of Southampton.

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xvi

List of Contributors

Maria-Cristina Pitassi is Professor and Director of the Institute of Reformation History at the University of Geneva. Bernd Roling is Professor of Greek and Latin Philology at the Institute of Greek and Latin Philology at Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin. Piet Steenbakkers is Senior Lecturer of the History of Modern Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Utrecht University, and Emeritus Professor of Spinoza Studies at Erasmus University, Rotterdam. Jetze Touber is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the History Department of Ghent University. Irene E. Zwiep is Professor of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at the University of Amsterdam.

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Editors’ Introduction BIBLICAL CRITICISM AS AN INNOVATIVE DISCIPLINE Did innovative textual analysis reshape the relations between Christian believers and their churches in early modern confessional states? This volume explores the hypothesis that in the seventeenth century humanist-inspired biblical criticism contributed significantly to the decline of ecclesiastical truth claims. Historiography pictures the long seventeenth century as an age in which the dominant position of religion and church began to show signs of erosion under the influence of vehement debates centring on the sacrosanct status of the Bible. Until quite recently, this gradual but decisive shift has been attributed to the rise of the sciences, in particular astronomy and physics. From 1635 onwards, so the argument goes, a new natural philosophy, marked by mathematics and experimentalism, led to a worldview in which a divine power, watching over human affairs, lost its rigorous cogency and its relevance. According to this interpretation, scientific developments were part of even more radical changes in philosophy, which eventually paved the way for the Enlightenment.1 Though very pertinent and to a certain degree convincing, this view has in our opinion also obfuscated other factors, among them the importance of early modern scholarly engagement with the biblical texts themselves. Only quite recently intellectual historians have started to draw attention to the history of humanist scholarship in debates over the nature of the profound changes in philosophical and scientific ideas and practices which characterize our view of the seventeenth century. Scholars such as Richard Popkin, Anthony Grafton, Peter Miller, Eric Jorink, and Dmitri Levitin have highlighted the role 1  Thus, e.g., Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans (London: Allen and Unwin, 1981), pp. 20–8; a different analysis (with more emphasis on autonomous developments in philosophy) is offered by Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), especially pp. 14–22; see also, from yet another perspective, John Robertson, The Case for the Enlightenment: Scotland and Naples, 1680–1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 8–9, 28–33.

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Editors’ Introduction

of philology and antiquarianism in the development of new ideas.2 Now that we are moving beyond the discussion of the viability of the notion of a ‘scientific revolution’, the intertwining of the history of science and of philosophy is beginning to be enriched by historians of theology and the church, who in turn are increasingly paying attention to the history of philology.3 All of these domains of thought, indeed, were still considered a unified body of knowledge for much of the seventeenth century. The task to disentangle these discourses and integrate them into a meaningful synthesis about seventeenth-century thought is daunting: the historian should grasp not only Galileo’s cosmological achievements and Spinoza’s substance, but also the chronology of Scaliger and the Hebraism of Selden. These last two names are less familiar to students of philosophy and science, but not to historians of biblical scholarship. It is necessary for historians of knowledge to take into account the manifold aspects of biblical philology as well as the rise of the new sciences and the New Philosophy. Doing so not only affects the narrative of the ‘origins’ of the Enlightenment by taking on board philology as an innovative discipline, instead of an oldfashioned humanist peculiarity, but also alters the chronology of the story of those origins and locates them rather in the first half of the seventeenth century— a period usefully termed ‘post-Scaligerian’ by Levitin, who even launched the idea of a historico-philological ‘Scaliger–Casaubon turn’.4 But the practices of Joseph Scaliger and Isaac Casaubon themselves were informed by those of Erasmus and sixteenth-century antiquarians. In other words: instead of assigning the rise of biblical criticism to a post-Spinozist period, as has been done by— among many others—Frank Manuel, Adam Sutcliffe, and Travis Frampton,5 this 2  Anthony Thomas Grafton, Defenders of the Text: The Traditions of Scholarship in an Age of Science, 1450–1800 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991); James E. Force and Richard H. Popkin (eds), The Books of Nature and Scripture: Recent Essays on Natural Philosophy, Theology, and Biblical Criticism in the Netherlands of Spinoza’s Time and the British Isles of Newton’s Time (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994); Peter N. Miller, Peiresc’s Europe: Learning and Virtue in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000); Eric Jorink, Reading the Book of Nature in the Dutch Golden Age, 1575–1715, trans. Peter Mason (Leiden: Brill, 2010); also, recently: Jed Z. Buchwald and Mordechai Feingold, Newton and the Origin of Civilization (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013); Dmitri Levitin, Ancient Wisdom in the Age of the New Science: Histories of Philosophy in England, c. 1640–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 3  James Turner, Philology: The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanities (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014); Rens Bod, De vergeten wetenschappen: Een geschiedenis van de humaniora (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2012); published in an adapted and updated English version as A New History of the Humanities: The Search for Principles and Patterns from Antiquity to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). For discussions on the validity of the term ‘scientific revolution’ and the rich panorama of developments covered by it, see Marcus Hellyer (ed.), The Scientific Revolution: The Essential Readings (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003); Lorraine J. Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750 (New York: Zone Book, 1998), avoided the term on purpose. 4  Levitin, Ancient Wisdom, p. 71. 5  Frank E. Manuel, The Broken Staff: Judaism through Christian Eyes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 164–5, 181–3; Travis L. Frampton, Spinoza and the Rise of Historical Criticism of the Bible (New York: T&T Clark, 2006); Adam Sutcliffe, Judaism and Enlightenment

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Editors’ Introduction

3

book builds rather on the work of scholars such as Anthony Grafton, Scott Mandelbrote, and Jean-Louis Quantin, who in the past two decades have altered the picture of an exegetical revolution inaugurated by Hobbes, Spinoza, and Simon. These heterodox thinkers relied on philological research which had largely been developed in the first half of the seventeenth century. ‘Biblical philology’ is here used as an umbrella term, covering a wide range of positions, practices, and publications in the realm of biblical scholarship. This volume aspires to show that such a broad use of the term is justified. It demonstrates that biblical philology was not the prerogative of latitudinarian thinkers, but that it was practised across a large confessional landscape. This did not constitute a bipolar scale that ranged from orthodox theologians to radical philosophers, but it included a variety of idiosyncratic appropriations of the biblical text within circles that are too often considered as distinct social and intellectual camps. Opening up this domain of the history of knowledge and linking it to existing conceptions of seventeenth-century thought in terms of philosophy and science has far-reaching implications for the role of humanist philology in the emergence of the Enlightenment. This book, then, looks into biblical criticism as, on the one hand, an innovative force and, on the other, the outcome of developments in biblical philology, which started much earlier than scientific experimentalism or the New Philosophy. The contributions focus on the role of textual and historical criticism, in the classical as well as in the oriental languages. The contributions show that philological research on the Bible, even in the hands of pious and orthodox scholars, not only failed to solve the textual problems that had surfaced, but even made things worse. They had piled up ammunition for those who sought to play down the authority of the Bible as the medium of God’s Word, or had at least created conditions that made it easier to question the substance of God’s Word. This shift from the conviction that God’s Word had been preserved as a pure and sacred source gave way to an awareness of a complicated transmission in a plurality of divergent, ambiguous, historically determined, and heavily corrupted texts. It took place primarily in the period and geography covered in this volume: the Dutch Protestant world of the seventeenth century. It remains to be seen what precisely the consequences were of this wide recognition among scholars that the biblical text posed problems which were beyond repair. Chapter 1 tentatively explores the extent to which this may have been instrumental in weakening the exclusive claims of the various denominations to salvation and, as a complementary development, in bringing about an appeal to the necessity of tolerance.6 Yet, it has not been the aim of this volume to gather (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). For further references see also Nellen and Steenbakkers in the present volume, chapter  1, ‘The Bible Seen from Outside the Christian Tradition: Spinoza as a Biblical Critic’, n. 114. 6  See Nellen and Steenbakkers, present volume, chapter 1, ‘Interconfessional Strife and the Status of the Bible’, in fine.

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Editors’ Introduction

evidence for such a connection—such an endeavour would have forced us to cast our net widely into the European Age of Enlightenment. Rather, these chapters reflect the present state of affairs in the study of early modern biblical philology, as relevant in particular to the Dutch Republic, which, between the last quarter of the sixteenth century and the first quarter of the eighteenth century, was in the vanguard of European biblical criticism. All contributions in one way or another address the question of how philology— that is, the text-critical and historical investigation of written documents— impinged on the sacrosanct status of the Bible and transformed it, at least in the eyes of critical inhabitants of the Republic of Letters, from a divinely inspired guideline for reaching salvation to a literary witness of the history of the Jewish people. The historical interpretation of Holy Writ had deepened the insight into authorial intention, original target audience, genesis, and the original historical context of the Bible books. Attempts to identify the literal sense of prophecies made exegetes advocate a clearer distinction between the verus sensus of a particular passage and its historical truth; that is, they managed to distinguish the authorial intention from the factuality of the events that were described. Influenced by Benedict de Spinoza, Jean Le Clerc presented this distinction as entailed by the scholarly task the critic had to fulfil: he had to disclose the true meaning, not the truth of what had been written: ‘quaeritur dictorum sententia, non veritas eorum quae dicuntur’.7 The historicization of the biblical text went hand in hand with a reconsideration of the normative values that were attributed to the Bible. Of course, the Bible remained an inspiration for countless believers, but at the same time critical scholarship more and more saw the book as the artefact of a distant, extinct civilization that waited for rediscovery through assiduous, painstaking historical research. In the seventeenth century a tension between biblical criticism and systematic theology cropped up. This applies first and foremost to Protestant believers, for whom the doctrine of the Bible as the sole spiritual authority (sola Scriptura) was a pillar of faith. While Judaism, Roman Catholicism, and Islam stressed the importance of tradition, Reformed theologians gave the Bible pride of place. For this reason, they abstained from emendations in the textus receptus, the standard text of the Greek New Testament. At the same time, they embarked on the publication of translations in the vernacular like the King James Version and the Statenvertaling, enterprises that asked for gigantic philological investments.8 In preparing this book, the premise that inspired us as editors has been the idea that initially exegetical studies were seen as subservient to systematic 7  Benedetto Bravo, ‘Critice in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries and the Rise of the Notion of Historical Criticism’, in Christopher Ligota and Jean-Louis Quantin (eds), History of Scholarship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 135–95, here 193–4. 8  Dirk van Miert, ‘De Statenvertaling (1637)’, in Paul Gillaerts, Henri Bloemen et al. (eds), De Bijbel in de Lage Landen: Elf eeuwen van vertalen (Heerenveen: Jongbloed, 2015), pp. 406–44.

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theology, but in the long run resulted in insights that did not allow for smooth incorporation in the theological system. As ‘a science and an end in itself ’, philology claimed autonomy.9 In response, theologians developed several different strategies. They referred to Holy Inspiration as a protective force that safeguarded the main tenets of religion; they pretended that textual variants did not affect the dogmatic superstructure; they inveighed against dangerous aberrations in a desparate attempt to contain further spread; and they hesitantly adapted their positions by incorporating new insights acquired by biblical scholarship. Faced with the consequences of sola Scriptura, they assiduously sought to emerge from this impasse. But as long as they wanted to preserve their truth claims they could only resort to repressing and silencing their antagonists, a modus operandi that failed. In the following overview of the book chapters, together with general conclusions drawn from them, we will show how far our initial premise has been corroborated, or requires adjustment, in the light of the findings of their authors. The central theme of this volume is the part played in the seventeenth century by textual criticism and biblical philology in stimulating historicization; that is, an awareness of the historical situation of the Bible and a concomitantly increasing sensitivity for rational arguments. The chapters offer a panoramic view of the contribution of philological scholarship in the seventeenth century to a shift in the appreciation of the authority of God’s Word, but they do not constitute a unified, synthetic view of this intricate process. In this introduction, we gather the strands and endeavour to formulate some general findings. In the period, the Bible played a pivotal role in church life, society, university, science, and politics. Though a volume like this is therefore bound to be selective, a number of tendencies taken together may be indicative of a major shift.

THEMES AND ISSUES A crucial development substantiated in many of the chapters is the increasing historical knowledge of the world in which the Bible originated. Historicization— the attempt to lay bare the context of the biblical books—went hand in hand with an ever-increasing knowledge of linguistic, philological, antiquarian, and juridical aspects. Taken together, these new insights inevitably affected the sacrosanct status of the text. Textual criticism as practised in biblical philology constituted an important part of this historicizing process. Another aspect of the developments in biblical scholarship is that faith and reason gradually found themselves trapped in a troublesome marriage, as many 9  John Van Seters, The Edited Bible: The Curious History of the ‘Editor’ in Biblical Tradition (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006), p. 124.

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of the chapters in this volume testify. How was the domain of faith to be protected against the increasingly stronger—and eventually even overwhelming— intrusions from those who embraced reason as the sole means to prevent the religious institutions from crumbling down? Recourse was taken to chronology, the study of source languages, philology, patristics, antiquarianism, and other historical disciplines. The long seventeenth century is characterized by an expanding knowledge of the particular contexts of the different Bible books and the meandering transmission processes that shaped them. That this development was not a linear one is argued in the introductory first chapter by Henk Nellen and Piet Steenbakkers. Textual criticism did solve some old controversies, but more often it brought to the surface disturbing new problems and anomalies. A phenomenon that illustrates this is the practice of pia fraus. In this volume, Grantley McDonald and Jan Krans treat two instances. The strong linkage between philological research and the changing status of the Bible is exemplified in the recurrent practice of forging source material in order to rescue biblical passages deemed essential to corroborate fundamental and controverted dogmas such as that of the Trinity. McDonald shows in his contribution that the Comma Johanneum, a spurious Bible verse (1 John 5:7–8) that conspicuously confirmed the dogma of the Trinity, maintained itself in the standard text, although the first editor of the New Testament in Greek, Erasmus, had already had serious misgivings about its manuscript basis. Krans treats a lesser-known but equally instructive case that occurred later, around 1600: the ‘Velesian readings’, a large collection of Greek variants that was supposed to confirm the authenticity of the Vulgate and thus came to serve as a polemical tool, engaged textual scholars in vehement debates, until late in the seventeenth century their spuriousness was proven owing to philological expertise of a level that was only attained by then. While some scholars applied philological methods in order to defend controversial conclusions, many preferred a position within the safe boundaries of theological orthodoxy. The ensuing tensions were solved in various ways, as becomes clear from the contributions by Dirk van Miert and Anthony OssaRichardson. Famous Dutch scholars like Daniel Heinsius and Hugo Grotius initiated a sophisticated philological and historicizing approach to the Bible text. They brought together a mass of material that contributed to the contextualization of the Bible and significantly advanced the understanding of the text. Although they did not dare question its supernatural status, they felt free to discuss variants and suggest new interpretations. They thus demonstrated the perils of textual scholarship—albeit as yet in a limited manner, certainly in the case of Heinsius. While Heinsius had to adapt to the context of Leiden university, the exile Grotius felt less inhibited by a social framework. Thus, the subversive potentiality of philology comes to the surface in his ideas on divine inspiration, as Van Miert argues. That the range of seventeenth-century hermeneutical methods was very diverse, however, is demonstrated by Ossa-Richardson

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in his chapter on André Rivet. This adamant adversary of Grotius deliberately chose a more conservative position regarding the Bible: as a trained Hebraist and fully fledged member of the international scholarly community, he was familiar with the ground-breaking textual research by philologists like Louis Cappel. Yet theological and confessional considerations ultimately prevailed in his attitude towards biblical criticism. Rivet’s biblical philology was governed by hermeneutical principles that were subject to a simple theological commitment: to preserve ‘the single naked truth’ of the biblical message. Nonetheless, facing the mass of variants culled from manuscripts and ancient translations, he had great difficulties in upholding the complete integrity and unequivocal, literal meaning of the text. Scholars whose exegetical work gave rise to vehement opposition and turmoil were attentively studied: confessional debates resonated in the churches and in the world of learning, thus affecting the concepts of religious authority, tolerance, and repression in the Dutch Republic and elsewhere in Western Europe. Throughout the denominations, the basic reflex was an attempt to regain control. Although Calvinist theologians like Rivet proclaimed the perfectly self-evident nature and sufficiency of the Bible, they felt the need to guide the reader’s interpretation of Scripture along fixed tracks. In spite of its dismissal of Roman Catholic and Jewish reliance on tradition, Calvinist orthodoxy began to create a ­particular ‘human tradition’ of its own: the Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgic Confessions and the Canons of Dordrecht together acted as the Three Forms of Unity establishing Reformed orthodoxy. This tendency to exercise control is reflected in the Jewish community, too: some currents within Judaism asked for an elaborate commentary on the Torah, whereas others just wanted a clean text. The interest in oriental languages—and, by extension, in the history and culture of the regions where these languages had been spoken—increased enormously and acquired its own dynamic, which began to challenge the Jewish monopoly on interpreting Old Testament Judaism. There is also a reverse side to this picture. More than classical philology, oriental studies became a fad that scholars dabbled in, without really contributing to scholarly debate. The chapters by Benjamin Fisher on Menasseh ben Israel and by David Kromhout and Irene Zwiep on seventeenth-century Amsterdam rabbis show that the Jewish community in Amsterdam was indeed immune to contemporary developments in orientalist biblical philology. The textual status of the Tanakh was not called into question. Above all, harmonization procedures that disposed of the countless anomalies—for example, chronological inconsistencies—should guarantee the impeccable stature of the Bible as the source for religious, communal, and social Jewish life. A case in point is the Conciliador (1632–1651) of Menasseh ben Israel: a comprehensive attempt to smooth over all the incongruities that had surfaced in the course of time, due to research in linguistics, chronology, and natural philosophy. Menasseh failed in his undertaking, at least according to modern standards, but his attempts had the unintended effect that

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more radical scholars like Spinoza could use these anomalies to undermine the status of the text. In their chapter, Kromhout and Zwiep argue that the exegetical work of Menasseh ben Israel should be studied in the social and cultural context of the biblical scholarship of seventeenth-century Amsterdam rabbis. The nature of this Jewish community, which had to build up its religious life in a vacuum, in a potentially hostile environment, in constant communication with more developed communities abroad, engendered a dynamic in which biblical philology played but a small part. Among Ashkenazim, the written Hebrew text of the Tanakh hardly played a role in religious life. They cherished a strongly oral religious culture, which revolved around Halachic scholarship and moralizing paraphrases from the Bible in Yiddish. Among the Sephardim in seventeenth-century Amsterdam, the Bible did retain the centrality it had enjoyed since the Middle Ages, but the situation in which they found themselves prompted them to reconcile their biblical religion with Ashkenazi Halacha, rather than with radical scepticism or criticism. The growing importance attributed to historical contextualization, philology, and oriental studies affected the status of the Bible. This resulted in sharp attacks on the traditional truth claims of the established confessions in the last quarter of the seventeenth century. A number of chapters analyse this process, from different vantage points. By that time, the image of Spinoza loomed large over biblical studies, because every exegete had to take issue with his ideas, explicitly or tacitly. The Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670) can be seen as a reference point for all subsequent scholars who were active in the field. Surprisingly, Anthony Grafton argues in his contribution that the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus lacks philological originality and depth. Although Spinoza dismantled—or at least seriously weakened—the theological edifice that bolstered the supernatural status of the Bible, he did not fully avail himself of the research by his predecessors. He selectively adapted philological material to his philosophical programme, and in the process reduced the Bible to a strictly historical report of the vicissitudes of the Hebrews. Though Spinoza did borrow from previous research on the text of (mainly) the Old Testament, he was not acquainted with the latest developments in the field of historical and textual criticism.10 The chapter by Jonathan Israel argues that Spinoza’s most important contribution was the sharp distinction between truth of fact and the authorial meaning of the text. The authorial meaning—that is, the meaning as the authors of the biblical books had intended it— should be investigated by exploiting the data that were taken from the Bible text alone. This staunch historicization of the biblical message came to be seen as a great threat to society. According to 10  See also Jetze Touber, Spinoza and Biblical Scholarship in the Dutch Republic, 1660–1720 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming), chapter 1; Piet Steenbakkers, ‘Das Wort Gottes und die wahre Religion: Das Fazit von Spinozas Bibelkritik (Kapitel 11–12)’, in Otfried Höffe (ed.), Baruch de Spinoza: Theologisch-politischer Traktat, Klassiker Auslegen (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2014), pp. 127–37.

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Israel, the ecclesiastical and political authorities, whose power was based on the traditional view of the Bible as God’s Word, saw their privileges questioned in a confrontation that eventually led to revolutionary societal changes: the idea of society as a divinely ordered hierarchy gave way to a growing insight that laws and institutions were the product of historically determined circumstances and should be changed if they worked out negatively. Spinoza thus became the arch-heretic: from then on theologians had to take position against his heritage, which was considered to undermine the credibility of divine revelation. Indeed, Spinoza forced people across the religious spectrum to respond. These included the Remonstrant Brotherhood and other circles of liberal thinkers, who are the subject of the contributions by Kęstutis Daugirdas, Jean Bernier, Maria-Cristina Pitassi, and Scott Mandelbrote. But they were also to be found among orthodox Reformed exegetes, as Aza Goudriaan and Jetze Touber exemplify in their contributions. Peripheral currents like Remonstrantism (also known as Arminianism, the latitudinarian variant of Calvinism), produced an innovative exegesis. Simon Episcopius, Étienne de Courcelles, and Philip van Limborch contributed to a renewal of biblical criticism. Most important in this respect are those Remonstrant theologians who—unlike Spinoza—refused to accept the idea that a supernatural force behind the Bible was incredible. Nonetheless, Episcopius, de Courcelles, and van Limborch all looked for a compromise between faith and reason that would satisfy the average believer. Van Limborch developed a coherent programme of hermeneutical rules, in which he tried to reconcile the seemingly contradictory demands of faith and reason. Reason had to regulate all individual steps of interpretation, but it remained dependent on written revelation for divine truths like the resurrection of Christ, which it could fully grasp only if aided by faith. Some exegetes, often of Remonstrant origin or sympathies, quietly incorporated Spinoza’s ideas or decidedly took issue with them. In this book, particular attention is paid to Pierre Bayle and Jean Le Clerc, who both played an important role in the reception of Spinoza’s ideas. In his article on Spinoza in the Dictionaire historique et critique, Pierre Bayle does not dwell upon Spinoza’s treatment of the Bible, but his works and correspondence show a growing knowledge of the field, the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus included. As an erudite writer, Bayle gradually familiarized himself with the disturbing findings of biblical criticism, praised Richard Simon’s erudition, but kept his distance towards Jean Le Clerc, whose boldness in expounding Simon’s radical ideas, for instance on Moses’ authorship of the Pentateuch, he rejected as harmful to Protestant solidarity. As it turns out, the views on textual interpretation Bayle develops in his Commentaire philosophique clash with the Arminian tradition. Bayle was also instrumental in circulating the results of biblical criticism, first and foremost in his widely read periodical Nouvelles de la République des Lettres. Scott Mandelbrote’s chapter on the scholarly amateur Anthonie van Dale gives a detailed overview of the discussions in learned circles in Holland, where

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the status of the Bible was hotly debated. Like many of his scholarly friends, the Mennonite van Dale was averse to debunking the sanctity of the Bible and suggested several solutions to prevent a clash between faith and reason. On the other hand, his research was directed at giving a natural explanation for prophecies and the appearance of ghosts and spirits in the Bible. He also devoted himself to proving the spuriousness of the famous Letter of Aristeas, a forgery meant to underpin the sacrosanct status of the Septuagint, although the Englishman Humphrey Hody had already definitively settled the matter. Van Dale’s works employed a rather mitigated criticism, but they provoked many protests. At the same time they attest to the great freedom that prevailed in the Dutch Republic. On the other side of the religious spectrum, conservative theologians exerted themselves to uphold the status of the Bible. As Aza Goudriaan shows, a religious leader like Gisbertus Voetius adhered to a sound philological approach in studying the text. He recommended the processing of the best manuscripts and stressed the necessity of an extensive knowledge of its history. On the other hand, he deemed it wrong to range human wit above Holy Writ by adapting the text on the basis of emendations ex ingenio and inserting readings not founded on reliable source texts. Surprisingly, Voetius argued that Catholic philologists like Benito Arias Montano and Andreas Masius deserved more praise for their fruitful research than the Church Fathers. Similarly, confessional boundaries did not count in the eyes of this staunchly orthodox theologian when he recommended Bible commentaries authored by Jesuit fathers. In-depth knowledge of language and history was indispensable, according to Voetius. Because the quest for such knowledge was even implied in the first commandment, the believer should have no qualms in studying the works written by representatives of the opposite camp. Even so, Voetius refused to yield an inch when it came to upholding the normative value of the Bible for salvation. As there existed a continuity between biblical interpretation and science, he assumed that the Bible informed all domains of knowledge. To suppose that it was the other way around was an offence to God. Jetze Touber’s chapter on the controversy between two factions of the established Reformed Church, the Cartesio-Cocceians and the Voetians, brings out the broadness of the religious spectrum of the second half of the seventeenth century. The first group, rather liberal and equipped with a greater willingness to look for certainties of a moral kind, demonstrated great philological skills in scrutinizing the Bible’s literal meaning, which they then rigged out with a finely diversified typological meaning. The second group strictly adhered to the Canons of Dordrecht and the Forms of Unity. They feared that the exegetical freedom of the Cartesio-Cocceians would lead to the ruin of faith. Caught between these two factions, a third group of theologians, referred to as scripturarii or ‘scripturarians’, tried to steer a middle course, hoping to ward off the attacks from the side of the radical Enlightenment. By promoting a historical

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explanation of the Bible that highlighted the literal, intended meaning of the text, they made themselves vulnerable to the accusation of sympathizing with Spinoza. The picture of all these theologians’ activities, then, is a varied one. Taking our cue from the results of the chapters in this book, the traditional image of an opposition between, on the one side a vanguard of exegetes attacking traditional beliefs in order to promote enlightened ideas, and on the other a horde of stubborn champions of orthodoxy not yielding an inch, is no longer tenable. Of course, fear of losing reputation, social status, and peace of mind often prevented scholars from entering the fray. Again, an isolated position in society and church certainly allowed a scholar more room to express contentious convictions that detracted from the status of the Bible. But the supposedly clear-cut contrast between orthodox and progressive exegetes in the Dutch Republic stands in need of qualification: ‘conservative’ Voetians subscribed to the need for a critical examination of the text, whereas the more ‘progressive’ Cocceians developed a unique program for renewing the study of the Bible by a scholarly approach that was reminiscent of old Erasmian ideals, and that, moreover, attached great value to the traditional allegorical interpretation of the text. Such issues were passionately debated in the second half of the seventeenth century, the more so because La Peyrère, Hobbes, Spinoza, Isaac Vossius, and other authors applied philological methods in order to confer most unconventional meanings to biblical passages. While this volume generally focuses on the long seventeenth century, the chapters by Martin Mulsow and Bernd Roling pursue the vicissitudes of biblical studies into the eighteenth century, with its wide range of hermeneutical methods and exegetical approaches. Historicization could lead to very idiosyncratic interpretive models, as the case of the German exegete Hermann von der Hardt demonstrates. His reading of the Bible shows a thorough philological approach that supported his view of the Bible text as encompassing diverse layers or encoded structures. The history of Manasseh and Josiah, kings of Judah, should be interpreted on the basis of the Bible book of Jonah, which contained a detailed prediction of the vicissitudes in the lives of both kings. At the same time their history reflected, in a meta-layer so to speak, the dramatic career of a ruler who was a contemporary of von der Hardt, King Charles XII of Sweden. Needless to say, von der Hardt’s exegesis evoked a storm of protest that culminated in the prohibition of his works. As bizarre as his view may be, von der Hardt also represents the modern era and its far-reaching historicization. He adopted a strictly historical interpretation that avoided delving into the mysteries of divine providence and explained the Book of Jonah as a series of practical, moral, and political recommendations. At the same time, his work can be seen as an elaboration of the idea that the explanation of prophecies was first and foremost to be sought in events that had taken place not long after these predictions had been enunciated.

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Another intriguing phenomenon is that numerous scholars attempted to avail themselves of the progress of science to defend the perfect authenticity and reliability of the Bible. A case in point is the ardently debated miracle of Joshua, who brought the sun to a standstill (Joshua 10:13). The story continued to arouse the interest of the exegetes: new astronomical, physical, and meteorological data served to make the traditional view of the sun’s standstill plausible. The German theologian Johann Scheuchzer advocated a strictly literal explanation of the passage, on the basis of a reasonable, ‘scientific’ explanation. Importantly, Scheuchzer’s apologetic enterprise was embedded in an international and longlasting movement that tried to prevent the Bible from being reduced to a sheer historical text. Instead, natural history and science should only serve as the handmaiden of research into the scriptural text and its literal meaning. It was wrong to implement these disciplines as a tool for re-evaluating the biblical message.

GATHERING THE STRANDS Overlooking the analyses offered here, some general developments may be formulated by way of conclusion. Already by the end of the seventeenth century many scholars in the periphery of church life in the United Provinces—not only Remonstrants or their sympathizers (Van Limborch, Bayle, and Locke) but also Mennonites (Anthonie van Dale)—freely studied and discussed the authenticity and consistency of the biblical books. The fruits of their research, though offensive to representatives of the ecclesiastical establishment who dreaded sacrilegious tendencies, could not be ignored any longer. The questions that had been raised in the seventeenth century continued to be topical in the scholarly debates of the eighteenth century. Both in England and in the German countries, academic research kept elaborating issues that had been brought up by radical, anxious, or overzealous philologists. From the second half of the eighteenth century onwards biblical criticism flourished, for example, in the German universities, and enjoyed a popularity there that can be traced directly to seventeenth-century predecessors. In order to grasp this process, it will be useful to borrow a pair of terms employed by Michael Legaspi11 to mark a bifurcation between, on the one hand the ‘scriptural Bible’, a supernaturally given and therefore self-authorizing, infallible guide in theological, moral, religious, political, and liturgical matters, and on the other hand an intrusive competitor: the ‘academic Bible’, presented as a historically grown heterogeneous collection of texts, transmitted in a wide array of textual versions, that could 11  Michael C. Legaspi, The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

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only be understood, explained, and commented upon after intensive linguistic and historical research. The position taken by advocates of the ‘academic Bible’ was marked by an acute awareness of historical distance. Both views of the Bible already existed side by side during the long seventeenth century. To be sure, adherence to the ‘scriptural Bible’ remained predominant, but it is fascinating to see innovative developments in the field of biblical scholarship—often initiated by orthodox theologians—that corroborated the status of the ‘academic Bible’ and consequently led to serious frictions. Eventually this process weakened the self-evident authority of God’s Word. To record this phenomenon does not commit us to a whiggish or teleological view, for two important reasons. First, we emphasize that the rise of the ‘academic Bible’ was embraced within the established confessions by prominent, often impeccably orthodox theologians, historians, and philologists. Focusing on the historical aspects of the Bible text, their only aim was a better understanding of this text. Second, we assume that this innovative view of the Bible was endorsed by a scholarly minority only. Its members were keen on laying bare its origins, historical context, transmission, and primordial authorial intentions, hoping to pave the way for a more convincing application of the biblical message to contemporary religious, moral, social, and political life. Though driven by a desire to serve their religion, church, and state, they were scholars, and their second nature made them hunt for the factual truth. Once discovered, that truth should not be concealed, even if it did not fully suit their own confessional outlook. One of the findings presented in this book is that many believers indeed continued to study Scripture through a primarily dogmatic lense, while drawing on prior critical exegesis. In individual cases, however, it is often impossible to assess to what extent protestations of orthodoxy can be taken at face value. For some faithful scholars and theologians social circumstances, such as being employed by a university with an explicit confessional status, certainly restricted the freedom for expressing their opinions. Legaspi, and before him Hans Frei,12 have pointed out in great detail that the process of historicization resulted in an emphasis on the biblical narrative as a human artefact—one which could not be properly understood unless its embedding in Near Eastern culture was explored in toto. The Bible was no longer ‘a self-authorizing, unifying authority in European culture’, but came to be situated in a specific historical context. The process of historicization, which had already started much earlier, gained momentum in the long seventeenth century and began to prevail, at least in academia, in the eighteenth century. The career of the orientalist Johann David Michaelis (1717–1791), impressively described by Legaspi,13 can be placed in this tradition, in which the Bible was 12  Hans W. Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1974). 13  Legaspi, The Death of Scripture, pp. 49–51, 101–4, and 164–9.

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gradually detached from religious preconceptions and paradigms. In this way, ‘God’s Word’ evolved into a central document, suited to inspire a moderate, even undogmatic religiosity as well as an irenic political attitude, both meant to strengthen the morality of the higher echelons of society in a vigorous national state. If this were interpreted as secularism, assuming that Michaelis envisaged a complete separation of church and state, or eventually strove for the elimination of religion altogether, his intentions would be grossly misrepresented. His aim was an unbiased interpretation, on the basis of the Bible’s historical, literary, and social aspects, but he also tried to assess its relevance for contemporary daily life in a society where a moderate, conciliatory Lutheranism prevailed. Michaelis is rightly described by Legaspi as a champion of comparative Semitic linguistics, whose investigations announced modern historical criticism. But as long as a majority of believers still saw the whole of the Bible as a divinely revealed, homogeneous unity that encapsulated in a single continuous narrative the promises of the Old Testament and their exact fulfilment in the New, a characterization of the period as ‘the pre-critical period’ is justified. In the eighteenth century, historical criticism further undermined the identity of the literal sense of the text and its historical reference. This means that from then on the exegete focused on the historical circumstances that had given birth to the text, thus shattering the traditional coherence between the literal, that is, theologically justified sense on the one hand, and the real, demonstrable subject matter on the other.14 For him, to retrace the literal sense of Scripture now meant to identify and assess the facticity of real, historical events. Furthermore the idea of the biblical text as a single unitary canon, based on prefiguration and reflecting a continuous historical development, was abandoned. Once the cohesion between the literal sense of biblical tales and their reference to factual events from the past was broken, reality could be seen as an autonomous development, of which only parts had been recorded in the Bible—but to what extent and to what degree of precision remained open for discussion. As one of our contributors aptly remarked elsewhere: whereas previously human history was based on the Bible, now the Bible became an episode in human history.15 The real world began to serve as a point of departure. A ‘logical and reflective distance’ between the narrative of the Bible and the historical development made itself felt.16 Previously, the integral text had been embraced as a vehicle for the divine message that served the needs of a continuously evolving 14  See also Brevard S. Childs, ‘The Sensus Literalis of Scripture: An Ancient and Modern Problem’, in Herbert Donner (ed.), Beiträge zur Alttestamentlichen Theologie: Festschrift für Walther Zimmerli zum 70. Geburtstag (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1977), pp. 80–93, here 88–9. 15  Jean Bernier, La Critique du Pentateuque de Hobbes à Calmet (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2010), pp. 88–9. 16  Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative, p. 5.

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community of faith, from the days of Adam and Eve until the complete fulfilment of all prophecies on the Day of Last Judgement. For many seventeenthcentury believers, the Bible still preserved the full, unimpaired status of God’s Word, but they were confronted with a growing crowd of interpreters who preferred to consider it a collection of tales on the historical events, opinions, customs, and moral values of a religious community that had receded into the past long ago. According to the representatives of this last group, disclosure of the literal meaning of the Bible was only possible if the cultural context and the genesis of its constituent parts were taken into account. These thinkers pictured Holy Writ as a conglomerate of historically very different texts, brought together in a canon that resulted from an age-long process of adaptation. The insight that within the Bible books themselves several earlier layers and even individual passages were to be distinguished, became widely accepted and thus marked the end of the pre-critical period. For these earlier fragments, the Sitz im Leben, the socio-cultural context, should be separately charted as well.17 The erosion of the sacrosanct status of the Bible due to the results, desired or not, of seventeenth-century biblical criticism, evokes the image of a ‘slow revolution’: the holy frontiers of a previously inviolable religious domain had to recede under the pressure of the rational approach proclaimed by ‘hard sciences’ like philology and history. Dirk van Miert Henk Nellen Piet Steenbakkers Jetze Touber

17  Richard A. Muller, ‘Biblical Interpretation in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in Donald K. McKim (ed.), Dictionary of Major Biblical Interpreters (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007), pp. 22–44, here 25–7.

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1 Biblical Philology in the Long Seventeenth Century New Orientations Henk Nellen and Piet Steenbakkers

Josephus Justus Scaliger’s ground-breaking investigations on biblical chronology, Louis Cappel’s painstaking research on the flawed transmission of the Old Testament text, Hugo Grotius’ restrictive view of divine inspiration, Isaac de La Peyrère’s ludicrous theory on the Pre-Adamites, Richard Simon’s refusal to accept Moses’ full authorship of the Pentateuch, Spinoza’s devastating attacks on supernaturally revealed religion: listing controversial issues that bear on the interpretation of God’s Word in the long seventeenth century is not difficult. At the time, the learned world housed many then famous researchers whose publications in the field of biblical scholarship provoked sharp rebuttal and widespread turmoil. The controversies revolved around the divine status of the Bible. Textual criticism and historical research played a primordial role in them. In this introductory essay, we attempt to sketch the main context of the debates, historical as well as historiographical, for the single chapters that will follow. After an explanation of the nature of early modern biblical philology in the section ‘Biblical Philology’, we address the literary conservatism in the practice of biblical philogy (‘Literary Conservatism’). This conservatism arose from psychological, socio-cultural, and theological impediments. The impact of interconfessional strife on the status of the Bible, in particular, merits a close examination (‘Interconfessional Strife and the Status of the Bible’). Irenic writers used biblical philology to play down the authority of revealed doctrines (‘The Epistemic Downgrading of Revealed Doctrines by Irenic Writers’). That story has hitherto received much less attention than the work of intellectual eccentrics who availed themselves of innovative exegesis (‘The Eccentric Position of Innovative Exegetes’). After that, the philosophers Thomas Hobbes and Lodewijk Meyer are singled out for their contribution to the dismantling of the divine status of the Bible (‘Dismantling the Divine Message: Thomas Hobbes

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and Lodewijk Meyer’). A towering figure among the philosophers who entered the fray is, of course, Benedictus de Spinoza, whose work as a biblical critic merits special attention (‘The Bible Seen from Outside the Christian Tradition: Spinoza as a Biblical Critic’). We conclude our survey with an evaluative note (‘By Way of Conclusion: An Evaluative Note’).

Biblical Philology Since the notion of ‘philology’ figures prominently in this volume, we emphasize that we use it in a broad sense. Philology proposed to study the transmission of the text and the ruinous impact this transmission had on the contents of the text. As a variegated ‘toolkit’, developed to do justice to the historical meaning of texts from the past, it included textual criticism, but also historical and antiquarian contextualizing. Under the aegis of famous classicists like Lorenzo Valla, Desiderius Erasmus, Angelo Poliziano, Josephus Justus Scaliger, and Isaac Casaubon, philology developed into the most elevated and important branch of scholarship. It studied texts (first and foremost Greek and Latin), and from 1575 onwards it was designated with increasing frequency as ‘criticè’ or ‘ars critica’. Focused on the literal interpretation of texts, in the vein of the ‘grammatici’ from the school of Alexandria in the third and second centuries before the Common Era, the main objective of this ‘art of judging’ was to examine, understand, restore, authorize or reject, and comment on the text through emendation (on the basis of manuscripts or conjecture) and explanation (a detailed exposition drawing on the historical context).1 If in the early modern period classical texts were already studied critically in order to assess their normative value for society, politics, and religion, this objective played an even greater part in reading the Bible, the divine guide for attaining salvation in the afterlife. Isaac Casaubon, one of the most outstanding critics of his age, made preparations for a treatise De critica, in which he intended to study the Bible critically as if it were a profane text. The project did not materialize, presumably for fear of the resistance such an approach would evoke, but from dispersed remarks in letters and prefaces it appears that Casaubon assumed the text to have been transmitted unmarred, at least as far as its tenor (‘nous’) was concerned. On the other hand, he admitted that the language in which this tenor had been preserved had undergone ‘blemishes and minor deformations’ that awaited the healing hand of the textual critic.2 The French 1  Benedetto Bravo, ‘Critice in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries and the Rise of the Notion of Historical Criticism’, in Christopher Ligota and Jean-Louis Quantin (eds), History of Scholarship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 135–95. 2  Bravo, ‘Critice’, p. 166. See also Hélène Parenty, Isaac Casaubon helléniste: Des studia humanitatis à la philologie (Geneva: Droz, 2009), pp. 323–30, for another (unpublished) treatise by

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scholar Henri de Valois presented textual criticism in his own De critica, written around 1650, as a discipline that centred on restoration and explanation, free from any impediments on account of the prestige and authoritative status the texts were invested with. He excluded, however, the books of the Bible, which had to be read with human reason laid in fetters: ‘It is only towards the divine books that we have to show respect, reading them with a mind as if enslaved, and the freedom of our judgement renounced.’3 In spite of this rigid respect for Holy Writ, the influence of criticism made itself more strongly felt during the long seventeenth century. ‘Indeed,’ as one authoritative researcher, Richard Muller, noted, ‘the increasing linguistic capabilities of Protestant exegetes, including the strictly orthodox writers, must be counted as a source of increasing pressure upon the orthodox theological system certainly equal to and perhaps surpassing in intensity the philosophical and scientific revolution of the seventeenth century.’4 On the other hand, we should be cautious not to link philological criticism with philosophical rejection of tradition. Since biblical philology was widely practised across the width of the theological and philosophical spectrum, Dmitri Levitin pointed out that ‘many of the conclusions supposedly unique to the “critical”and “enlightened” historians […] were not only present, but sometimes even commonplace, in the seventeenth-century discussions, and that there was no intrinsic connection between “criticism” and heterodoxy’.5 Linguistic capabilities increased, together with the availability and stand­ ardization of source texts for study. Due to the spread of the printing press after 1500, the Hebrew and Greek texts of the Old and New Testaments were widely available. In the long run printed versions of the Bible proved to be cheaper than the manuscripts that until then had served church and believers. The printing press enabled the dispersion of near-identical copies of the same text over a large area. In the medieval situation, when manuscripts were small in number and unique in content and lay-out, a fruitful exchange of thoughts was hard to realize when spatial distance separated the exegetes. Now, the picture radically changed, the more so as the widely expanding application of useful paratextual matter such as chapter headings, side notes, pagination, and indexes Casaubon, De philologia. The most recent study on Casaubon as a philologist is Anthony Grafton and Joanna Weinberg, with Alistair Hamilton, ‘I Have Always Loved the Holy Tongue’: Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 2011). 3  Bravo, ‘Critice’, pp. 181–2: ‘Solis Divinis libris hic honos habeatur, ut animo quasi in ­servitutem redacto et iudicii nostri libertate abiecta eos perlegamus’. Cf. Anthony Grafton’s contribution to this volume. 4  Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725, vol. 2: Holy Scripture: The Cognitive Foundation of Theology, 2nd edn (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), p. 131. 5  Dmitri Levitin, Ancient Wisdom in the Age of the New Science: Histories of Philosophy in England, c. 1640–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), p. 8.

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greatly facilitated an effective handling of textual obscurities and exegetical solutions. Standardization ensured that everyone was on the same page,6 and what is even more important, the printed text offered a ‘platform’ for debates on readings in newly found manuscripts. The division of the Bible into chapters already dates from the thirteenth century, but it is easy to image how much more scholars profited from the division into verses, introduced in 1551 in the New Testament, and only applied to the entire Bible as late as 1555, by the famous Paris printer Robert Estienne.7 The most widely printed text of the Greek New Testament in the sixteenth century was based on the edition of Erasmus, who had published it under the guise of an appendix that should enable scholars to check the editor’s new Latin translation, in fact a thoroughly adapted Latin Vulgate text.8 The Greek version, based on manuscripts from the so-called Byzantine recension, later revised by Robert Estienne and Theodore Beza, acquired the status of a ‘textus receptus’ in the seventeenth century, when the Leiden Elzevier firm issued two editions (1624 and 1633) that soon dominated the market.9 Already in 1517 and 1524–1525 the Venetian printer Daniel Bomberg had published the first editions of the Old Testament in Hebrew, but a ‘new and improved’ Hebrew Bible saw the light in 1618–1619, owing to the efforts of Johann Buxtorf the Elder. He offered a text that remained the standard for all Christians until the twentieth century.10 These editions were important for professional theologians, preachers, and scholars alike. Nevertheless, they did not satisfy the scholarly needs of every researcher, as is testified by the polyglot editions, which were fundamental for 6  Gérard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. Jane E. Lewin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1997), pp. 1–15, does not explicitly include ‘pagination’ in the category paratexts: ‘Most often, then, the paratext is itself a text’ (p. 7). 7  Bénédicte Boudou and Judit Kecskeméti (eds), La France des humanistes: Robert et Charles Estienne, des imprimeurs pedagogues, Europa Humanistica, collection publiée par l’Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), pp. 25–6. 8  See Henk Jan de Jonge, ‘Novum Testamentum a nobis versum: The Essence of Erasmus’ Edition of the New Testament’, Journal of Theological Studies, n.s., 35 (1984), pp. 394–413. Cf. Sebastiano Timpanaro, The Genesis of Lachmann’s method, ed. and trans. Glenn W. Most (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2005), pp. 58–9. 9  Henk Jan de Jonge, ‘Jeremias Hoelzlin: Editor of the “Textus Receptus” Printed by the Elzeviers Leiden 1633’, in T. Baarda, A.F.J. Klijn, and W.C. van Unnik (eds), Miscellanea Neotestamentica, vol. 1 (Supplements to Novum Testamentum, 47) (Leiden: Brill, 1978), pp. 105–28, esp. 105–6: ‘the Elzevier text as printed in 1624 and 1633 became the generally received text for centuries (it was in the preface to the second edition that it was styled the textus nunc ab omnibus receptus)’. The 1633 edition comprised some readings taken from an edition by Henri Estienne (Geneva, 1576). A helpful graph, charting the interdependence of the editions, is given by Jan Krans, Beyond What Is Written: Erasmus and Beza as Conjectural Critics of the New Testament (Leiden: Brill, 2006), p. 207. 10  Stephen G. Burnett, ‘The Strange Career of the Biblia Rabbinica among Christian Hebraists, 1517–1620’, in Bruce Gordon and Matthew McLean (eds), Shaping the Bible in the Reformation: Books, Scholars and their Readers in the Sixteenth Century (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012), pp. 64–72, and by the same author, From Christian Hebraism to Jewish Studies: Johannes Buxtorf (1564–1629) and Hebrew Learning in the Seventeenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 1996), pp. 169–202.

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a more critical assessment of the text. The most famous polyglot editions are the Complutense, published by the University of Alcalá in 1520, the Antwerp polyglot of Plantin (1568–1573), the Parisian polyglot (finished in 1645) initiated and financed by Guy-Michel Le Jay, and the London polyglot (1655–1657), issued under the supervision of Brian Walton.11 As the outcome of huge printing enterprises that asked for substantial governmental, ecclesiastical, or private sponsorship, the polyglots attest to a lively interest in the establishment and interpretation of the authentic text. The display of versions in multiplecolumned pages enabled experts to deal with the incongruities ensuing from the complicated transmission process—provided they were competent in the Semitic languages these editions contained. By shedding light on the transmission process, the polyglots made the textual instability palpable, so to speak. Troubled by the dispersion of nine different versions over every two pages of the London polyglot, the English theologian John Owen asked himself where God’s Word was to be found.12 The polyglots offered scholars the material for solving exegetical cruces, but they also presented them with many new problems, which in turn created a demand for a presentation that would allow a survey of the commentaries that obscure and complex passages had elicited until then in one glance. The London polyglot soon found a useful complement in the Critici sacri (ed. John Pearson, nine volumes, London 1660, and later editions), an equally voluminous printing enterprise, which assembled biblical commentaries of learned exegetes of the past two centuries. As a discipline that historicized the biblical text on the basis of a practical, rational, verifiable, and therefore ‘scientific’ approach, philology tried to explain this text by placing it in the cultural context of the Middle East. Knowledge of oriental languages and cultures, in particular, improved as travellers brought home not only experiences, but also antiquities and manuscripts.13 In the seventeenth century, oriental studies developed according to a pattern similar 11  Le Jay, lawyer at the parliament of Paris, financed the project as a private person. He refused to accept Richelieu’s financial support and went bankrupt. For the London Polyglot, funding was raised by opening a subscription list. See Adrian Schenker, ‘The Polyglot Bibles of Antwerp, Paris and London, 1568–1658’, in Magne Saebø (ed.), Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation, vol. 2, From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Göttingen: Vandenbroeck and Ruprecht, 2008), pp. 774–84. See also the studies of Peter N. Miller, especially ‘The “Antiquarianization” of Biblical Scholarship and the London Polyglot Bible (1653–57)’, Journal of the History of Ideas 62:3 (2001), pp. 463–82. 12  Richard W.F. Kroll, ‘Mise-en-Page, Biblical Criticism, and Inference during the Restoration’, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 16 (1986), pp. 3–40 (p. 21), quoted in Jean Bernier, La Critique du Pentateuque de Hobbes à Calmet (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2010), p. 244. 13  Jacobus Golius, Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, and John Selden exemplify the erudite collector who imported manuscripts from the Orient, thus building large libraries that often stimulated innovating linguistic and historical research. Archbishop William Laud financed wholesale acquirement of manuscripts for Oxford University. See G.J. Toomer, Eastern Wisedome and Learning: The Study of Arabic in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), Index s.v. ‘manuscripts, Arabic’; William J. Bulman, Anglican Enlightenment: Orientalism, Religion and Politics in England and its Empire, 1648–1715 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

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to that of classical philology. Concomitantly, a host of grammars, lexica, commentaries, and other research tools saw the light.14 But there were complications. The desire to gain access to Hebrew forced Christians to cooperate with Jews, even if traditionally the relationship with Judaism was marked by frictions and misunderstandings.15 More generally, philology was enriched but also compounded by the advancement of knowledge in many adjacent fields such as chronology, palaeography, and codicology, geography, ethnography, jurisprudence, numismatics, archaeology, and other domains of interest encompassed in the term ‘antiquarianism’. Inspired by an ingenuous and unflagging concern for an exhaustive explanation of the Bible’s message, scholars soon realized that their involvement with the text transgressed the boundaries of strictly textual criticism and required an overall historical knowledge of the socio-cultural environment in which the books of the Bible had come into existence.16 Philology thus became a broad scholarly activity that fuelled an ongoing reflection on authorial intentions, target audiences, and social contexts. In that capacity, philology certainly effected an awareness of the complex history of the Bible as it was known in the early modern age. From the end of the sixteenth century, philological research attracted an increasing number of exegetes who studied the Holy Book on a par with profane texts. That is to say, they scrutinized the text for scribal errors, omissions, useless repetitions, contradictions, chronological inconsistencies, and many other kinds of anomalies, which they attributed to a protracted, randomly meandering process of transmission. Perhaps these annoying cruces could be removed by processing the overwhelming amount of plausible variants that had been transmitted in ancient manuscripts, as well as in translations made on the basis of manuscripts that had disappeared since. Scholars were convinced that by comparing this source material it would be possible to restore the original version of the biblical text. They also tried to retrieve, explore, and articulate the exact meaning that the text must have had for its contemporary audience. Thus their interpretation focused on the material form of the text as well as on its historical context. Supported by a broad range of auxiliary disciplines, exegetes gradually became 2015), pp. 44–5, and Anthony Hamilton, Maurits H. van den Boogert, and Bart Westerweel (eds), The Republic of Letters and the Levant, Intersections, 5 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), pp. 4–7 and passim. 14  See Burnett, From Christian Hebraism to Jewish Studies, pp. 103–33 (‘The Development of Hebrew Grammar and Lexicography’), and more generally, Ann M. Blair, Too Much to Know. Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010). 15  An eloquent discussion of such a case is found in Grafton and Weinberg, ‘I Have Always Loved the Holy Tongue’; see now also Levitin, Ancient Wisdom, pp. 113–229, for an extended discussion of a wide variety of Protestant approaches in England to the primacy of Jewish thought. 16  For a recent affirmation, see Anthony Grafton, ‘Christianity’s Jewish Origins Rediscovered: The Roles of Comparison in Early Modern Ecclesiastical Scholarship’, Erudition and the Republic of Letters 1 (2016), pp. 13–42.

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more inclined to yield to the idea that even the Bible had been subjected to the ravages of time. In the memorable words of François Laplanche: ‘If we want to encapsulate what happened in the seventeenth century, with the quest for a literal, unequivocal meaning, harbinger of clarity, we can assert that the Bible made its entrance in time.’17 Attempts to chart the complex transmission process of biblical as well as patristic texts were often thwarted and even diverted in the wrong direction if research was based on spurious sources. It took a long time before the status of the Sibylline oracles, the Orphic hymns and Hermes Trismegistus, supposed author of the famous Corpus Hermeticum, went down from genuine relics of the past to forgeries that created an illusion of Christianity before Christ. As late as 1650, Athanasius Kircher simply ignored Isaac Casaubon’s demolishment of the authenticity of the Corpus Hermeticum of 1614, but nevertheless the English philosopher Ralph Cudworth, who mocked Kircher for that, continued to accept most of the Corpus as late as 1678.18 It was pia fraus that evoked the effervescence of such forgeries: because sources of paramount importance to the history of God’s salutary plans had disappeared, the need was felt to bring them back to life again. Although Renaissance criticism aptly developed a set of tools to detect falsifications, the forgers only had to take recourse to these same tools to continue the stream of pseudo-authors. Much of the discussion in learned circles was about the authenticity and spuriousness of texts that buttressed traditional positions in the confessional struggles. Whoever made use of a testimony that an adversary succeeded in denouncing as a forgery saw the rug pulled from under his feet.19 The controversy evoked by the Epistola Aristeae, originally written to defend the superiority of the Septuagint, is a case in point, as is the Donatio Constantini.20 Before and after Spinoza, many different scholars contributed to the development of biblical philology: Joseph Scaliger, Jacobus Golius, Hugo Grotius, Daniel Heinsius, Thomas Hobbes, Isaac de La Peyrère, André Rivet, Isaac Vossius, Johannes Coccejus, Lodewijk Meyer, Adriaan Beverland, Jean Le Clerc. 17  ‘Si l’on veut dire en quelques mots ce qui s’est passé au XVIIe siècle à travers la recherche d’un sens littéral univoque, porteur de clarté, on affirmera que la Bible est entrée dans le temps’, in François Laplanche, Bible, sciences et pouvoirs au XVIIe siècle (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1998), p. 67. 18  See Levitin, Ancient Wisdom, pp. 63–4 and 171–80. On Casaubon’s handling of the Corpus Hermeticum, see Anthony Grafton, ‘Protestant versus Prophet: Isaac Casaubon on Hermes Trismegistus’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 46 (1983), pp. 78–93. 19  Anthony Grafton, Defenders of the Text: The Traditions of Scholarship in an Age of Science, 1450–1800 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991). See also Anthony Grafton, Glenn W. Most, and Salvatore Settis (eds), The Classical Tradition (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 2010), pp. 361–5, s.v. ‘forgery’ (A. Grafton). 20  Abraham Wasserstein and David J. Wasserstein, The Legend of the Septuagint: From Classical Antiquity to Today (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Lorenzo Valla, On the Donation of Constantine, ed. and trans. G.W. Bowersock (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007). See also section 5. For a lesser known case, the ‘Velesian readings’, see Jan Krans, this volume, chapter 3.

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Strikingly, all but one (Hobbes) of these were Dutch, or spent time on Dutch soil. Spinoza’s contribution to the debate, however, appears to have changed the rules of the game. After the publication of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus in 1670, biblical criticism had to cope with the suspicion that all attempts to make sense of Scripture as a collection of historically transmitted and possibly fallible texts would lead to Spinozism, i.e. atheism.21

Literary Conservatism Philological adventurism was kept in check both by practical circumstances and by theological demands. It is one of the great seventeenth-century paradoxes that philological research did not lead, or led only with a considerable time lag, to revising the textus receptus of the New Testament, the seventeenthcentury edition which was most often used. This was the result, first of all, of human inertia, as well as a limited possibity to collect all existing textual witnesses. The scope of the early modern editor, working on a classical, biblical, or patristic text, remained rather narrow. For a new edition he often took an old one (if extant) as the printer’s copy and compared the text with one or more manuscripts at hand, often for dubious passages only. The editor duplicated the text unless manuscript evidence forced him to adopt textual changes. Scholars had only a very restricted overview of and access to the preserved manuscripts. Thus a complete recensio of the textual material was out of the question.22 Moreover, many texts of celebrated classical writers played an important role in the educational setting of school and university. Here, thorough changes always aroused annoyance and incomprehension, among teachers as well as students. The eclectic approach and conservative outlook prevalent in textual scholarship testify to the embryonic state of philological procedures in the early modern period. In spite of the impressive achievements of the humanists, it was not until the nineteenth century that the famous philologist Karl Lachmann (1793–1851) finally broke with the version of the textus receptus. Basing himself on eighteenth-century philologists like John Mill, Richard Bentley, Johann Albrecht Bengel, Johann Jacob Wettstein, and Johann Salomo Semler, Lachmann studied the text of the New Testament according to new rules aimed at extensive

21  See below, ‘The Bible Seen from Outside the Christian Tradition: Spinoza as a Biblical Critic’. 22  Described by Kenney as ‘the false problem’ in: E.J. Kenney, The Classical Text: Aspects of Editing in the Age of the Printed Book (Berkeley, CA, Los Angeles, CA, and London: University of California Press, 1974), pp. 1–20, especially p. 19. In retrospect, the editors of the post-editio princeps age were locked in an unsolvable impasse: lack of materials prevented them from establishing the best possible text, even if they would have had sound techniques—which they did not, precisely due to the lack of material.

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collation of important manuscripts, reconstruction of their genealogical relationship, and systematic sifting of readings.23 Seventeenth-century biblical philology had opened up the field of philology for appropriation by people with various agendas, from orthodox to radical. The remarkable openness of their discussions shows how central the role of philology was in seventeenth-century thought. The restraints came from the external world, not from a rigid set of philological procedures itself, consented to by scholars of different beliefs and ideals. Thus, confessional constraints counterpoised against the destabilizing effects of the philological dissection of biblical texts. The extent of the taboo on editorial changes is demonstrated by the history of the famous Comma Johanneum (1 John 5:7), traditionally the most explicit proof-text for the much debated doctrine of Trinity; the issue is discussed in detail in the present volume by Grantley McDonald. On the basis of sound manuscript evidence for the spuriousness of the Comma, Erasmus decided to skip it in the Greek New Testament edition of 1516, thus evoking accusations of revitalizing the old heresy of Arianism. These were so venomous that the scholar felt forced to reintroduce the passage in a later edition. Another example is 1 Timothy 3:16, where the replacement of the word theos in the textus receptus by the relative pronoun hos or ho resulted in a version that was rejected as anti-Trinitarian, in spite of the fact that these readings were attested by important witnesses, like the Codex Alexandrinus (hos, who) and the Vulgate (quod, which = ho).24 These incidents make clear that a strong aversion to textual-critical emendations dominated, for the simple reason that such adaptations threatened to undermine the theological superstructure devised by the professional theologians. Exegetical reticence determined the approach to the biblical text. This reservation is also exemplified by the famous church leader Theodore Beza. He presented the University of Cambridge with the famous ‘Codex Bezae Can­ tabrigiensis’, representative of the Western text-type, and thus a manuscript that stemmed from another textual tradition than the manuscripts used for the Greek standardized version of the New Testament. On the ground that the codex contained many unknown variants, Beza warned the new possessors that it had better be stored away than published, in order to avoid turmoil (‘ut, vitandae quorundam offensioni, asservandum potius quam publicandum existimem’).25 Of course, the widely felt unwillingness to change the text was 23  See Timpanaro, The Genesis of Lachmann’s Method, pp. 84–9 and 115–18. 24  See, for the history of the textual debates on 1 John 5:7 and 1 Timothy 3:16, Muller, PostReformation Reformed Dogmatics 2, pp. 141–6 and 421–5; Sarah Mortimer, Reason and Religion in the English Revolution: The Challenge of Socinianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 153–4, and Kristine L. Haugen, Richard Bentley: Poetry and Enlightenment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), pp. 187–210. 25  Jan Krans, Beyond What Is Written, pp. 227–36, quotation on p. 230. See for the Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis also Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament: Its

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strengthened by the ongoing inner-Christian controversies that induced ecclesiastical authorities to rebut any change whatsoever, in view of the risk that changes would reverberate in the domain of systematic theology and might weaken the confessional documents of faith, which had just been articulated so carefully in the 1560s and 1570s.26 Evidently, the need for maintaining the privileged status of the biblical text prevailed even more strongly in the Protestant camp, which had consolidated its separation from the body of the church by proclaiming sola Scriptura as a leading principle for acquiring faith and salvation.27 The dilemma that exegetes faced is embodied in Beza’s biblical commentaries: because the great reformer assumed the text to be divinely inspired, he was reluctant to change it. In his hermeneutical approach, the concept of divine inspiration clashed with the observation that the Bible text had suffered corruption in the process of transmission. On the one hand, it was philological scrupulousness that drove Beza to handle the text with great precision, thus throwing light on its shortcomings. On the other, he feared that if he acknowledged these shortcomings this would invalidate the divine message. In constant care to remove or solve textual cruces, he perused manuscripts and editions in order to retrace variants that would enable him to illustrate and explain the text. It is safe to assume that his predilection for textual problems had much to do with the strong urge to help all believers, his fellow-preachers in the first place, to understand the biblical message fully and thus contribute to the spread of the Christian faith. He scrutinized the textual material at hand as an arsenal that could provide valuable information, but usually the results of his research did not extend to the text of the standard edition, which he preferred to leave untouched. It was the commentary that he took recourse to as the privileged and safe platform for discussion. Although textual variants or, more delicately, conjectural emendations were processed in the text only incidentally, it is beyond doubt that the exegete was confronted with an insoluble problem. The biblical message was perfect, transparent, and divinely inspired, but the text showed anomalies, evoked questions, called for human interference, and thus necessitated constant guidance by an expert reader. Though Beza, in rare cases, did decide to adapt the text, he felt compelled to demonstrate the necessity of this editorial intervention, while he was at the same time obliged to pretend that the change was not essential. The only escape was to cling to the a priori Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 70–3 and 151–2. 26  The 1560s witnessed, for the Reformed, the acceptance of the Scots Confession (1560), the Confessio Belgica (1561), the Confessio Helvetica posterior (1562/1564), and the Heidelberg Catechism (1563); for the Anglicans, the 39 Articles of the Church of England (1562); on the Catholic side the outcome of the Council of Trent (1563) confirmed the paramount status of the Vulgate. Not much later followed the Lutheran Formula of Concord (1576/1577). 27  See also ‘Biblical Philology’, above.

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idea that textual corruption did not infringe on the dogmas that were held necessary for salvation.28 As an outstanding theologian, eloquent preacher, and productive letter writer, the Huguenot André Rivet, since 1620 professor of theology in Leiden, held a position in the world of Reformed orthodoxy that was certainly comparable to Beza’s. In his comprehensive, erudite, and well-ordered Isagoge seu Introductio ad Scripturam Sacram (Leiden: Commelin, 1627), Rivet took issue with Roman Catholic writers who tried to question the reliability of the biblical text. Some of them assumed an almost undamaged preservation of the Old Testament text, but others presented it as completely corrupt. In elaborating on the integrity (puritas) of the text, Rivet attempted to forge a balance between the demands of theology and the problems posed by philological findings.29 He acknowledged the possibility of scribal errors having crept in, due to sloppiness and ignorance, but he minimized the degree of corruption, convinced as he was that an assiduous collation of relevant manuscripts would result in the original lectio, dictated by the Holy Spirit to his amanuenses. In the eyes of Rivet, philological work of this kind had a cosmetic effect only. Both for the Old and the New Testament he assumed an overall reliability, on the basis of a wide range of arguments. Before the incarnation, corruption of the Old Testament message was out of the question, since Christ and the apostles referred to the text without questioning it. Besides, the Jews had always shown an ardent respect for the text, and it was beyond any doubt that God would have prevented his church from using corrupted versions. Quotations from the Old Testament in the New served as a guarantee against secret alteration of the Hebrew text by the Jews. Corruption must also be excluded on the grounds that passages from the Old Testament with an evident Christological meaning had been left unaltered, while the Greek and Latin translations often obfuscated this meaning and thus offered an incentive for editorial adaptation. Among other things, Rivet also referred to the wide dispersal of the Hebrew text: forgers could only have changed an insignificantly small number of manuscripts.30 Then Rivet addressed the adversaries who assumed a thorough corruption of the New Testament text. ‘As they say, it is above any doubt that the text is corrupted in several places, partly through the carelessness of the scribes, partly through the deceit of the ancient heretics. For this reason they consider the Greek text less apt to generate faith.’31 To make his point, he referred to the protection by divine providence and the 28  Krans, Beyond What Is Written, pp. 317–32; Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics 2, pp. 144, 306. 29  André Rivet, Isagoge seu Introductio ad Scripturam Sacram (Leiden: Isaac Commelin, 1627), pp. 106–17 (pp. 106–13 on the textual reliability of the Old Testament; pp. 113–17 on the New Testament). See also the contribution of Anthony Ossa-Richardson, this volume, chapter 5. 30  Rivet, ibid, pp. 107–8. 31  ibid., p. 114: ‘Dicunt dubium non esse quin variis locis [editio] sit corrupta, partim incuria librariorum, partim fraude veterum haereticorum et consequenter non adeo idoneum esse textum Graecum ad gignendam fidem’.

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wide dispersal again. According to Rivet, the text did indeed show variants, but these were spread at random over many codices, in such a way that philological research could solve all cruces by eliminating the erroneous readings. Truth had stayed intact in the total of the copies used by the settlements of the primitive church.32 The Leiden professor Daniel Heinsius, author of the Sacrarum exercitationum libri XX (1639), a large philological commentary on the New Testament, is another typical representative of a scholarly attitude marked by internal frictions. Bent on steering a middle course between respect for the textus receptus (as he himself had labelled it in the preface to the 1633 Elzevir edition33) and the urge to smooth out textual wrinkles and inconsistencies, he depended heavily on an advisor of the faculty of theology and expert in rabbinical literature, Constantijn L’Empereur, who checked the proofs on what he thought of as theological soundness. L’Empereur was keenly aware of the risks of Heinsius’ philological approach. In a number of cases he tried to prevent the results of his colleague’s research from intruding into the domain reserved for systematic theology. Theological sensibilities would be aroused if Heinsius questioned the univocal meaning of Old Testament citations in the New Testament or proposed emendations in order to harmonize discrepancies. From L’Empereur’s comments, it becomes apparent ‘how far the development of exegetical practice had outstripped the ability of orthodoxy to incorporate the results of scholarly exegesis of the bible’.34 Quite understandably, seventeenth-century exegetes were anxious to underline their objective, unbiased approach in explaining the message of the Bible. The Lutheran exegete Abraham Calovius listed this principle as a rule of thumb in his guide for a sound hermeneutical method. He stressed amongst other things the importance of a thorough command of the original languages, recommended the use of reliable concordances, and warned against an exaggerated reliance on Jewish and gentile sources, but he also highlighted the danger of preconceived errors (‘praeconcepti errores’). At the same time, he criticized Jews, Papists, Calvinists, Socinians, and Arminians for adopting a hermeneutical procedure that he practised himself: ‘They impose a meaning on the words of Scripture, instead of extracting this meaning from them.’ To this observation 32  ibid., p. 115: ‘ita volente Deo, ut verae lectionis integritas, quam hominum vel malitia vel negligentia corruperat in partibus, in tota saltem ecclesiasticorum codicum universitate servaretur, ne ecclesia Dei per aliquod tempus divinarum Scripturarum integritate careret, utque haberent semper pii et eruditi viri, unde corrigere et emendare possent quod aut imperitorum inscitia aut iniquorum perfidia vitiasset, facta collatione multorum inter se exemplarium’. 33  See also Henk Jan de Jonge, Daniel Heinsius and the Textus Receptus of the New Testament: A Study of His Contributions to the Editions of the Greek Testament Printed by the Elzeviers at Leiden in 1624 and 1633 (Leiden: Brill, 1971), esp. pp. 21–2. 34  Peter T. van Rooden, Theology, Biblical Scholarship and Rabbinical Studies in the Seventeenth Century: Constantijn L’Empereur (1591–1648), Professor of Hebrew and Theology at Leiden, Studies in the History of Leiden University, 6 (Leiden: Brill, 1989), pp. 135–42, quotation on p. 136.

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he added a relevant quotation from the fourth-century church father Hilarius of Poitiers, On Trinity, book I: ‘He is the best reader [of the Scriptures], who extracts the meaning of the words from the words themselves, rather than imposing a meaning upon them; who discloses the meaning instead of adding to it, nor forces that to be taken for the contents of the words, which before reading he had assumed to be the meaning.’35 The long seventeenth century has been dubbed the pre-critical period, and not without reason. Although Calovius pretended to interpret the Bible without giving in to any prejudice whatsoever, he used his Biblia illustrata, consisting of more than 5,800 pages, to prove that it was the Lutheran creed only that reflected the truth of the Bible in a reliable way.36

Interconfessional Strife and the Status of the Bible An important incentive for discussing the status of the Bible was the interconfessional strife that dominated the different religious communities after the Reformation had taken root. The Roman Catholic Church stressed the indispensable value of tradition, on the grounds that the Bible was not self-evident and needed explanation in harmony with the Church Fathers, conciliar decisions, and papal decrees. In order to throw light on the indispensability of churchly magisterium and to undermine the sola Scriptura doctrine of the Protestant theologians, Roman Catholic exegetes were eager to question the absolute certainty, perfection, and sufficiency of the sacrosanct text. The Jesuit Cardinal Robert Bellarmine defended this view on the basis of cogent philological arguments in the extremely successful Disputationes de controversiis Christianae fidei adversus huius temporis haereticos (3 vols, Ingolstadt: Sartorius, 1586–1593).37 Though not a Roman Catholic himself, the Dutch humanist Hugo Grotius 35  Abraham Calovius, ‘INJ Praeloquium generale ad libros S. Codicis’, in A. Calovius, Biblia Veteris et Novi Testamenti Illustrata (Frankfurt am Main: Balthasar Christophorus Wustius, 1672–1676), vol. 1, pp. 14–21, esp. 19 A: ‘Inferunt ergo verbis Scripturarum sensum, non efferunt ex iisdem’. Cf. Hilarius of Poitiers, as quoted by Calovius: ‘Optimus enim lector est, qui dictorum intelligentiam exspectet ex dictis potius quam imponat, et retulerit magis quam attulerit, neque cogat id videri dictis contineri, quod ante lectionem praesumpserit intelligendum.’ (PL 10, col. 38). 36  Henk Nellen, ‘Bible Commentaries as a Platform for Polemical Debate: Abraham Calovius versus Hugo Grotius’, in Karl Enenkel and Henk Nellen (eds), Neo-Latin Commentaries and the Management of Knowledge in the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period (1400–1700), Supplementa Humanistica Lovaniensia, 33 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2013), pp. 445–71. Cf. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics 2, pp. 442–51 and 500–1. 37  Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, Apokalypse und Philologie: Wissensgeschichten und Weltentwürfe der Frühen Neuzeit (Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2007), pp. 59–78, esp. 59: ‘Gäbe es einen Zitatenindex der Werke des 17. Jahrhunderts, Bellarmin läge ganz voran’.

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endorsed a similar position. He openly doubted whether philology would ever be able to restore the original text in its pristine lustre or to distract an unequivocal meaning from it: ‘To disclose the truthful meaning is a huge work, and not always a successful one.’38 The French Roman Catholic theologian Jean Morin exalted the reliability of the Septuagint, while attacking the inerrancy of the Hebrew text. Understandably enough, he provoked severe criticism on the part of Protestant Dutch and English philologists.39 It was the same Jean Morin who conspired with other Roman Catholic scholars in assisting the Huguenot Louis Cappel, Hebraist from the Protestant Academy in Saumur, to publish his Critica Sacra (Paris: Cramoisy, 1650), a seminal study on the history of the Hebrew Text, that was already completed in 1634. Cappel distinguished between grammatical, philological, and historical arguments on the one hand, and theological arguments on the other. He pretended to leave the last category to the theologians, and focused on textual problems, which were legion. Cappel proved beyond any doubt that the Hebrew text bore the traces of an age-long transmission process. He collated various parallel passages, mainly clusters of verses that were repeated in the Old Testament itself, or quotations from the Old Testament in the New, and he also compared passages in the Masoretic Hebrew text of the Old Testament with ancient translations of the same passages, for example in the Greek versions (Septuagint and other translations) and Aramaic (Targumim). He was able to discern regularities in the textual differences that could only be explained as the result of human, and therefore flawed interference with the text. Cappel justified his view of the instability of the text by constantly referring to what François Laplanche has dubbed ‘le principe de totalité’: an obscure passage would always disclose its clearer meaning (sensus clarior) when it was compared to and explained from the gist of the biblical text. It was the totality of the salutary message that counted. The analogy of faith prevented the believer from losing himself in the mass of variants. Besides, Christ and his disciples had often quoted the Old Testament, mostly from the Septuagint, at other moments from the standard Hebrew text, but also from versions that had now been lost. This inconsistency proved that the protagonists of the primitive church did not care about such minutiae.40 In laying bare instances of corruption as the consequence of human interference, and what is more, in demonstrating that this interference showed regular, 38  Hugo Grotius, Opera omnia theologica, in tres tomos divisa: Ante quidem per partes, nunc autem coniunctim et accuratius edita (Amsterdam: Blaeu, 1679; reprint Stuttgart and Bad Cannstatt, 1972), vol. 3, pp. 628, 647–8, 672–4 and 722–7, esp. 673 A 54–62: ‘Quid […] verum sit discernere, ingens labor, nec semper felix.’ 39  Nick J.S. Hardy, The Ars Critica in Early Modern England (Ph.D. thesis, University of Oxford, 2012), pp. 218–39. 40  François Laplanche, L’Écriture, le sacré et l’histoire: érudits et politiques protestants devant la Bible en France au XVIIe siècle (Amsterdam: APA-Holland University Press, 1986), pp. 218 and 223.

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plausible patterns, Cappel paved the way for editorial emendation of the text on strictly rational grounds. His criticism also confirmed scholars in their opinion that the imperfect status of the Hebrew text was at odds with the doctrine of a divinely inspired message. Cappel’s research had immediate repercussions on the status of the text, the more so because polemic strife soon concentrated on one single aspect, as a result of a previous study: Arcanum punctationis revelatum (Leiden: Johannes Maire, 1624). In this anonymously published book, Cappel argued that the Hebrew vowel points had been added at a later stage, a long time after the first version had come into existence, in the fifth century ce. In his Isagoge seu Introductio ad Scripturam Sacram, Rivet did not aspire to decide the matter. He even gave a benevolent description of the research into this matter undertaken by Louis Cappel, ‘well known to me and a special friend’.41 Rivet could condone Cappel’s view of a later vocalization, as long as the integrity of the Hebrew text remained untouched. Whether original or added later, the vowel points represented the correct reading of the text. They helped the interpreter to understand the text. And although interpretations might vary, this did not affect the text as such, which had been handed down unaltered in the course of the ages. Provided that the right hermeneutical rules were applied, the true meaning of the text would emerge without fail.42 So Rivet saw no problem in endorsing Cappel’s view that the true and genuine sense of the Hebrew text was evident without the support of the vowel points. He approvingly quoted the title of one of the chapters in the Arcanum: ‘It is proven that a true and genuine meaning of the Hebrew text can certainly be had without the help of the vowel points added by the Masoretes.’43 A great danger, however, lurked in admitting that in the past human intervention in the text had taken place: Roman Catholic polemicists were thus given an opportunity to stress the indispensability of tradition for explaining the Bible. For this reason, Cappel’s study aroused sharp protests in Protestant circles. The idea that the Hebrew text had undergone important changes due to deliberate human interference or carelessness was severely attacked by two Hebraists from Basel, Buxtorf, father and son.44 Cappel also evoked much criticism by the freedom 41  Rivet, Isagoge, p. 104: ‘mihi notissimus et amicus non e multis’.    42  ibid., pp. 102–5. 43  ibid., p. 104. The quotation is taken from the Arcanum punctationis revelatum, bk 2, ch. 27 (p. 307): ‘Probatur haberi posse certo verum et germanum textus Hebraici sensum, sine punctorum Masorethicorum subsidio.’ See also Richard A. Muller, ‘The Debate over the Vowel Points and the Crisis in Orthodox Hermeneutics’, in Richard A. Muller, After Calvin: Studies in the Development of a Theological Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 151 and 244, n. 35. 44  Laplanche, L’Écriture, passim, and in particular pp. 231–2; Stephen G. Burnett, ‘Later Christian Hebraists’, in Magne Saebø (ed.), Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation, vol. 2, From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Göttingen: Vandenbroeck and Ruprecht, 2008), pp. 789–92. It is important to note that, according to Cappel, the novelty of the vowel points did not harm the inspired message of the Bible. Apart from these points, the real meaning of the text could be deduced from the overall structure, word sequence, and total context of the Bible (‘principe de totalité’, on the basis of the analogy of faith). If a passage was open to more than one interpretation,

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he took to adapt the Hebrew text on the basis of conjectures that did justice to the differing content of other versions.45 The awareness that a satisfying reconstruction of the biblical text was an unfeasible ideal began to impose itself more forcefully at the turn of the seventeenth century. A case in point is John Mill’s edition of the New Testament (Oxford: E Theatro Sheldoniano, 1707), which included more than 30,000 variant readings. In the eighteenth century, the progress of text-critical research made it clear that the Bible, as was commonly the case with authoritative texts, had spread in many versions that resulted from diverging historical, socio-cultural, and religious backgrounds.46 The history of Cappel’s textual-critical activity illustrates the dilemma in which exegetes of his sort were destined to become entangled. He perfectly fits into the general pattern of Protestant apologetics that attempted to keep intact the hermeneutical rules of the sola Scriptura and the analogia Scripturae, but his position confronted him with the ordinary Roman Catholic counterarguments highlighting the traditional problems besetting the interpretation of the biblical text. What he did was to make a move forward that could not but evoke sharp protests in his own camp, too: he pointed out that all problems of interpretation could be solved, on the condition that the idea of the complete impeccability of the text was given up. The Mosaic originality of the vowel points, the undoubted superiority of the Hebrew version of the Old Testament, and the sacrosanct status of the Hebrew language were strongholds in the controversy with Rome that he was ready to abandon, just for the sake of maintaining the Bible as the only source of belief.47 As appears from the campaign launched by the Buxtorfs against Cappel, attempts to assess, question, or qualify the reliability of the biblical text did not go unchallenged. With the aim to strengthen their position, exegetes and church historians from the Protestant camp decided to undermine the Roman Catholic position by throwing light on the unreliability of tradition as a guide. To be sure, they acknowledged the importance of the corpus of the Church Fathers, for example as a subsidiary source on ancient rituals, church life, and ecclesiastical organization, but at the same time they stressed the difficulties in extracting from this body, abounding in contradictions and aberrant opinions, this ambiguity had to be accepted for the simple reason that it did not pertain to the essentials of faith. See Laplanche, L’Écriture, pp. 219 and 224. 45  Hardy, The Ars Critica in Early Modern England, pp. 224–40. In Holland, the ‘Leiden Rabbis’ Constantijn L’Empereur and Jacobus Golius refused to support publication; if Cappel’s textual critical method was endorsed, certainty would be banned from Scripture. See Hans Bots and Pierre Leroy (eds), Correspondance intégrale d’André Rivet et de Claude Sarrau (Amsterdam: APAHolland University Press, 1982), vol. 3, pp. 114, 120 and 188, Rivet to Sarrau, 8 May, 15 May, and 14 August 1645. 46  Cf. Grafton, Defenders of the Text, pp. 233–41, with an illuminating description of the influence of the methods employed in biblical criticism (Johann Gottfried Eichhorn) on the research by Classicists like Friedrich August Wolf. 47  Laplanche, L’Écriture, p. 211.

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a sound basis for the Christian belief. The Medulla theologiae patrum, 4 vols (Amberg: Michael Forster, 1598–1613), by the Heidelberg theologian Abraham Scultetus, is a case in point. Like his colleague David Paraeus, Scultetus attacked the consensus of the fathers as an indefensible Roman Catholic myth and asked for scrupulous text-critical research, on the grounds that their writings had fallen prey to severe corruption.48 The heterogeneity of patristic sources was also stressed by the French Huguenot Jean Daillé, who likewise denied the existence of a ‘consensus Patrum’ and strongly rejected any appeal to this body of texts for deciding current controversies. In his opinion, these works were useless for contemporary debates as they had been written with totally different objectives, for instance to confirm fellow believers in their wavering faith or to refute the horrible extravagances of ancient paganism. In addition, the usefulness of the fathers had suffered from their inveterate habit to mingle philosophy with theology, an approach that led them into errors that contradicted the Bible.49 In his famous work Traité de l’employ des saints Pères (Geneva: Pierre Aubert, 1632; English trans. 1651; expanded Latin version, 1655), Daillé denounced the fragmentarily transmitted, textually corrupt, obscure, inconsistent, and altogether unreliable patristic legacy. Even thorough philological research would not be capable of restoring the damage done in the course of centuries.50 Furthermore, the sources, as far as they had survived, disclosed a gradual deterioration of religious life, setting in immediately after apostolic times. Belief lost its pristine lustre and decayed in an enduring process that was eventually curbed by the Reformation.51 Daillé saw his bleak view of the patristic legacy adequately articulated by Augustine, who recommended that the 48  Wilhelm Kühlmann, Volker Hartmann, Susann El Kholi, and Björn Spiekermann (eds), Die deutschen Humanisten: Dokumente zur Überlieferung der antiken und mittelalterlichen Literatur in der frühen Neuzeit, Abteilung 1: Die Kurpfalz, vol. 3: Jacobus Micyllus, Johannes Posthius, Johannes Opsopoeus und Abraham Scultetus, Europa Humanistica, 9 (Turnhout: Brepols 2010), pp. xxvi–xxxii. 49  For Daillé, see Mario Turchetti, ‘Jean Daillé et son Traicté de l’employ des saincts Pères (1632): Aperçu sur les changements des critères d’appréciation des Pères de l’Eglise entre le XVIe et le XVIIe siècles’, in Emmanuel Bury and Bernard Meunier (eds), Les Pères de l’Eglise au XVIIe siècle: Actes du colloque de Lyon, 2–5 octobre 1991 (Paris: IRHT-Les Éditons du Cerf, 1993), pp. 69–87; Jean-Louis Quantin, ‘Un manuel anti-patristique: Contexte et signification du “Traité de l’emploi des saints Pères” de Jean Daillé (1632)’, in Günther Frank and Jean-Louis Quantin (eds), Die Patristik in der frühen Neuzeit: Die Relektüre der Kirchenväter in den Wissenschaften des 15. bis 18. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 2006), pp. 299–325, and of the same author, the very thorough study on patristics in the period of the ‘crise de la conscience européenne’, Le catholicisme classique et les Pères de l’Eglise: Un retour aux sources (1669–1713) (Paris: Brepols, 1999), especially pp. 79–95. For the general context of Daillé’s book, see Anna Minerbi Belgrado, L’Avènement du passé: La Réforme et l’histoire (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2004), pp. 163–85 and passim, and Irena Backus, ‘Reformed Orthodoxy and Patristic Tradition’, in Herman J. Selderhuis (ed.), A Companion to Reformed Orthodoxy (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 91–117, here pp. 93–7. 50  Daillé, Traité de l’employ des saints Pères, pp. 59–113. 51  ibid., pp. 10–15, 439–41.

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fathers were to be followed only in so far as they conformed to Scripture and human reason.52 As becomes clear from Daillé’s analysis, his view of the patristic legacy was characterized by a historicizing approach that drastically qualified the value of these sources. Research on early modern source criticism53 has established the idea that already in the years 1610–1620, a turn in the appraisal of the patristic legacy had taken place. During these years the insight developed that the controversy of Rome–Reformation should not affect the study of the sources to the extent that the confessional outlook manipulated the interpretation of texts for polemical use. In a more critical approach, researchers from both camps tried to analyse and evaluate a patristic text by placing it in the dogmatic development of the primitive church, apart from its significance for the current situation. For the modern historian it is, of course, tempting to think that this change has a strong parallel in the rise of the historical-critical interpretation of the biblical text. Yet the degree of objectivity in the approach to the patristic legacy should not be overestimated. For apologetic reasons many Protestant polemicists stuck to an ample, unqualified use of the fathers when it came to defending general Christian tenets like the Trinity against the greatest enemies from inside and outside the Christian world, Socinianism and Islam.54 The Roman Catholics reacted to this inconsistency in exploiting patristic sources by making a cunning retreat: they highlighted the value of these sources for establishing the broadest possible consensus on dogma and practices in the early church. Another escape route for overcoming patristic heterogeneity lay in the assumption that truth had surfaced in the course of time, as the church, guided by the Holy Ghost, managed to pinpoint doctrine in an unequivocal way, for example during the Council of Nicaea (325 ce).55 Evidently, the image sketched above, of a process of reciprocal erosion that affected the sacrosanct status of biblical and patristic sources in a downward spiral needs further refinement. As the polemic between Cappel and the Buxtorfs shows, the debates often pitched representatives of the same confessional camp against each other. These camps should therefore not be seen as homogeneous, monolithic blocs. Within each party all kinds of idiosyncrasies flourished; points of view were constantly adapted, played down, retracted, and 52  ibid., pp. 273–5, 285, 288, 303–4, 308, 311, referring to Augustine, Contra Faustum 2, 5 (PL 42, 248) and the Epistola ad Hieronymum 82 (CSEL 34. 2, p. 354). These two passages from Augustine were invoked over and over again in Protestant apologetics; see Andreas Merkt, Das patristische Prinzip: Eine Studie zur theologischen Bedeutung der Kirchenvater (Leiden: Brill, 2001), pp. 122–3. 53  Pierre Petitmengin, ‘De adulteratis patrum editionibus: La critique des textes au service de l’orthodoxie’, in Emmanuel Bury and Bernard Meunier (eds), Les Pères de l’Eglise au XVIIe siècle: Actes du colloque de Lyon, 2–5 octobre 1991 (Paris: IRHT-Les éditions du Cerf, 1993), pp. 17–34, especially pp. 33–4, cited by Quantin, ‘Un manuel anti-patristique’, p. 315. 54  See also, for Scultetus and Daillé, Schmidt-Biggemann, Apokalypse und Philologie, pp. 92–6. 55  ibid., pp. 53–121.

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elaborated.56 On both sides of the religious divide exegetes applied text-critical techniques in an attempt to secure the authority of the Bible, because—regardless of the divinely inspired quality of the text and the ability of the church to keep controversy in check—they were convinced that the text’s meaning would only become clear through a better understanding of its transmission and gradual corruption; that is, by diligently applying the historical-critical method.57 Seen from an extra-confessional vantage point, it was the Reformation’s view of the Bible as a self-evident source of faith that had to bear the heaviest blows, but together with Protestant bibliocentrism the opposite side’s exaltation of tradition also endured severe attacks. Careful study of the Bible and the fathers supplied the Protestants with pressing arguments for rejecting Roman Catholic tenets like transubstantiation, papal supremacy, and purgatory as medieval, and therefore unauthorized, superstitious accretions that had grown up in a wild flowering of allegories that stretched far beyond the literal meaning of the text. And what is more, the upsetting conclusion imposed itself on exegetes of both camps that by explaining the Bible incorrectly even the fathers had demonstrated the unfeasibility of an uncontroverted interpretation. While refuting each other on particular matters, the overall result of these retaliations was an erosion of the sacrosanct status of the biblical text. Initially, frictions between biblical criticism and systematic theology did not arise, or remained inconsequential, because these disciplines operated in different, though adjacent and strongly interrelated fields. Their peaceful coexistence was based on a monopoly, claimed by theology, for evaluating the textual problems that had been identified through persistent philological research.58 Systematic theology was not the result of arbitrary proof-texting, but constantly took recourse to the whole of the Bible for buttressing its findings.59 On the other hand, biblical criticism did much to guide systematic theology in interpreting the text. Furthermore, philologists stayed within the boundaries of their own territory and refrained from meddling with the results of systematic theology, as long as they could reassure themselves with the idea that their textual findings did not entail a deliberate questioning of the overall reliability of the sacrosanct text. In the words ‘as long as’, however, lies the crux. If the theologians tried to explain the world from the perspective of the Bible, nobody would deny them the right to do so. But philologists and historians studied the Bible as an artefact of which the genesis, transmission, and dominant status were open to the same influences that affect all products of human culture. 56  Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics 2, pp. 102, 144–8, passim. 57  Noel Malcolm, ‘Hobbes, Ezra, and the Bible: The History of a Subversive Idea’, in N. Malcolm, Aspects of Hobbes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), pp. 383–431, here 413–22. 58  Erika Rummel, The Humanist–Scholastic Debate in the Renaissance and Reformation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 99. 59  See for the term Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics 2, p. 511: collecting Bible quotations for buttressing an already elaborated theological doctrine.

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To understand the history of the biblical books it was necessary to investigate them freely, without restrictions from systematic theology. Inevitably, philological research yielded results that did not match the scholastic-dogmatic system erected in the course of generations through arduous theological study and debate. During the seventeenth century, such frictions came to the surface.60 Gradually, philology and its supporting disciplines history, linguistics, and source-criticism emancipated from their subservient position as theology’s ancillary: philologists claimed a free working space for their investigations. And most importantly, heterodox figures of various religious denominations now availed themselves of the text-critical and historical research in the field of Bible studies to undermine the dominant position of theology and dogmatism. If, as we suggested earlier, philology functions as a toolkit, it can be used both constructively, by a carpenter, and noxiously, by a burglar. At this point, though, a strong proviso is in order. The breakthrough towards enlightened ideas should not be seen as a linear development, elicited, stimulated, and brought to fruition by an elite in the scholarly world, a rationalist avant-garde that was bent on breaking down the claims and prerogatives of theological establishment. On the contrary, text-critical research was conducted by professional orthodox theologians as well, entering the debate from all camps and from all wings within those camps. In this way, they participated in a long tradition, which was marked by such luminaries as Matthias Flacius Illyricus, Robert Bellarmine, Cesare Baronio, Isaac Casaubon, Theodore Beza, and André Rivet, who, driven by confessional motives, had explored the available sources in order to shed light on the historical basis of their particular religious dogmas, rites, and church organization. Thus, their historical research and textual criticism was strongly attached to their ideas of orthodoxy. Whereas the sola Scriptura principle greatly stimulated Protestant research, the old quadriga continued to serve Roman Catholic authors as a safe basis for their investigations. As long as the three sublime ways of interpretation (allegorical, anagogical, and eschatological) were respected, the literal or historical sense offered a compartment that allowed for free investigation. Although the positions of the different confessions found confirmation in the research results, a concomitant development began to prevail, however: boundaries between the confessions were transcended. After all, it was historical factuality that counted, and textual or historical-critical research was the only way to ascertain historical facts. Learned representatives of school, university, and church ultimately met each other on common ground, in an intermediate, trans-confessional 60  M.H. Goshen-Gottstein, ‘The Textual Criticism of the Old Testament: Rise, Decline, Rebirth’, Journal of Biblical Literature 102:3 (1983), pp. 365–99, here 372–3; Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics 2, pp. 61–2, 113, 146–7, 371–2, 396–7, 421–5, 441, 501, 452–3; see also Keith D. Stanglin, ‘The Rise and Fall of Biblical Perspicuity: Remonstrants and the Transition Toward Modern Exegesis’, Church History 83 (2014), pp. 38–59, esp. 56–9.

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space, that stretched as far as the evidence of historical material would allow.61 Not only the study of the Bible and the Church Fathers, but also ecclesiastical history in general evolved into a ‘rational branch of knowledge’. Discussing innovative scholarship in France, Jean-Louis Quantin pointed out that ‘it appealed to experience; it progressed over time and made discoveries; it cultivated critical acumen—that is, a discriminating faculty—rather than memory; and it was sustained by an elaborate epistemology’. In line with this rational approach, it manifested a strong inclination to set aside confessional differences in those instances that moral certainty was achieved; that is, when research results disclosed the most probable version of historical factuality.62 We mentioned above Cappel’s Critica sacra, a controversial book that saw the light through inter-confessional cooperation (which is not to say that the Roman Catholics involved in the enterprise were free from ideological motives). Although Cappel greatly advanced the knowledge of the Hebrew text and its history, the turning point might also be placed later in the century, after discussions on the different versions of the Old Testament had failed to lead to unequivocal results. Now orthodoxy had to be protected against the growing attacks by Socinians, Deists, rationalists, and sceptics who availed themselves of text-critical arguments to undermine the authority of the Bible. More clearly than ever before, a gap between exegetical practices and traditional theology opened up; philology had loosened its ties with theology. An exemplary figure in this development is the French Oratorian Richard Simon, whose (in)famous Histoire critique du Vieux Testament (Rotterdam: Reinier Leers, 1685)63 gave him a peripheral position in the Church of Rome. The book offered the most radical articulation of the view that the Bible text had been mutilated in transmission. 61  Cf. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics 2, p. 421; Bernier, La Critique du Pentateuque de Hobbes à Calmet, pp. 237–8; Dmitri Levitin, ‘Historiographical Review. From Sacred History to the History of Religion: Paganism, Judaism, and Christianity in European Historiography from Reformation to ‘Enlightenment’, The Historical Journal 55:4 (2012), pp. 1117–60, here 1140 and 1159–60; Johann Anselm Steiger, ‘The Development of the Reformation Legacy: Hermeneutics and Interpretation of the Sacred Scripture in the Age of Orthodoxy’, in Magne Saebø (ed.), Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation, vol. 2, From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Göttingen: Vandenbroeck and Ruprecht, 2008), pp. 691–757, here 697–703. Steiger subsequently published a separate, expanded version of this seminal account of German Orthodox Protestant biblical exegesis: Philologia Sacra: Zur Exegese der Heiligen Schrift im Protestantismus des 16. bis 18. Jahrhunderts (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlagsgesellschaft, 2011). 62  Jean-Louis Quantin, ‘Reason and Reasonableness in French Ecclesiastical Scholarship’, Huntington Library Quarterly 74:3 (2011), pp. 401–36, esp. 426–8 (quotation on 428). On moral certainty, see ibid., pp. 418–12, and Étienne Chauvin, Lexicon philosophicum (Leeuwarden: Franciscus Halma, 1713), pp. 97–8, s.v. ‘certitudo’: ‘Actus intellectus dicitur moraliter certus, quando assentitur illi veritati, quae quanquam aliter contingere possit, tam frequens tamen est, ut eius dubium bonis moribus adversetur.’ 63  On the instigation of Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, the privilege granted for the first edition (Paris: Billaine, 1678) was withdrawn and the print run destroyed, except for fifteen or twenty copies. See Patrick J. Lambe, ‘Biblical Criticism and Censorship in Ancien Régime France: The Case of Richard Simon’, The Harvard Theological Review 78 (1985), pp. 149–77, esp. 156–9.

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Simon challenged its stability and integrity in two ways: he described the canonized, now untraceable ‘autograph’ as the result of a long, complicated historiographical process, in which ‘public scribes’ like Ezra played an important role by selecting, ordering, revising, and editing a wide range of archival sources, and he threw light on the text’s subsequent corruption that went hand in hand with its age-long transmission in many copies and translations.64 According to his Roman Catholic opponents, Simon ignored all rules by discrediting the Bible text, even though his strategy offered an important advantage in the polemics with the Protestants: Roman Catholics were justified in clinging to tradition, in view of the fact that ‘the misfortune of time and the negligence of transcribers’ had ‘wrought changes in Holy Scriptures as well as in profane authours’.65 Nonetheless, Simon suggested a way to overcome the impasse. Navigating between, on the one hand, Jews and Protestants, who exalted the impeccability of the original texts, and on the other, those Roman Catholics who venerated Septuagint and Vulgate, he proposed a middle way that would satisfy Jews and Christians alike, in particular the Roman Catholic doctors and the judicious Protestants, who never had denied that the current Hebrew text was flawed: in view of the impossibility of singling out a version that was superior to all the other ones, believers should embrace the Vulgate as a text for daily practice, while the researchers who tried to come to a reliable text of the Hebrew Bible by confronting different versions, should not be thwarted in the least. This was a safe procedure, according to Simon, because God’s providential care for his creatures implied that the salutary message of Scriptures had remained intact.66 Rather than with praise, however, Simon’s proposal met with heavy criticism, from fellow Roman Catholics as well as from Protestants.67 64  See, for a helpful description of Simon’s significance in the history of biblical scholarship, John Van Seters, The Edited Bible: The Curious History of the ‘Editor’ in Biblical Tradition (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006), pp. 185–91. 65  Colin Brown, ‘Enlightenment Period’, in Stanley E. Porter (ed.), Dictionary of Biblical Criticism and Interpretation (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), p. 93. Even though Simon held an eccentric position inside the Roman Catholic Church, his scholarly research attests to a persistent respect for the decrees of Trent and the privileged status of the Vulgate. See John W. Rogerson, ‘Early Old Testament Critics in the Roman Catholic Church—Focussing on the Pentateuch’, in Magne Saebø (ed.), Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation, vol. 2, From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Göttingen: Vandenbroeck and Ruprecht, 2008), pp. 837–50. On Simon, see ibid., pp. 838–43. 66  Pierre Gibert, ‘The Catholic Counterpart and Response to the Protestant Orthodoxy’, in Magne Saebø (ed.), Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation, vol. 2, From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Göttingen: Vandenbroeck and Ruprecht, 2008), pp. 771–2, referring to Richard Simon’s analysis of the exegetical work by Jean Morin, in the Histoire critique du Vieux Testament (Rotterdam: Leers, 1685), pp. 465–6. 67  Simon attacked the Protestant view of the centrality of the Hebrew text, which makes him a truly genuine representative of Roman Catholicism, in spite of his peripheral position. Here it is important to note that Simon carefully scrutinized the works of Spinoza, according to a contribution by John D. Woodbridge, ‘Richard Simon’s Reaction to Spinoza’s Tractatus theologico-politicus’, in Karlfried Gründer and Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggeman (eds), Spinoza in der Frühzeit seiner religiösen Wirkung (Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider, 1984), pp. 201–26.

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Thus far we have described the debates on the status of the Bible in the context of international Calvinism in its struggle with Rome, but it goes without saying that the Republic of the United Provinces played an important role in the exchange of ideas, in a way that seriously affected societal life. The Dutch Republic was characterized by a hodgepodge of contrasting beliefs. Here, just as elsewhere, attempts to unite the Christian churches failed completely,68 simply because the established confessions derived their internal coherence and outward attractiveness from the precise codification of dogma. Turmoil, mutual incrimination, and vehement opposition did not fade away; on the contrary, theological controversy intensified, leading to an ever more precise demarcation of confessional boundaries. Nonetheless, the debates resonating in church and society must have led to the insight that the best way to maintain quietness and order among the citizens was to come to a tacit ‘agreement to disagree’.69 The need for toleration made itself felt, the more so because biblical philology strengthened the idea that complete certainty was doomed to remain unattainable. How could a believer be sure that his interpretation of the Bible was the one intended by God? Availing themselves of their experience as exiles living in the Republic, foreign philosophers such as Pierre Bayle and John Locke offered in their widely divulged publications the theoretical basis for a religious landscape marked by peacefully competing confessions.70

The Epistemic D owngrading of Revealed D octrines by Irenic Writers Thus, biblical philology was conducive to the erosion of exclusive truth claims in ecclesiastical matters—in part involuntarily, but in part also on purpose. In the process, the epistemic quality of the sacred text was called into question. In the seventeenth century, a broad spectrum of assorted forms of disbelief, ranging from atheism, deism, scepticism, and freethinking to indifferentism and lukewarm religiosity, was felt to be a serious threat. It seemed beyond dispute that the Christian faith had to be defended against attacks by an internal enemy. This defence was to be conducted by means of a rational approach, directed by 68  See ‘The Epistemic Downgrading of Revealed Doctrines by Irenic Writers’. 69  That this attitude arose from the needs of practical everyday life, rather than from lofty principles, has been argued by Benjamin J. Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 2007). 70  R. Po-Chia Hsia and Henk van Nierop (eds), Calvinism and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Golden Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), Introduction, p. 2: ‘The central paradox of the Dutch Republic is this: the existence of a confessionally pluralistic society with an official intolerant Calvinist Church that discriminated against Catholics, but whose pragmatic religious toleration elicited admiration and bewilderment in ancient régime Europe’. See also Kaplan, Divided by Faith, pp. 334–58.

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credible, or rather self-evident arguments. It would involve two steps: in introductory skirmishes such arguments should expel stubbornness, prejudice, and mental blindness. Then, in the second phase, after the soil, so to speak, had been tilled, believers should be led to the Bible in order to acquaint them with the details of the Christian creed. The split-up of Christ’s Church prompted a whole range of seventeenthcentury writers to enter the fray in order to negotiate peace between the quarrelling parties. Here we will disregard the irenic schemes propagated by such well-known conciliators as Georg Calixt and John Dury,71 and instead single out those thinkers whose strategy affected the status of the Bible. A relatively small number of influential apologists established a set of core doctrines that were attested by logical reasoning and that were distinct from the doctrines of revelation. The latter could easily be endorsed once the former had been accepted. This new strategy departed from the traditional Protestant view that the rational findings of natural religion only had a subsidiary, supportive value, as compared with the foundational status of the supernaturally revealed biblical message.72 We come across this strategy in the works of irenic writers, for example Herbert of Cherbury, Hugo Grotius, and Marin Mersenne.73 It is also to be found in Spinoza.74 Mostly operating from isolated positions at the fringe of society, conducting secret, now often untraceable negotiations with kindred spirits, goodhearted patrons, and powerful authorities, they were convinced that reduction of faith to a limited set of basic tenets would bring ecclesiastical peace, minimize the disruptive effects of dogmatic strife, and thus create political stability. Agreement on a shortlist of rationally deduced articles was easier to achieve than a compromise on a finely elaborated dogmatic system, the more so if the remaining articles of the second, revealed, and less certain, but nonetheless indispensable category were left open to dignified discussion. Not surprisingly, these irenic writers went to great lengths to corroborate the status attached to the first category of rationally obtained tenets, but by doing so they inevitably lowered the status of the second category. Essential doctrines, 71  Johannes Wallmann, ‘Calixt, Georg (1586–1656)’, in Theologische Realenzyclopädie (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1981), vol. 7, pp. 552–9; Merkt, Das patristische Prinzip (on Calixt); Pierre-Olivier Léchot, Un christianisme ‘sans partialité’: Irénisme et méthode chez John Dury (v. 1600–1680) (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2011). 72  Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics 2, pp. 153–4, 168–9, 176–7, 267–9, and 293–4. 73  Even Louis Cappel showed signs of a reconciling, irenic attitude that eschewed any controversy on the variants in the transmitted versions of the Bible. Cf. Hardy, The Ars Critica in Early Modern England, p. 233, note 595, quoting Cappel’s Critica sacra (Paris: Cramoisy, 1650), p. 304 (4, 16, 6): ‘Liberum esse debet cuilibet hanc vel illam [lectionem] sequi, nec propterea scindenda est Christiana charitas atque unio, aut in partes trahendus lector’. See also Cappel, ibid., pp. 404–5 (6, 5, 12). 74  Benedictus de Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (Amsterdam: Rieuwertsz, 1670), ch. 14. See Jacqueline Lagrée, ‘Les Notions communes religieuses: Antécédents et enjeux du credo minimum chez Herbert de Cherbury et Spinoza’, in Filippo Mignini (ed.), Dio, l’uomo, la libertà: Studi sul Breve Trattato di Spinoza (L’Aquila-Roma: Japadre, 1990), pp. 457–79.

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such as the existence of a divine power constantly supervising his creation, were provable both a priori and a posteriori, i.e. by reasoning from necessary principles as well as by appealing to a universal consensus. On the other hand, the revealed doctrines, for instance about Christ’s incarnation and resurrection, though essential, could not be established by means of pure reasoning (‘ex rationibus naturalibus’). This meant that these tenets were relegated to a lower epistemic domain, where only the believer’s personal answerability to God counted. In consequence, these less evident, supra-rational tenets had to be acquired in a process of laborious adaptation, by studying and discussing the Bible in the first place. Furthermore, it was clear that, precisely because they were unprovable, the adherence to these tenets called for civil tolerance. While the category of less evident, revealed doctrines was vital for salvation as well, their certainty was neither absolute nor perfect.75 Therefore, it would be wrong to impose these doctrines on other people against their will. Not only did enforcement and violence generate hypocrisy, but such behaviour also ran counter to the core of the Christian faith. God had left man in uncertainty, thus treating belief as a touchstone for sifting out the pure gold of true believers from the base metal of freethinkers and infidels.76 The distinction between, on the one hand, evident, rationally grounded articles of faith and, on the other, supernaturally revealed, but less evident ones is fundamental for an understanding of the changes that the status of the Bible went through. The irenical project led to attempts to qualify the doctrine of divine inspiration. An exegete like Hugo Grotius overtly disagreed with the idea that the books of the Bible were divinely inspired from cover to cover. Divine inspiration should not be looked for in the historical parts: it manifested itself mainly in passages that preached such purely ethical values as clemency, self-sacrifice, patience, gratitude, and other virtues that could be summarized in the Golden Rule: ‘treat others the way you want others to treat you’. Here we see how the domain of belief was cut back and internalized as an inspirational force that stimulated practical piety. A supra-rational doctrine like the Trinity was essential for Christian belief, but did not need an elaboration outside the terminology of the Bible. As history made clear, hair-splitting on the triune God had divided and destabilized the Christian church. All in all, Grotius aimed to tone down dogmatic rigidity, strengthen the moral value of belief, and reduce 75  Hugo Grotius, De veritate religionis Christianae as discussed in Henk Nellen, ‘Minimal Religion, Deism and Socinianism: On Grotius’ Motives for Writing De Veritate’, Grotiana 33 (2012), pp. 25–57; Hardy, The Ars Critica in Early Modern England, p. 67; Lorraine Daston, ‘Probability and Evidence’, in Daniel Garber and Michael Ayers (eds), The Cambridge History of SeventeenthCentury Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 1108–44, here 1117, referring to Grotius, De veritate, bk 2 (Leiden: Johannes Maire. 1627), ch. xix and xxiii (Hugo Grotius, Opera omnia theologica (Amsterdam: Blaeu, 1689; reprint Stuttgart and Bad Cannstatt: Frommann Holzboog, 1972), vol. 3, pp. 44 and 48–9). 76  Grotius, De Veritate, bk 2, ch. xxii [= 19], in Grotius, ibid., pp. 48–9.

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religiously fuelled internal Christian strife. It goes without saying that such a latitudinarian attitude provoked suspicions of Socinianism.77 How does this relate to biblical criticism? Adherents to irenicist projects took advantage of the increasingly stronger value that was attached to a belief that stressed ethical aspects and did not spend its energy in endless quarrels about dogmatic niceties. Text-critical and historical research had made clear that the interpretation of texts was obstructed by huge, perhaps even insoluble problems. The abstruse vocabulary of dead languages and the difficulties encountered in unravelling the genesis, target audience, cultural context, and transmission of ancient texts constituted barriers that did not tally with the complete certainty claimed by the theological system. At the same time, philology and history continued to cast their magic spell. By claiming tradition as an indispensable guideline for interpreting the Bible, the Counter-Reformation enhanced the importance that was accorded to the results of text-critical and historical research. Consequently, the focus in the controversy between Rome and Reformation slowly moved from strictly theological issues, such as the transubstantiation, Eucharist, justification by faith alone, purgatory, and the invocation of the saints, to the all-encompassing question where authority should lie, either in the self-authenticating, divinely inspired Bible or in the magisterium of the church, supervising the best interpretation of the Bible on the basis of the ‘consensus patrum’, councils, and papal decisions. The Protestants felt that the way in which their bibliocentrism was challenged called for strong counterarguments: either the Protestant Church should be proven to embody the Apostolic Church, or the Bible needed to be defended as the sole reliable basis for salvation.78 Once more we return to Louis Cappel, a key figure whose resolute philological approach to the Bible text was exemplary. Though Cappel, like many other scholars, accorded the Bible a central position, he also realized that important concessions were inevitable if this position was to retain its credibility. He therefore allowed the researcher to weigh and select transmitted variants freely, in order to come as close as possible to the originally written text. To defend his work, he pointed out that he advocated the thesis of the perfect sufficiency, perspicuity, and reliability of the Bible, at least as far as the essential tenets necessary for salvation were concerned. As noted before, this hermeneutical approach evoked strong objections in Protestant circles. Although he claimed to remain within the bounds of orthodoxy, he closely resembled the irenicists dealt with in this section, whose struggle for unity had put them outside the established church.79 77  Jan Paul Heering, Hugo Grotius as Apologist for the Christian Religion: A Study of his Work De Veritate religionis christianae (1640) (Leiden: Brill, 2004), pp. 199–218; Mortimer, Reason and Religion in the English Revolution, p. 154 and passim. 78  Laplanche, L’Écriture, p. 313.    79  ibid., p. 211.

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The Eccentric Position of Innovative Exegetes The sources reveal a growing awareness of the complicated transmission of the text, but as has been pointed out, this did not immediately lead to changes in systematic theology. Erasmus, Beza, Morin, Cappel, and many other exegetes weighed variants and studied anomalies in the text. Biblical scholarship, however, was not an exclusively orthodox mainstream practice. In the seventeenth century, ground-breaking innovations were often prompted by outsiders. Among these researchers who worked and studied in the periphery of the established churches and universities were Hugo Grotius, Isaac de La Peyrère, and Isaac Vossius. These scholars combined an eccentric position with considerable audacity and obstinacy—features they certainly needed as soon as they made their views public. Isaac de La Peyrère, for instance, seeking unity between Christians, Jews, and pagans, embarked on a revolutionary enterprise that shook the foundations of traditional Christian exegesis. La Peyrère gained fame because of his hypothesis, published in the Prae-Adamitae (1655), that humankind had spread on the earth already long before Adam. Therefore Adam was the progenitor of the Jewish people only. La Peyrère embedded his hypothesis in an overarching irenic frame that aimed at the adoption of Jews and heathens in a broad ecumenical church. Although his hypothesis was subservient to his irenic ideals, he attached great value to it, because he assumed that chronological incongruities, as exposed by comparing pagan (Chinese and Egyptian) timetables with biblical chronology,80 would prevent non-Christians from converting and entering his universal Christian church. His conciliatory scheme motivated him to propose a solution that came down to a complete reversal of traditional exegesis. Much of the material that La Peyrère gathered was taken from recent historical and chronological research, but on several occasions he worked with text-critical arguments, too. A Greek aorist in the original text that had not been rendered accurately in the Vulgate, helped him strengthen the foundations of his doctrine of the Pre-Adamites.81 In a work published previously, Du rappel des juifs (1643), the French King was given a pivotal role in the conversion of the Jewish people, on the basis of a Hebrew word in Psalm 45 (44): 8, which could stand for ‘gladness’, as well as for ‘lily’. According to La Peyrère, who referred to the Vulgate, the Hebrew text had been misinterpreted, owing 80  Isaac de La Peyrère, Prae-Adamitae, Systema, bk 3, ch. 5–7 (pp. 165–80), quoted in Grafton, Defenders of the Text, p. 210. We consulted a copy of Isaac de La Peyrère, Prae-Adamitae sive Exercitatio super versibus duodecimo, decimotertio et decimoquarto capitis quinti Epistolae D. Pauli ad Romanos, quibus inducuntur primi homines ante Adamum conditi (1645), in Lausanne, Bibliothèque cantonale et universitaire, shelfmark 1 U 1789, accessible in Google Books. 81  La Peyrère, Prae-Adamitae, Exercitatio, ch. 13 (pp. 32–3). See, for other examples, PraeAdamitae, Exercitatio, ch. 10 (pp. 27–8) and ch. 25 (p. 57). See also Andreas Pietsch, Isaac La Peyrère: Bibelkritik, Philosemitismus und Patronage in der Gelehrtenrepublik des 17. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen: De Gruyter, 2012), p. 95, n. 71.

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to a transposition of vowels (‘transposition de voyelles’). Instead of ‘oil of gladness’ in the phrase ‘God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows’, the exegete preferred to read ‘oil of lilies’, as if this explanation sufficed to convince every reader that the text directly referred to the most Christian King of France.82 Initially, La Peyrère freely discussed his ground-breaking, revolutionary theory of the Pre-Adamites in private conversations with Claude Saumaise, Hugo Grotius, Marin Mersenne, André Rivet, Ismael Boulliau, and many others, apparently without arousing great turmoil. This changed immediately after the exegete had published his Pre-Adamite theory. To be sure, entering the public atmosphere asked for a carefully designed strategy. For example, La Peyrère might have presented his theory as a hypothesis in the recesses of a hefty Latin biblical commentary, under the guise of an aberrant opinion that deserved strong refutation. But from the moment the author decided to put his full persona behind a theory that he had substantiated by a host of verifiable exegetical, historical, and theological arguments, he had to cope with severe opposition and even slander, culminating in his arrest and condemnation. On the other hand, as soon as La Peyrère publicly denounced his audacious exegetical treatise and confirmed this retraction with a formal conversion to the Church of Rome, life went back to normal.83 On account of the idiosyncrasies of his unionist scheme, La Peyrère may be characterized as a maverick. He did not find any support, but met with ridicule, rejection, and eventually even imprisonment. Nonetheless, at the outset he may well have been stimulated by contemporary political developments in France. There Richelieu, at the end of his life, made serious attempts to come to a reunification of religions. It has been suggested that Grotius attacked La Peyrère because his ideas questioned the universality of original sin and thus undermined the core of the Christian religion. This view is plausible, but we have to take into account that Grotius studied an early draft of the Prae-Adamitae; in the printed version La Peyrère expressly opted for a doctrine of original sin that held sway over the whole of mankind, to the effect that even the heathens before Adam were retroactively encompassed. At the end of the first part of his PraeAdamitae, La Peyrère’s expressed his innocent intentions by saying that he had promoted his ideas by way of a scholarly exercise (‘exercitationis gratia’). He 82  Susan (‘lily’) instead of sasun (‘joy’). Nevertheless, La Peyrère wished to maintain the phrase ‘oil of joy’ in Hebrews 1: 9 as a testimony to Christ’s unction in a spiritual, non-material sense; see La Peyrère, Du rappel des Juifs, pp. 114–39, especially 125–35. Cf. Marin Mersenne, Correspondance du P. Marin Mersenne, religieux minime, ed. Cornelis de Waard, René Pintard, Bernard Rochot, and Armand Beaulieu, 17 vols (Paris: Beauchesne, PUF, and CNRS, 1932–1988), vol. 13, p. 157, Martinus Ruarus to Marin Mersenne, 20 June 1644. 83  Dirk van Miert and Henk Nellen, ‘Media en tolerantie in de Republiek der Letteren: De discussie over Isaac de La Peyrère (ca. 1596–1676) en zijn Praeadamitae’, De Zeventiende Eeuw 30:1 (2014), pp. 3–19.

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abhorred any ideas that went against the traditional doctrines of the church.84 Unfortunately, this obligatory captatio benevolentiae did not shield him from sharp rebuttal. All in all, however, La Peyrère should not be regarded as a heretic: his writings show that he preferred subscribing to a creed that—except, of course, for the theory of the Pre-Adamites—was quite similar to orthodox Protestantism.85 Among La Peyrère’s opponents, the Dutch polymath Isaac Vossius was the most controversial one. He tried to outfox La Peyrère by exalting the absolute authority of the Septuagint against the Hebrew text, a position later condemned by Richard Simon as well as by many other exasperated theologians. Vossius’ main incentive was to solve a problem that had already troubled La Peyrère: by preferring the longer chronology given in the Septuagint it would be easier to encompass the timetables of pagan history, for example those recording Egyptian and Chinese dynasties. His pleas for the authority of the Greek text were founded also on evidence procured by an important textual witness of the Septuagint, the Codex Alexandrinus. Understandably enough, exegetes in Protestant circles were afraid that, by discrediting the Hebrew text, Vossius would advance the Roman Catholic viewpoint that tradition had to support the interpretation of the Bible text. This tendency to serve Rome’s cause did not help him very much. Although his writings were deemed to be more moderate than those of other heretics, the Congregation of the Index condemned them in 1686, partly because they violated Tridentine rules and placed the Vulgate in a negative light.86 For our purpose, however, it is much more important to note that Vossius’ case is exemplary in showing how the debates on the authority of the text gradually changed. Now it was philology that prevailed. In the historicizing approach adopted by exegetes like Vossius and Simon and soon picked up in scholarly discourse, confessional boundaries were transcended and did not determine positions as strictly as before. Initially, English scholars of divergent religious convictions sided with Vossius in defending the authority of the Septuagint and expressed the hope that he was embarking on a seminal edition of the Greek Bible, by including the textual data preserved in the Codex Alexandrinus. But this benevolent attitude did not last for long. The Oxford philologist Humphrey Hody superbly undermined Vossius’ arguments for the antiquity of the Septuagint and its independent, even divinely inspired genesis, by proving the 84  La Peyrère, Prae-Adamitae, Exercitatio, ch. 26 (p. 58): ‘unice benignum meum lectorem oratum volo, ut quaecunque hic congessi, scripta putet exercitationis gratia. Nihil enim ausim asserere de his quae videntur parum convenire cum recepta opinione totius ecclesiae. Cuius praeceptis […] totum me sine fraude et devotissime addico.’ 85  Pietsch, Isaac La Peyrère, pp. 266–8. 86  Scott Mandelbrote, ‘Isaac Vossius and the Septuagint’, in Eric Jorink and Dirk van Miert (eds), Isaac Vossius (1618–1689) Between Science and Scholarship (Leiden: Brill 2012), pp. 85–117, especially pp. 99–102. See also, in the same volume, Anthony Grafton’s contribution on Vossius’ work as a chronologist.

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Letter of Aristeas to be a blatant forgery. Vossius’ philological arguments were swept aside. As a consequence, his reputation quickly went downhill. In this process his fame as a libertine played no decisive role; Hody’s criticism, based on great palaeographical skills, unparalleled command of oriental languages, and a thorough knowledge of manuscripts, had worked out objective, verifiable arguments. He proved that Vossius’ claims for the authenticity of the Septuagint were utterly worthless. In the Dutch Republic, England, and France his shortcomings as a critic were widely decried.87 In a more general sense, the difference in outlook between scholars like Grotius, La Peyrère, Vossius, Spinoza, and Simon on the one hand, and the theologians André Rivet, Johann Buxtorf father and son, Samuel Maresius, Gisbert Voetius, Johannes Coccejus, and Abraham Calovius on the other, can in part be explained by the positions they held in society. While Calovius and his colleagues served the interests of church and university, self-made exegetes like Grotius, Isaac Vossius, and La Peyrère were positioned in the outskirts of the scholarly world. Nevertheless, we must also be aware of counterexamples, for example Balthasar Bekker, who was deeply embedded in the structures of the professional clergy of the Dutch Public Church. His De betoverde weereld (Amsterdam: Daniel van den Daalen, 1691) constituted a comprehensive attack on all kinds of supernatural phenomena like sorcery, spirits, demonic possession, and even the real existence of the devil as described in the Bible. The author was removed from his office as preacher in Amsterdam after an overwhelming avalanche of refutations (most written in the vernacular). Bekker brought Cartesian insights to bear, subscribed to a mechanical worldview and, most importantly, tried to show how translations of the Bible into the vernacular had fanned a superstitious belief in spirits. Disenchantment set in when the original text was explained according to the standards of philologically oriented criticism.88 Among the innovative exegetes who were active in the margins of established biblical scholarship we also encounter some well-known philosophers, Thomas Hobbes and Benedict de Spinoza, and one who is now less famous, the Dutch physician, lexicographer, and philosopher Lodewijk Meyer. In spite of conspicuous differences, their contemporaries saw them as birds of a feather, on account of the books with which they contributed to the dismantling of the divine status of the Bible: Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651), Meyer’s Philosophia S. Scripturae interpres (1666) and Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670). We will deal with these works chronologically: Hobbes and Meyer in the 87  Mandelbrote, ‘Isaac Vossius and the Septuagint’, pp. 113–17. 88  Andrew Fix, ‘Balthasar Bekker and the Crisis of Cartesianism’, History of European Ideas 17 (1993), pp. 575–88, and Annemarie Nooijen, ‘Unserm grossen Bekker ein Denkmal?’ Balthasar Bekkers ‘Betoverde Weereld’ in den deutschen Landen zwischen Orthodoxie und Aufklärung, Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur Nordeuropas, 20 (Münster: Waxmann, 2009), pp. 35–152.

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following section, Spinoza in a section of his own (although it will be instruct­ ive to mention his views occasionally in treating Hobbes, too).

Dismantling the Divine Message: Thomas Hobbes and Lodewijk Meyer In 1611, the King James Version came out. The Dutch protestants followed suit. In 1635, their translation was ready; in 1637, it was authorized by the States General and printed.89 Hence it later acquired the name of ‘Statenbijbel’ (States Bible). Both these early modern Protestant translations are ultimately products of the Reformation principle of sola Scriptura: all theology and all religious guidance is to be derived from Scripture alone. This is squarely opposed to the Roman Catholic emphasis on the need for an ecclesiastial tradition to reveal the meaning of the Bible. For the Reformers, every Christian stands directly before God, without no other mediator but Christ (1 Tim. 2:5).90 An implication of this was that every single believer should have access directly, in his or her own language, to God’s Word as the only source and measure of faith. Couched in theological terms, Scripture was considered distinct from other texts by three features: (1) auctoritas, which it owes to its author, God; (2) perspicuitas (or claritas), meaning that the divine message is intelligible to all; and (3) perfectio (or sufficientia)—sufficient for salvation, that is (cf. 2 Tim. 3:16–17).91 The assumptions behind the general availability of Bibles in the vernacular were that God’s Word was perspicuous and its embodiment in Scripture therefore unequivocal; that nothing essential would get lost in translation; and that a lay audience was capable of getting its divine instruction—at least as far as the way to salvation was concerned—from the translated text without any further learned assistance or comment: Scripture by itself suffices.92 The preface to the Authorized Version, ‘The Translators to the Reader’, confidently stated: ‘wee doe not deny, nay wee affirme and avow, that the very meanest translation of the Bible in English […] containeth the word of God, nay, is the word of God’.

89  Biblia, dat is: De gantsche H. Schrifture (Leiden: Paulus Aertsz van Ravensteyn, 1637). For the most recent account of the making of the States Bible, see Dirk van Miert, ‘De Statenvertaling (1637)’, in Paul Gillaerts, Henri Bloemen et al. (eds), De Bijbel in de Lage Landen: Elf eeuwen van vertalen (Heerenveen: Jongbloed, 2015), pp. 406–44. 90  Steiger, ‘Reformation Legacy’, p. 704; Steiger, Philologia Sacra, p. 21. 91  Steiger, ‘Reformation Legacy’, pp. 715–22; Steiger, Philologia Sacra, p. 64. 92  Cf. Steiger, ‘Reformation Legacy’, p. 721 (quoting Johannes Coccejus’ Summa theologiae ex scripturis repetita, reprinted 1665): Scripture offers no complete catalogue of miracles nor a verbatim record of Christ’s sermons, but it is perfect in the sense that it suffices to instruct its readers in the faith in Jesus Christ the Son of God. This perfectio is then expanded to historical and scientific data contained in the Bible (p. 722).

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By the time Thomas Hobbes93 formulated his views on the authority of the Bible, the assumption that the Bible in English is God’s word, was no longer obvious. Hobbes barely hides his contempt when he remarks in Behemoth: after the Bible was translated into English, every man, nay, every boy and wench, that could read English, thought they spoke with God Almighty, and understood what he said when by a certain number of chapters a day they had read the Scriptures once or twice over. The reverence and obedience due to the Reformed Church here, and to the bishops and pastors therein, was cast off, and every man became a judge of religion, and an interpreter of the Scriptures to himself.94

But Hobbes’ critique went a great deal further. For him, as well as for Spinoza, the very idea of Scripture as a channel through which God spoke directly to the faithful had become problematic. Though in the end the two philosophers occupy markedly different positions as regards religion, Christianity, and the Bible, their discussions of the issues involved show striking similarities.95 Since they knew each other’s works on the subject, these resemblances seem to call for an explanation in terms of influence. Given the chronology, it would seem that the direction can only have been from Hobbes to Spinoza. But the matter turns out to be so complicated as to admit of no clearcut answer, as Noel Malcolm has shown. For his critique of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch Spinoza may have been influenced by Isaac de La Peyrère and Hobbes, but it is more likely that he had developed his own view on the issue independently.96 Spinoza, indeed, must have made up his mind about the authority of the Bible well before he became acquainted with Hobbes’ analyses. His own criticism was rooted in an intimate familiarity with the Hebrew Bible, going back to his Jewish education 93  Harold W. Jones, ‘Thomas Hobbes and the Bible: A Preliminary Enquiry’, in Arts du spectacle et histoire des idées: Recueil offert en hommage à Jean Jacquot (Tours: Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance, 1984), pp. 271–85; Justin A.I. Champion, ‘Hobbes and Biblical Criticism: Some Preliminary Remarks’, Institut d’Histoire de la Réformation, Bulletin annuel 31 (2009–2010), pp. 53–72; Bernier, La Critique du Pentateuque. 94  Thomas Hobbes, Behemoth, in William Molesworth (ed.), The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, vol. 6 (London: Bohn, 1840), p. 190. 95  As has been duly noted by several scholars, e.g. Leo Strauss, Die Religionskritik Spinozas als Grundlage seiner Bibelwissenschaft: Untersuchungen zu Spinozas Theologisch-politischem Traktat (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1930); Arrigo Pacchi, ‘Leviathan and Spinoza’s Tractatus on Revelation: Some Elements for a Comparison’, History of European Ideas 10 (1989), pp. 577–93; Edwin Curley, ‘ “I Durst Not Write So Boldly”, or How to Read Hobbes’ Theological-Political Treatise’, in Daniela Bostrenghi (ed.), Hobbes e Spinoza: Atti del Convegno Internazionale Urbino, 14–17 ottobre, 1988 (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1992), pp. 497–593; Noel Malcolm, ‘Hobbes, Ezra, and the Bible: The History of a Subversive Idea’, in N. Malcolm, Aspects of Hobbes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), pp. 383–431. General discussions of the extent of Hobbes’ influence on Spinoza are William Sacksteder, ‘How Much of Hobbes Might Spinoza Have Read?’, The Southwestern Journal of Philosophy 11:2 (1980), pp. 25–39; Karl Schuhmann, ‘Methodenfragen bei Spinoza und Hobbes: Zum Problem des Einflusses’, in Karl Schuhmann, Selected Papers on Renaissance Philosophy and on Thomas Hobbes, ed. Piet Steenbakkers and Cees Leijenhorst (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2004), pp. 45–71. 96  Malcolm, ‘Hobbes, Ezra, and the Bible’, p. 397.

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in the 1640s. Whether he had in fact read Leviathan before publishing his own treatise cannot be decided on the basis of any documentary evidence, but it is both possible and likely. What Spinoza found in the book will have confirmed and reinforced, rather than shaped his assessment of Scripture.97 As for Hobbes, though he is reported to have exclaimed after having read the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus when that book came out in 1670, that ‘he durst not write so boldly’,98 he did not, in the remaining eight years of his life, respond to it in writing. Hobbes adopted the uncontroversial Protestant distinction between immediate and mediated revelation. God had revealed himself directly to the prophets, evangelists, and apostles; the record of this in Scripture can now be consulted by all, and this constitutes revelation by mediation.99 The trouble is, however, that this cannot in any way be proven: it is a matter of faith rather than of knowledge. The question of the authority of the Bible cannot be answered by explaining how we know (or why we believe) that Scripture is God’s Word, for though all Christians agree on that, they do so for very different reasons. As Noel Malcolm put it: ‘The radical step taken by Hobbes (and avoided by orthodox writers) was to point out that, where a fragment of divine revelation is conveyed to us by a merely human narrative, its reliability can be no greater than that of the narrator himself—in other words, merely human.’100 For Hobbes, then, the real issue is that of political power and authority, and more particularly that of the division of power between state and church: ‘The question truly stated is, by what authority they [the Scriptures] are made law.’101 The answer to that question had been solved in the earlier parts of Leviathan; this can be noone else but the sovereign.102 For Hobbes, ‘the question of the authority of the Scriptures, is reduced to this, whether Christian kings, and the sovereign assemblies in Christian commonwealths, be absolute in their own territories, immediately under God; or subject to one vicar of Christ’.103 His own preference is clear enough: power should be concentrated exclusively in the hands of the civil rather than the ecclesiastical rulers, even if a church claims that it is led by Christ’s vicar on earth. The kingdom of God is a real, not a metaphorical kingdom:104 it means that a Christian king should decide what counts as the true religion. Therefore, the text of the Bible—for example, the canon, or the authority of translations—is a matter of politics, not of philology or theology.

97  See also Anthony Grafton, this volume, chapter 8. 98  John Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. Andrew Clark, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1898), p. 357, as quoted in: Curley, ‘I Durst Not Write So Boldly’, p. 497. 99  Steiger, ‘Reformation Legacy’, p. 703; Hobbes, Leviathan, in The English Works, ed. William Molesworth, vol. 3 (London: Bohn, 1839), ch. 32. 100  Malcolm, ‘Hobbes, Ezra, and the Bible’, p. 423. 101  Hobbes, Leviathan, in The English Works, vol. 3, ch. 33, p. 377. 102  ibid., p. 378.    103  ibid., p. 379.   104  ibid., ch. 35.

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Hobbes wrote and thought within the framework—at least ostensibly—of the Church of England, adopting a Christian (even orthodox) approach to the Bible, including doctrines such as Christological typology, acknowledgement of angels as substantial, and God as the author of the Bible. The issue of Hobbes’ sincerity will remain insoluble: it is impossible for us to assess to what extent Hobbes (or any of his contemporaries, for that matter) managed to combine individual faith with a fundamental philosophical critique of religion, questioning even such doctrines as the immortality of the soul.105 His overriding concern is that of political stability, which means, for Hobbes, the undivided and absolute power of the sovereign. This should not be threatened by any attempts of the church to have the final say in matters of religious doctrine. Like anything else, these fall under the authority of the sovereign. Hobbes was therefore a staunch supporter of the Church of England, of which the sovereign was the head. In that respect, there is no reason whatsoever to be suspicious of his protestations of allegiance to Christianity. On the other hand, precisely because of his preoccupation with political authority, he could not have said anything else, even if he had rejected Christianity altogether. This is why the suspicion of insincerity will persist, whatever Hobbes said, wrote, or thought. In the Dutch Republic, debates about the status and the authority of Scripture had been heated ever since the Reformation, but it is no exaggeration to say that they were set ablaze by the publication in 1666 of an anonymous tract on philosophy as the interpreter of Scripture.106 Its author, Lodewijk Meyer, was a versatile and many-sided man: physician, playwright, poet, translator, theatre manager, lexicographer, literary critic, grammarian, and philosopher. His contribution to philosophy is twofold. As a close friend and literary executor of Spinoza he played a vital part in spreading his friend’s philosophy, but he also was an original and radical thinker in his own right, as manifested in the notorious Philosophia S. Scripturae interpres, subtitled Exercitatio paradoxa (published anonymously in ‘Eleutheropolis’, i.e. Amster­dam, in 1666).107 The work presents itself as ‘paradoxical’, not in the sense of ‘self-contradictory’, but of ‘conflicting with received opinion’. Meyer declared he was fully aware that it would whip up the hatred of the theologians: that is the reason he adduces in the prologue and the epilogue for publishing the book anonymously, after 105  ibid., ch. 38. 106  For the Dutch reception, see Roberto Bordoli, Ragione e Scrittura tra Descartes e Spinoza: Saggio sulla ‘Philosophia S. Scripturae Interpres’ di Lodewijk Meyer e sulla sua recezione (Milano: FrancoAngeli, 1997), pp. 232–407; Jonathan I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 200–12; for reverberations elsewhere in Europe, see Israel, ibid., pp. 212–17. 107  That is, if he was indeed the (sole) author. The book appeared anonymously, and we only have later statements (by Johannes Colerus and by the publisher’s son, Jan Rieuwertsz Jr) for the attribution to Meyer. It is possible that Meyer’s close friend Johannes Bouwmeester also had a hand in it. See the relevant documents in Jacob Freudenthal, Die Lebensgeschichte Spinozas, 2., stark erweiterte und vollständig neu kommentierte Auflage, ed. Manfred Walther and Michael Czelinski (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 2006), vol. 1, p. 86 (Rieuwertsz) and p. 134 (Colerus).

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having considered (and rejected) the idea of suppressing it altogether. The subject, however, was too important for him to remain silent. Christendom is in a wretched state of discord and strife. Theology pretends that it teaches the truth, yet theologians are as divided as the pagan philosophical sects of the Ancients. How can this lamentable situation be overcome? For Meyer, this can only be achieved by applying Descartes’ method, which had proved to be so successful in philosophy, to theology. Everything should be called into doubt, until a firm foundation is established upon which the whole edifice can be erected anew. What can be the principle and foundation of theology? Everybody agrees, so Meyer observes, that the books of the Old and New Testaments are the infallible Word of God (‘Libros V. et N. Testamenti esse infallibile Dei Opt. Max. Verbum’); whoever denies that, places himself outside theology.108 The whole of theological reasoning is founded on God’s Word. But words are ambiguous; how are we to know the meaning of God’s Word? We need an infallible method of interpretation. Meyer’s starting-point is that the truth must be one and undivided: there can be no conflicting truths. What do we have to interpret Scripture and discover its truth? Roman Catholics rely on the authority of the church and the pope, Protestants on scholarship and the help of pious, learned men. Yet all this has so far remained fruitless, and Meyer proposes a radically new and ‘paradoxical’ approach: the judge of the interpretation of Scripture can only be philosophy. ‘Since […] philosophy is the true, certain, indubitable knowledge of things, inferred from principles known through the light of nature and proved apodictically’, it is ‘the certain, infallible norm both for interpreting Holy Writ and for investigating the interpretations’.109 God is the first cause of the natural light or human reason, and thus guarantees the truth of all that we perceive clearly and distinctly. Many theologians belittle the natural light and rely on some supernatural light instead. But truth can neither contradict nor surpass itself.110 Now the truth of Scripture, so Meyer argues, is nothing but its ‘true sense’ (sensus verus); that is, its agreement with the author’s intention.111 In any text, Scripture included, meanings are assigned to words arbitrarily; significance is therefore always relative to the context. The true interpretation of Scripture will lay bare within the context the true sense of the sentences it contains—a task that philosophy is eminently equipped for. 108  Lodewijk Meyer, Philosophia S. Scripturae interpres: Exercitatio paradoxa, in qua veram philosophiam infallibilem S. Literas interpretandi normam esse apodictice demonstratur, et discre­ pantes ab hac sententiae expenduntur, ac refelluntur (Eleutheropoli [= Amsterdam], 1666), Prologus, sig. **1r. 109  ibid., p. 44 (ch. 6, sec. 1): ‘Cum […] Philosophia sit vera, certa ac indubitata rerum notitia, ex principiis naturae lumine cognitis deducta, atque apodictice demonstrata, poterunt hac et ­locorum Scripturae veritates certo erui, erutasque esse demonstrari, et eorum ab aliis factae explicationes, num vero conveniant, an repugnent, explorari, ac huius vel illius notae esse, indubie ostendi. Unde evidentissime consequitur, illam tam Sacras Literas interpretandi, quam interpretationes explorandi certam esse atque infallibilem normam […]’; for Meyer’s full definition of philosophy, see ch. 5, sec. 2. 110  ibid., p. 43 (ch. 5, sec. 7). 111  ibid., p. 32 (ch. 4, sec. 2): ‘sensus Authoris menti atque intentioni congruens ac respondens’.

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Meyer argues that truth in philosophy and truth in theology must be entirely in agreement with each other. He consequently rejects the doctrines of the cre­ ation out of nothing and the resurrection at the Last Judgment of the self-same bodies.112 Surveying the various Christian views of interpreting Scripture, Meyer criticizes the Roman Catholic appeal to authority as well as the Reformed doctrine of explaining Scripture through itself (sola Scriptura), with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. He is more sympathetic towards the Socinian and Remonstrant emphasis on the natural light, but these sects, too, still expect illumination from the Holy Spirit. In the final pages of the Epilogue to the book, Meyer realizes that his handling of the topic has landed him with a thorny question indeed: why should we study Scripture at all, if philosophy is both the unique supplier of truths and the norm to interpret the Bible? It would seem that Scripture is useless, and that it was written and transmitted to us in vain.113 Meyer then argues that the function of Holy Writ is to summon its readers to reflect upon its stories, thus supplying our thinking with topics that otherwise might have gone unnoticed. The Bible is concerned with the salvation of mankind rather than with truth. Meyer ends his treatise with a moving tribute to the rising tide of philosophy: although pursued only in pockets in society, the number of its followers is steadily increasing. Descartes lit a torch and showed the way by his example. Others are following in his footsteps. Then, in a memorable passage, Meyer explicitly announces the imminent publication of new views on God, the rational soul, and man’s supreme beatitude—an obvious reference to Spinoza’s Ethica, then a work in progress. Meyer saw Spinoza’s philosophy basically as a radical expansion of Cartesian philosophy, broadened to include precisely those areas Descartes had given a wide berth: God and the soul. His own Interpres is to be seen in that light, too: as a radical expansion of the Cartesian programme. Unlike Spinoza, though, Meyer eventually denied Scripture any independent value whatsoever. Meyer’s Interpres created a scandal and was banned, with Hobbes’ Leviathan and Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. In the ensuing debates, Meyer preferred to keep silent: Philosophia Sacrae Scripturae interpres thus remained his sole but seminal contribution to philosophy and to biblical scholarship.

The Bible Seen from Outside the Christian Tradition: Spinoza as a Biblical Critic Critical and innovative exegetes like Grotius, Hobbes, La Peyrère, Vossius, and Meyer can all be termed relative outsiders, in comparison with scholars who can be seen as representatives of mainstream religious positions. Yet this label 112  ibid., pp. 59–60 (ch. 8, sec. 2).    113  ibid., Epilogue, sig. P1r.

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is still more appropriate in the case of Benedict de Spinoza. Though his position in the debates on the status of the Bible was atypical and indeed eccentric, it certainly was not marginal. His views had an immediate and tremendous impact. The extent of his influence is shown by a curious shift: after the publication of his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (Amsterdam: Rieuwertsz, 1670), all attempts to read the Bible historically ran the risk of being accused of Spinozism, as Richard Simon was soon to find out. In the tense atmosphere that Spinoza’s book had provoked, this amounted to an accusation of atheism: after ‘Socinian’ had long served as the standard term of abuse for an atheist, it was rapidly superseded by ‘Spinozist’. For those who stressed the perils of the new, histor­ ical reading of the Bible as a collection of human artefacts, the appearance of Spinoza’s book seemed to confirm their worst fears. It also offered them an opportunity to decry textual criticism as a stepping stone towards atheism. Another indication of influence attributed to him is the currently popular assessment of Spinoza as the founding father of biblical criticism.114 This is certainly exaggerated, as the mere list of biblical scholars who have so far featured in this chapter testifies. Yet both his role as bogeyman after 1670 and the overrating of his place in the history of biblical scholarship indicate that his approach to the Bible did bring about a major shift. At least a partial explanation of this remarkable phenomenon is to be found in his uniquely detached position. In 1656, 114  Peter van Rooden, ‘Spinoza’s bijbeluitleg’, Studia Rosenthaliana 18 (1984), pp. 120–33 (120 n. 2) provides an extensive list of references in order to illustrate his point that Spinoza is generally considered a precursor or even founder of modern Bible scholarship—a view that van Rooden himself does not endorse. The scholarly results presented in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus do not, so he argues, depend on a systematically applied new method, but on an ordinary, if perceptive reading of the Bible. Van Rooden’s list of references is not intended to be exhaustive, and many more publications could be added, e.g. M. Vexler, ‘Spinoza et l’autorité de la Bible’, Revue des études juives 64 (1912), pp. 30–58; Woodbridge, ‘Richard Simon’s Reaction to Spinoza’s Tractatus theologico-politicus’; Jacqueline Lagrée and Pierre-François Moreau, ‘La lecture de la Bible dans le cercle de Spinoza’, in Jean-Robert Armogathe (ed.), Le Grand Siècle et la Bible (Paris: Beauchesne, 1989), pp. 97–115; Frank E. Manuel, The Broken Staff: Judaism through Christian Eyes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 164–5, 181–3; Manfred Walther, ‘Biblische Hermeneutik und historische Erklärung: Lodewijk Meyer und Benedikt de Spinoza über Norm, Methode und Ergebnis wissenschaftlicher Bibelauslegung’, Studia Spinozana 11 (1995), pp. 227–300; Rüdiger Otto, ‘Johann Christian Edelmann’s Criticism of the Bible and its Relation to Spinoza’, in Wiep van Bunge and Wim Klever (eds), Disguised and Overt Spinozism around 1700: Papers Presented at the International Colloquium, held at Rotterdam, 5–8 October 1994 (Leiden: Brill, 1996), pp. 171–88; Richard Popkin, ‘Spinoza and Bible Scholarship’, in Don Garrett (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 383–407; James Samuel Preus, Spinoza and the Irrelevance of Biblical Authority (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Roy A. Harrisville and Walter Sundberg, The Bible in Modern Culture: Baruch Spinoza to Brevard Childs, 2nd edn (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002); Adam Sutcliffe, Judaism and Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Travis L. Frampton, Spinoza and the Rise of Historical Criticism of the Bible (New York: T&T Clark, 2006); Brayton Polka, Between Philosophy and Religion: Spinoza, the Bible, and Modernity, 2 vols (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2007); Steven Nadler, ‘The Bible Hermeneutics of Baruch de Spinoza’, in Magne Saebø (ed.), Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of its Interpretation, vol. 2, From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Göttingen: Vandenbroeck and Ruprecht, 2008), pp. 826–36.

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Spinoza had formally broken with Judaism. He never converted to Christianity. As a thinker without a commitment to any of the religious denominations around him, and, for that matter, without any financial, professional, or personal obligations either, Spinoza was freer to address the precarious questions that many others had raised before him but were afraid to answer. The Tractatus Theologico-Politicus is Spinoza’s contribution to biblical criticism. As the title reveals, it deals with theological and political issues, and in particular with the distribution of power between religious and civil authorities. The division between the parts of the book is uneven: chapters 1–15 deal with the Bible and religion, chapters 16–20 with politics, but the latter include an extended discussion of the Hebrew state as presented in the Bible. The entire project, then, ultimately rests upon Spinoza’s analysis of the Bible, in particular the Old Testament. In fact, he gives several reasons why he prefers not to deal with the New Testament in detail: his insufficient command of Greek, the lack of the original texts of the books of the New Testament (which Spinoza holds to have been written in Hebrew), and the fact that this work has already been done by other capable scholars.115 It is clear, however, that Spinoza was not acquainted with the scholarly literature then available, nor did he seem to be particularly interested in its results.116 What interests him is the way in which this particular combination of texts, from the ancient Hebrew and the early Christian tradition, has functioned historically as the Word of God. Spinoza was raised in the Jewish tradition, but he addresses a Christian audience whose assessment of the Bible as the Word of God he can appreciate, even though for Spinoza the meaning of that phrase differs widely from its ordinary acceptation. He deals extensively with the concept in chapter  12. Since in Spinoza’s own philosophical system, as set forth in the Ethica (1677), God is identical with nature, and since there is nothing outside, beyond, or against nature, all words are—by definition—words of God. What makes the Bible God’s Word in a distinctive sense is that it teaches the universal religion, common to all men, as a moral code of conduct. Spinoza refers to the true way of living as taught in Isaiah 1:16–17, which does not consist in ceremonies (denounced in vss 11–15), but in charity and a true heart. To begin with, he disabuses his readers of the fanciful illusion that the Bible is a sort of letter sent by God to mankind. In the preceding chapters, Spinoza has argued that the Bible is ‘faulty, mutilated, corrupted, and inconsistent, that we have only fragments of it, and finally that the 115  Benedictus de Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus/Traité théologico-politique, ed. Fokke Akkerman, trans. Jacqueline Lagrée and Pierre-François Moreau (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999), ch. 10, pp. 408–9. 116  Piet Steenbakkers, ‘Das Wort Gottes und die wahre Religion: Das Fazit von Spinozas Bibelkritik (Kapitel 11–12)’, in Otfried Höffe (ed.), Baruch de Spinoza: Theologisch-politischer Traktat, Klassiker Auslegen (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2014), pp. 127–37 (pp. 128–30). Anthony Grafton argues in chapter 8 of this volume that Spinoza was not particularly acquainted with work on the Old Testament either.

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original text of the covenant God made with the Jews has been lost’.117 So in what sense can the Bible be said to be God’s Word? In what sense can a book, a lifeless object, be considered sacred and divine? Nothing is sacred or profane by itself: Scripture is sacred only in so far as it motivates human beings to obey the divine law.118 It is corrupted not by scribal errors in the text, but by human neglect of the divine law. What remains then is only paper and ink, whose worship constitutes superstition and fuels fanaticism. In writing his treatise on the Bible and politics, Spinoza took his cue from the larger movement towards a historical and contextual reading of the Bible that, as we have seen, had been on its way for quite a while. Yet contemporaries saw his contribution to the debate as far more radical and pernicious than anything previously published on the status of the Bible. As Spinoza observes, any difficulties we experience in interpreting the Bible are due to the distance separating us from the era in which its books were written. The audiences for which they were originally conceived had no problems in understanding the texts, but if we want to make sense of them now, we can only do so after a painstaking historical investigation into the circumstances, the language, their authorship, the concrete events related in them, and so on. This is why Spinoza deems it necessary to formulate a method for reading the Bible as a historical collection of texts, which have come down to us in shapes determined by the vicissitudes of a long process of transmission. For this, we must draw up a ‘history’; that is, an exhaustive decription of all the relevant data we can discover about and extract from the Bible: ‘the universal rule in interpreting Scripture is to attribute nothing to Scripture as its teaching which we have not understood as clearly as possible from its history’.119 His systematic point of departure, then, is that the Bible should be understood from itself alone (ex sola Scriptura). On the face of it, this looks akin to the Protestant formula of sola Scriptura (God’s Word as the only source and measure of faith), but Spinoza’s principle aims at something else: explaining the Bible through itself is to lay bare the meaning it had for its authors and their audiences. From that perspective, the biblical message is a purely moral one; it does not teach any philosophical or scientific truths. 117  Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, ch. 12, p. 428: ‘Qui Biblia, ut ut sunt, tanquam epistolam Dei e caelo hominibus missam considerant, clamabunt sine dubio me peccatum in spiritum sanctum commisisse, qui scilicet Dei verbum mendosum, truncatum, adulteratum et sibi non constans statuerim, nosque ejus non nisi fragmenta habere et denique syngraphum pacti Dei, quod cum Judaeis pepigit, periisse.’ The English version has been taken from The Collected Works of Spinoza, ed. and trans. Edwin Curley, vol. 2 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016). 118  Cf. also Steven Nadler, ‘Spinoza on the Divinity of Scripture’, in Spinoza Research: To Be Continued (Voorschoten: Uitgeverij Spinozahuis, 2016), pp. 35–47. 119  Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, ch. 7, p. 282: ‘Regula igitur universalis interpretandi Scripturam est, nihil Scripturae tanquam ejus documentum tribuere, quod ex ipsius historia quam maxime perspectum non habeamus.’ Translation taken from The Collected Works of Spinoza, ed. and trans. Curley, p. 172.

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In understanding the intention of the text, Spinoza does not allow any extrabiblical norms such as conformity to reason. The sheer survival of this particular set of texts is the result of a tortuous course of events, and in the process they have undergone all sorts of changes, including manipulation and corruption. Surprisingly, Spinoza does not conclude from this that the Bible has become useless. In fact, the argument of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus may well be construed as an attempt to save the Bible as a moral benchmark, both against an absolute reading of God’s Word as a true account of the origins and the purpose of the world, and against a relativist depreciation of it. Spinoza certainly did not intend to expose the Bible as well-nigh redundant, in the way his radical acquaintance Adriaan Koerbagh had done.120 Nor did he agree with his close friend Lodewijk Meyer that the truth of the Bible should be probed by philosophy. Rather than a philosophical treatise yielding knowledge, the Bible was a random collection of stories that functioned as an edifying reminder of the most basic moral and social injunction, viz. that we should worship God and that the best way to do so is to love our neighbours like ourselves. In the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Spinoza attempts to set forth the dangers and uses of religion. The argument tacitly presupposes his own philosophical way to salvation, as set forth in the Ethica, but he does not require his readers to adopt this. Instead, he presents his views in the vocabulary of the Christian audience he addresses, turning the laws of nature into divine decrees. Yet Spinoza does not feel the need to stay within the boundaries of Christianity. In the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, true religion and philosophy are presented as fundamentally different but equally valid ways to salvation. This could not assuage the misgivings of his contemporaries: as Spinoza employed a sustained philosophical analysis in order to justify this division, treating the Bible as a historical, human product, the comparison tends to present religion as, at best, a substitute for philosophy. On account of its affective origins, Spinoza saw religion as an inexorable phenomenon: people will always be susceptible to fear and distress, and therefore to a temptation to invest gods with anthropomorphic features, seeing them as beings to whom they can turn for comfort and support. As this behaviour is rooted in human nature, attempts to eradicate religion are pointless. To the extent that religion as a social institution can be conducive to cooperation, charity (charitas), and law-abiding behaviour (pietas), Spinoza regards it as beneficial. Indeed, it is only in that form that he accords to it the title of (true) religion. Whenever a set of convictions with claims about faith lead to repression, persecution, and fanaticism, he labels it as superstition rather 120  Adriaan Koerbagh, Een bloemhof van allerley lieflijkheyd sonder verdriet geplant door Vreederijk Waarmond, ondersoeker der waarheyd (Amsterdam: ‘Gedrukt voor den Schrijver’, 1668), entry ‘Bibel, of Bybel, een boek’, pp. 95–7: only to the extent that it concurs with reason can Scripture be considered as genuine; all the rest is useless and vain.

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than as religion. In the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Spinoza even offers a set of seven ‘dogma’s of universal faith’.121 This minimal creed should suffice for a religion that binds people in society together, instead of pitting them against each other. This is where a moral reading of the Bible comes in: even if the text has not been preserved intact in the process of transmission, its straightforward social and moral import—viz. to love God and to love our neighbours like ourselves—has nonetheless remained in full force. Spinoza made a passionate attempt to salvage the Bible as a source of morality, and in doing so he managed to marshal an impressive series of essential questions and arguments relating to the transmission, reception, and function of Scripture. Though competent as a Hebraist, his significance for biblical scholarship does not reside in innovative philological solutions to textual conundrums.

By Way of Conclusion: An Evaluative Note The chapters of this book scrutinize, each from its own perspective, a shift in the status of the Bible in Western culture in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is common usage among historians to denote this period as ‘early modern’, and the shift as part of a larger and more diffuse process often called, for want of a better term, ‘secularization’. Indeed, mapping historical changes of the kind under discussion here inevitably invites the use of broad classificatory notions like modernity, secularization, and Enlightenment.122 These terms have been applied in widely different and even contradictory senses, and have been used in such emotionally and ideologically charged ways that many historians now tend to avoid them. Though they are indeed ambiguous, we prefer not to steer clear of them: we started and conducted the research for our project under the auspicious working title ‘Biblical Criticism and Secularization in the Seventeenth Century’. In fact, it is hard to make sense of a complex process like the waning of religious authority in Western society in the early modern and modern period without appealing to notions that express development of some sort. Although the term ‘secularization’ and its derivatives are mentioned only intermittently and are nowhere fundamentally questioned in the contributions 121  Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, ch. 14, pp. 474–7: ‘fidei universalis dogmata sive universae Scripturae intenti fundamentalia’. 122  Recently, debates on modernity and on secularization tend to focus on the notion of Enlightenment: Jonathan I. Israel and Martin Mulsow, Radikalaufklärung (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2014). In many publications, Jonathan Israel has since 2000 elaborated his particular view of modernity, comprising a package of features: the dismissal of superstition, fanaticism, and zealotry; the undermining of monarchy, aristocracy, and the church; the separation of church and state; egalitarianism; political and religious toleration; individual liberty in agreement with the common interest; women’s emancipation; and sexual liberation.

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to this book, we want to conclude this survey by stating that developments in the long seventeenth century show essential features that might be characterized by, for instance, ‘secularization’. This does not imply that we subscribe to a (let alone the) so-called ‘secularization thesis’, where, in the words of Ian Hunter, ‘ “Secularization” refers to an epochal transition, beginning in late medieval or early modern times, in which a culture based in religious belief was transformed into one based in an autonomous human reason.’123 By offering such a rigid and normative definition of secularization, Hunter in fact makes it inapplicable to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: such a transition indeed never took place, and to the extent that developments in that direction can be discerned, they should probably all be situated in the twentieth century. As we see it, though, the combination of an appeal to individual conscience, aversion to ecclesiastical claims to power in society, an increasing emphasis on ethical rather than dogmatic justification, as well as the attempt to eliminate superstition— a combination whose emergence Hunter situates around 1800124—can already be perceived in the debates on the status of the Bible in the seventeenth century. Obviously, these debates took place in the upper echelons of society, church, and university, and did not, as yet, disturb the mass of believers. Nonetheless, a process of weakening of ecclesiastical authority did occur, and the fruits of this process, even if still unripe, merit the qualification of secularization. For us, secularization involves a growing historical awareness (historicization) and an increasing sensitivity for rational arguments that led to an ever stronger distrust towards the truth claims of traditional religion. With regard to the status of the Bible in the seventeenth century, this sensitivity is most readily discernible in the findings of biblical philology.

123  Ian Hunter, ‘Secularization: The Birth of a Modern Combat Concept’, Modern Intellectual History 12 (2015), pp. 1–32, quotation p. 2. 124  ibid., p. 14.

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Part I Famous Cases of pia fraus

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2 The Johannine Comma from Erasmus to Westminster Grantley McDonald

In the writings of the earliest Christians, Jesus is endowed with a number of titles, such as ‘Son of God’, ‘Son of Man’, ‘Lord’, and the ‘Word’ that was with God and in some way was God. These writings also describe how the Spirit of God appeared at various times during Jesus’ earthly life and descended upon his followers soon after his resurrection. However, early Christian theologians were forced to consider how these claims could be reconciled on the one hand with the demands of Jewish monotheism, and on the other with the theological and philosophical systems of the classical world, such as Hellenistic Jewish conceptions of wisdom, the Stoic notion of the logos and the Neoplatonic metaphysics of divine emanation. In time, orthodox Christian theologians arrived at a formulation which strove to preserve the Jewish insistence on divine unity, adopting several metaphysical concepts from pagan philosophy while rejecting others: while the Neoplatonic triad of the One, Mind, and Soul initially seemed a promising way of understanding the relationship between Father, Son, and Spirit, the notion of emanation seemed to turn the act of creation into an involuntary reflex of the divinity, while the subordinationism of the Neoplatonic model was also uncongenial to many Christian thinkers. The orthodox party came to maintain that God the Father, Jesus the Messiah, and the Spirit of God are three co-equal, co-eternal persons within the one divine substance (the Trinity), and that Jesus was simultaneously fully human and fully divine, his two natures remaining distinct but unified (the hypostatic union). However, not all Christians agreed with these formulations. Some, like Sabellius, argued that Father, Son, and Spirit are simply different modes by which God reveals himself to humanity. The Alexandrian presbyter Arius taught that the Son was the first of God’s creation, and therefore subordinate to God and non-eternal, though still worthy of receiving prayer and reverence as God’s anointed Son. In reaction to such positions, orthodox councils formulated creeds summarizing the principal articles of their belief, and theologians wrote

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catechisms to instruct converts and children in the elements of the faith in preparation for their baptism and reception into full membership of the community. After the Arian Goths and Vandals were finally absorbed by Catholicism, there was little dispute over the doctrine of the Trinity in the Middle Ages, except for a lingering difference between Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox over the procession of the Holy Spirit. In the sixteenth century, Erasmus contributed to the revival of the ancient controversy when he uncovered the existence of considerable doctrinal diversity in the early church. While Erasmus himself remained within the fold of the Catholic church, his writings provoked others, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, to arrive at theological positions they considered closer to those of the earliest Christians than the dogmas formulated at the great councils of the fourth and fifth centuries. Amongst the doctrines challenged by Erasmus’ readers was that of the orthodox formulation of the Trinity. Some, notably Michael Servetus and Faustus Socinus, maintained that Jesus is subordinate to God the Father. Socinus also advocated beliefs about human choice and the duties of the citizen which would put his followers at odds with secular authorities. Socinianism, which many considered to be synonymous with anti-Trinitarianism, became a spectre which haunted seventeenth-century debates on the proper character of the Christian church and religion. In the third of its articles on the Trinity, the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), the central doctrinal statement of the Presbyterian church, declares: ‘In the Unity of the God-head there bee Three Persons, of one substance, power, and eternity; God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost.’1 In the margin, the authors give four proof texts on which this proposition was based: Mt. 3:16–17 (the baptism of Jesus), Mt. 28:19 (the Great Commission), and 2 Cor. 13:14 (the ‘Trinitarian blessing’), and 1 Jn 5:7 (the Johannine Comma): 7 For there are three that beare record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.8 And there are three that beare witnesse in earth, the Spirit, and the Water, and the Blood, and these three agree in one. (1 Jn 5:7–8, as given in the Authorised Version, 1611).

In 1648, the Scottish Parliament approved two catechisms to promote and impose the form of belief expressed in the Confession. In the Larger Catechism, the catechist is asked: ‘How many persons are there in the Godhead?’ The required response was: ‘There be three Persons in the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and 1  The Confession of Faith, and the Larger and Shorter Catechisme (Edinburgh: Gedeon Lithgow, 1649), p. 10. On the printing of these documents, see Benjamin B. Warfield, The Printing of the Westminster Confession (Philadelphia, IL: MacCalla, 1901). For a more detailed exposition of this material and for further references readers are referred to my monograph Biblical Criticism in Early Modern Europe: Erasmus, the Johannine Comma and Trinitarian Debate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).

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the Holy Ghost; and these three are one, true, eternal God, the same in substance, equall in power and glory, although distinguished by their Personall properties.’2 A note in the margin likewise refers to 1 Jn 5:7, and this latter response paraphrases the verse directly. The Johannine Comma—‘comma’ here means not a mark of punctuation, but a sentence or clause—is the most explicit expression in the New Testament of the doctrine of the consubstantial Trinity, and had long been employed in the Latin west as the classic Scriptural basis for Trinitarian doctrine. The Westminster divines could look back on a long line of theologians who had relied on this same verse. However, the textual history of the Johannine Comma is problematic, to say the least. Despite the impression an unsuspecting reader might have gained from the Authorized Version, the entire passage from ‘in heaven’ in v. 7 to ‘on earth’ in v. 8 does not occur in any extant Greek manuscript older than the fourteenth century. How did it happen that the framers of the Westminster Confession and Catechisms came to rely so heavily on such a poorly attested Scriptural authority? Patristic authors from Tertullian (c. 160–c. 225) onwards had used the phrase ‘these three are one’, part of the genuine text of 1 Jn 5:8, as a neat verbal formulation to express their understanding of the relationship between God, Jesus, and the Spirit. A Trinitarian interpretation of the phrase ‘these three are one’ is found primarily in writers of the Latin west, such as ps.-Eusebius Vercellensis, and Phoebadius.3 There is some evidence that Origen also used the phrase in allegorical interpretations of the Trinity.4 A formulation in which the spirit, water, and blood are replaced by ‘the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit’, and the two triads of Father–Word–Spirit and spirit–water–blood are explicitly located in heaven and earth respectively, is found in creeds from the late fourth century, such as that of Priscillian, burned as a heretic in 385. This Trinitarian expansion of the text is found alongside the genuine parts of the text, in various com­ binations, in some manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate from the seventh century onwards. It is likely that the Trinitarian expansion of the genuine text was copied into the margin of a manuscript of the Vulgate, and then inserted into the body text by a later copyist, possibly in error. By the tenth century, the Comma is found more frequently as part of the body text of the epistle, and by the fourteenth century it is present almost invariably. Although there is some trace of allegorical interpretation of 1 Jn 5:8 in the Greek tradition, there is no evidence of 2  The Confession of Faith (1649), p. 75. The Comma is also given as a proof text in the response to the question: ‘What doe the Scriptures make known of God?’ (pp. 74–5), and in the Smaller Catechism (p. 158). 3  Ps.-Eusebius Vercellensis, De Trinitate I, in Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina (Turnhout: Brepols, 1953–2008), vol. 9, p. 15; Phoebadius, Contra Arianos 27.5, in Contra Arianos: Streitschrift gegen die Arianer, trans. Jörg Ulrich (Freiburg i. B.: Herder, 1999), p. 154. 4  Origen, Selecta in Psalmos, Ps. CXXII.2, Patrologiæ cursus completus, series Græca, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne (Paris: Seu Petit-Montrouge, 1857–1866), vol. 12, col. 1633.

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the same process of textual development in the Greek text of the New Testament, nor in any other textual tradition. Until the sixteenth century, the Johannine Comma remained a characteristic feature only of the Latin Vulgate and those translations derived from it. Many theologians and philosophers in the Latin west came to rely on the Johannine Comma as the classic Scriptural formulation of the Trinity. The Comma gained further currency from the time of Innocent III, when it was combined with the text Duo seraphim (cf. Is 6:1–3) to form the eighth responsory sung at matins on Sundays throughout the year. When Erasmus omitted the Comma from the first and second editions of his Greek-Latin New Testament, he was accused by the Englishman Edward Lee (c. 1482–1544) and the Spaniard Diego Lopez de Zúñiga (Stunica, † 1531) of trying to revive the heresy of Arius. Both men nursed a grudge against Erasmus, and it is not unlikely that their attacks were motivated at least in part by personal animus. Lee claimed that Erasmus had invited his comments on his New Testament, but then dismissed them as trivial when they were offered. Lee was also associated with several conservative churchmen in England, such as the Franciscan Henry Standish, who feared that Erasmus’ revision of the traditional Latin Vulgate had pushed open the door for heresy. Stunica, one of the editors of the Complutensian polyglot, resented the fact that Erasmus had beaten the Spanish editors to publication. While the New Testament volume of the Complutensian Bible had been printed in January 1514, the sheets remained unbound until the five remaining volumes (the Old Testament and a reference volume) were completed in July 1517. Even then, it took a direct command from Leo X (22 March 1520) until the Spanish edition was finally published, by which time Erasmus’ New Testament had already appeared in a corrected second edition. Erasmus defended himself against the criticisms of Lee and Stunica by arguing that he was simply reproducing what was in the manuscripts he had consulted. Lee pointed out that the omission of the most explicit formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity in the Scripture could hardly be considered a neutral editorial choice. Erasmus was aware of the importance with which the Comma had been invested by western theologians, and equally aware that the accusation of heresy had the potential to harm the reception of his work and endanger his program of philosophia Christi. In the midst of his dispute with Lee, Erasmus was presented with a Greek manuscript from England containing the Comma. Erasmus decided to commit the lesser of two evils, and adopted the reading of the Comma from this ‘British codex’ in his monoglot Latin edition in June 1521, and in the third edition of his Latin-Greek diglot in 1522. However, in his Apology to Stunica, and soon after in his annotations on the Greek text, he expressed his doubts about the manuscript: However—lest I should keep anything hidden—there has been found in England one single Greek manuscript in which occurs what is lacking in the commonlyaccepted texts. It is written as follows: Ὅτι τρεῖς εἰσιν οἱ μαρτυροῦντες ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ,

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πατήρ, λόγος καὶ πνεῦμα, καὶ οὗτοι οἱ τρεῖς ἕν εἰσιν. Καὶ τρεῖς εἰσιν μαρτυροῦντες ἐν τῇ γῇ, πνεῦμα, ὕδωρ, καὶ αἷμα. Εἰ τὴν μαρτυρίαν τῶν ἀνθρώπων, etc,5 although I think it is no accident that the phrase ‘and these three are unto one’, which is found in our Greek manuscripts, is not repeated at this point [i.e. in verse 8]. I therefore restored from this British codex what was said to be lacking in our editions, lest anyone should have any handle to blame me unjustly.6 However, I suspect that this codex was adapted to agree with the manuscripts of the Latins.7

Only two extant Greek New Testament manuscripts predating 1522 contain the Comma. The earliest was copied in 1362–63 by brother Bartholomew of the monastery of St John on the Mount of Olives (now Rome, BAV ms Ottob. gr. 298, GA [Gregory-Aland] 629ap). Bartholomew copied the Greek and Latin texts in parallel columns, but altered the Greek in many unusual ways to the Latin.8 There is no evidence that Erasmus ever saw this manuscript; in any case, the reading of the Comma in GA 629 is different from that reported by Erasmus. The other manuscript, held, in the library of Trinity College Dublin since the seventeenth century, is generally known as Codex Montfortianus (GA 61). Erasmus’ 1522 diglot gives a reading of 1 Jn 5:7–8a (ὅτι . . . αἷμα) virtually identical to that in Montfortianus, correcting transcription errors he had made in the Apologia ad Stunicam and in his Annotationes: Ὅτι τρεῖς εἰσιν οἱ μαρτυροῦντες ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ, πατήρ, λόγος, καὶ πνεῦμα ἅγιον, καὶ οὗτοι οἱ τρεῖς ἕν εἰσι. καὶ τρεῖς εἰσιν οἱ μαρτυροῦντες ἐν τῇ γῇ, πνεῦμα, καὶ ὕδωρ, καὶ αἷμα, καὶ οἱ τρεῖς εἰς τὸ ἕν εἰσιν.

Erasmus’ only departure from the reading given in Montfortianus was to add καὶ before ὕδωρ, perhaps for stylistic reasons, perhaps through attraction from his 1516/1519 text. However, the absence of this καὶ in the reading of the 5  This information on the reading in the British codex was first given in Erasmus’s Apologia respondens ad ea quæ Iacobus Lopis Stunica taxauerat (Leuven: Dirk Martens, 1521), p. q1v; critical ed. in Opera Omnia Desiderii Erasmi (Amsterdam: North Holland/Elsevier, 1969–2008; Leiden: Brill, 2009– [henceforward ASD]), vol. IX.2, p. 258, where Erasmus (or the compositor) in his haste made three errors in recording the manuscript reading. 6  Despite what has been asserted by several critics since Jacques Le Long, ‘Lettre du Pere le Long à Monsieur Martin, Ministre d’Utreck. De Paris, ce 12. Avril 1720’, Journal des Sçavans (Paris: Witte, 1720), pp. 298–304, this statement is true. On the expression ansa calumniandi, cf. Adag. 304 (Ansam quaerere et consimiles metaphorae), ASD II:1, pp. 411–12. 7  Erasmus, In Novum Testamentum ab eodem tertio recognitum, Annotationes item ab ipso recognitæ, & auctario neutique pœnitendo locupletatæ (Basel: Froben, 1522), pp. 617–18: ‘Veruntamen, ne quid dissimulem, repertus est apud Anglos græcus codex vnus, in quo habetur quod in vulgatis deest. Scriptum est enim hunc ad modum: Ὅτι τρεῖς εἰσιν οἱ μαρτυροῦντες ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ, πατήρ, λόγος καὶ πνεῦμα, καὶ οὗτοι οἱ τρεῖς ἕν εἰσιν. Καὶ τρεῖς εἰσιν μαρτυροῦντες ἐν τῇ γῇ, πνεῦμα, ὕδωρ, καὶ αἷμα. Εἰ τὴν μαρτυρίαν τῶν ἀνθρώπων etc. Quanquam haud scio an casu factum sit, vt hoc loco non repetatur quod est in græcis nostris: καὶ οἱ τρεῖς εἰς τὸ ἕν εἰσιν. Ex hoc igitur codice Britannico reposuimus quod in nostris dicebatur deesse, ne cui sit ansa calumniandi. Tametsi suspicor codicem illum ad nostros esse correctum.’ 8  Alfonso Capecelatro, Codices Manuscripti Græci Ottoboniani (Rome: Typographeum Vaticanum, 1893), p. 161.

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manuscript as reported in Erasmus’ Apologia and Annotationes suggests that it was absent from Erasmus’ Vorlage. To the reading from Montfortianus he also added the concluding clause of v. 8b (καὶ οἱ τρεῖς εἰς τὸ ἕν εἰσιν), which he spliced in from his text of 1516/1519. Aquinas had condemned this clause as an heretical interpolation, added by Arians to make it seem that their unity was only one of testimony or intention, not one of essence; consequently, it is omitted from many Latin manuscripts copied after Aquinas’ day, probably including the one consulted by the scribe of Montfortianus as his model for the Comma.9 Erasmus claimed that Montfortianus had been ‘adapted’ to make it conform more closely to the Vulgate. In fact, the fifth chapter of 1 Jn contains five instances where the scribe departed deliberately from the reading given in his parent manuscript (Oxford, Lincoln College ms gr. 82, GA 326ap†) to make the Greek conform more closely to the Latin Vulgate.10 In v. 6, GA 326 gives ὅτι τὸ πνεῦμα ἐστιν ἡ ἀλήθεια (‘for the Spirit is the truth’), while Montfortianus has ὅτι ὁ Χριστός ἐστιν ἀλήθεια (‘for Christ is the truth’), a reading found in no other extant manuscript, but one that conforms with the reading quoniam Christus est veritas, a common variant in the Vulgate text attested as early as Codex Fuldensis (copied 541–46). This variant changes the sense significantly, turning the ὅτι-clause into an indirect statement rather than an affirmation that the Spirit is identifiable with the truth. The suspicion of alteration is strengthened by the unidiomatic omission of ἡ before ἀλήθεια. In Montfortianus, the article is also missing before πατήρ, λόγος and πνεῦμα ἅγιον in v. 7, and before πνεῦμα, ὕδωρ, and αἷμα in v. 8, a grammatical irregularity which leads to the suspicion that the scribe simply translated both verses (somewhat inexpertly) from Latin, which, of course, has no articles. In v. 9, Montfortianus departs from GA 326 by giving ὅτι instead of ἣν, following the Vulgate reading quoniam. In v. 12, GA 326 gives ὁ ἔχων τὸν υἱὸν, while Montfortianus gives the fuller reading ὁ ἔχων τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ Θεοῦ, in conformity with the Vulgate qui habet filium Dei. And in verse 20, GA 326 gives the indicative ἐσμεν, while Montfortianus gives the subjunctive ὦμεν, in conformity with the Latin simus.11 The occurrence in one chapter of five readings which Erasmus had never seen in any other manuscript may have raised his suspicions about the reliability of this codex, and perhaps made 9  Thomas Aquinas, Opuscula selecta, 3 vols (Paris: Lethielleux, 1881), vol. 3, pp. 450–1 (In decretalem I expositio ad archidiaconum Tridentinum). This passage was printed in the margin of the Complutensian Bible, apparently in order to discredit Erasmus; see Anne Reeve and Michael A. Screech, Erasmus’ Annotations on the New Testament: Acts, Romans, I and II Corinthians (Leiden: Brill, 1990), pp. xxii–xxiii. The unusual omission of this phrase in the Greek text of the British codex was one of the details that made Erasmus suspect its authenticity. 10  Orlando T. Dobbin, The Codex Montfortianus: A Collation of this Celebrated ms. in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin (London: Bagster, 1854), showed Acts and the Epistles in Montfortianus were copied from Lincoln College ms gr. 82; Dobbin suggested that the Gospels were copied from two manuscripts, Oxford, New College ms 68 (GA 58e) and Oxford, Lincoln College ms gr. 18 (GA 56e), though it seems more likely that only GA 58 was used. 11  Johann Jakob Griesbach, Bemerkungen über des Herrn Geheimen Regierungsraths Hezel Vertheidigung der Aechtheit der Stelle 1 Joh. 5, 7 (Giessen: Heyer, 1794), p. 14; ASD VI:4, p. 70.

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him wary of using it more than necessary. Had he thought that the manuscript was of any value, he could have used it to patch the text of the last chapter of Revelation, for which he had only used one defective Greek manuscript.12 With the available evidence, it is impossible to determine why the scribe of Montfortianus altered the text of 1 Jn 5 in so many places to conform to the Vulgate. The scribe of Montfortianus wrote variant readings from Erasmus’ 1516 New Testament into the margins of Revelation. However, these variant readings are written in a slightly different ink and with different pens from that used for the body text, which suggests that the scribe added them after writing the body text. Whether this was a matter of days or years cannot be said with confidence. While the scribe was able to compare his text with Erasmus’ 1516 edition, it is not certain whether he had seen Erasmus’ text by the time he came to copy John’s letters. While Tregelles, like many others, expressed strong suspicions that the manuscript ‘was written out for the purpose of producing a MS. which should contain 1 John 5.7 in Greek’, this cannot be stated with absolute confidence.13 Andrew J. Brown has argued that the scribe perhaps ‘held a favourable view of the Vulgate text, which led him to make occasional changes which, in his opinion, helped to improve the Greek wording’.14 Had the manuscript been written at Lee’s command to force Erasmus’ hand, one would expect it to contain more readings that supported Lee’s criticisms of Erasmus’ editio princeps. But that a very recent Greek manuscript containing the Comma—one of only two in the world—should have appeared in the homeland of Erasmus’ critic Lee, and should have been presented to Erasmus at just the moment when it might make a difference, can certainly be described as a remarkable piece of luck. Certain features of Montfortianus provide some information about its origins. One of the parent manuscripts used in the Gospels (GA 58) was copied by Johannes Serbopoulos, a Greek scribe resident at Reading at the end of the fifteenth century. Another of the parent manuscripts (GA 326) has been in England since at least the late fifteenth century. This suggests that Montfortianus was also written in England, and not before the end of the fifteenth century. This dating is consistent with the evidence of the watermarks, which are similar to those found in paper produced at Genoa in the decade either side of about 1505. The consistency of the watermarks throughout the codex suggests that it was conceived as a unit. There is reason to believe that the scribe was a Franciscan, for twice on 198v is written the inscription ἰησοῦς μαρία φράγκισκος (Jesus, Mary, Francis), a formula often found in Franciscan manuscripts, albeit usually in Latin. On the bottom of 12v is an ownership mark: sū thome clemētis olim fratris froyke (‘I belong to Thomas Clement, formerly to Friar Froyke’). 12  Martin Heide, Der einzig wahre Bibeltext? Erasmus von Rotterdam und die Frage nach dem Urtext, 5th edn (Nuremberg: Verlag für Theologie und Religionswissenschaft, 2006), pp. 86–111. 13  S.P. Tregelles, The Book of Revelation in Greek (London: Bagster, 1844), p. xxvi. 14  ASD VI:4, pp. 36–7.

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This note is in the hand of the physician John Clement (c. 1490–1572), the father of Thomas Clement, who made comparable marks in a number of manuscripts before distributing them to his children.15 John Clement, one of the foremost Greek scholars in England in the first half of the sixteenth century, was probably a student of William Lily at St Paul’s school before entering the household of Thomas More in about 1514 as a student-ward and tutor to More’s children. During More’s diplomatic mission to Flanders in 1515, Clement met Erasmus. In early 1520, he left Oxford definitively to deepen his studies of Greek at Leuven, and of medicine in Italy.16 At Leuven he studied and boarded in the house of Erasmus’ friend, Juan Luis Vives.17 While there, he impressed Erasmus with his charm and intelligence.18 In early 1522, Clement visited Erasmus in Basel and brought him letters from More.19 If we want to know how Erasmus could have seen Montfortianus, we need look no further than John Clement, a member of Erasmus’ Leuven circle at precisely the time he was preparing his third edition of the New Testament.

15  This inscription is in the same hand as Paris, BnF ms gr. 2168, fol. 2r, a book which John Clement originally intended to give to his son Thomas, but later decided to leave to his old college at Oxford (Thomę vnico filio Ioannes Clemēs donauit: [same hand] Ioānes Clemens Medicus dedit Collegio Corp. Chrī. ut orent pro eo et Richardo Paceo, et fideł. defūct. 1563. Octobr. 7). Another three manuscripts in the Bibliothèque nationale de France bear similar inscriptions in John Clement’s hand: ms gr. 2164, fol. 3r (Thomę Filio, Io. pater donauit); ms gr. 2165, fol. 1r (Thomę filio Pater suus donauit); ms gr. 2167, fol. 3r (Thomę Clemēti vnico filio Io. pŕ donauit). Further on Clement, see Ernst August Wenkebach, John Clement: ein englischer Humanist und Arzt des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts (Leipzig: Barth, 1925); Giovanni Mercati, ‘Sopra Giovanni Clement e i suoi manoscritti’, La Bibliofilia 28 (1926), pp. 81–99; A.W. Reed, ‘John Clement and his Books’, The Library, Fourth Series, 6 (1926), pp. 329–39; Alfred B. Emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford, A.D. 1501 to 1540 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), pp. 121–2; Thomas Merriam, ‘John Clement, his Identity, and his Marshfoot House in Essex’, Moreana 25 (1988), pp. 145–52; Peter G. Bietenholz and Thomas B. Deutscher (eds), Contemporaries of Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and Reformation (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1985–1987) [henceforward CE], vol. 1, pp. 310–11; Alan Coates, English Medieval Books: The Reading Abbey Collections from Foundation to Dispersal (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 142–4; Thomas F. Mayer and Courtney B. Walters, The Correspondence of Reginald Pole, vol. 4: A Biographical Companion: The British Isles, St Andrews Studies in Reformation History (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 137–8; Grantley McDonald, ‘Thomas More, John Clement and the Palatine Anthology’, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 75 (2013), pp. 259–70; and my forthcoming biography of Clement. 16  More to Erasmus (March/April 1520), Epist. 1087, in Opus Epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, eds P.S. Allen, H.M. Allen, and H.W. Garrod (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1906–1958) [henceforward Opus Epist.], vol. 4, p. 232; The Correspondence of Erasmus, trans. R.A.B. Mynors and D.F.S. Thompson, annotat. Wallace K. Ferguson and Peter G. Bietenholz (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1974–1994) [henceforward Correspondence], vol. 7, p. 254. 17  H. de Vocht, Monumenta Humanistica Lovaniensia: Texts and Studies about Louvain Humanists in the First Half of the XVth Century (Leuven: Uystpruyst, 1934), p. 4; H. de Vocht, History of the Foundation and the Rise of the Collegium Trilingue Lovaniense 1517–1550 (Leuven: Bibliothèque de l’Université, 1951–1955), vol. 2, pp. 43, 358–9, 404. 18  Erasmus to Burbank (Leuven, 1.9.[1520]), Epist. 1138 (Opus Epist., vol. 4, p. 334; Correspondence, vol. 8, pp. 38–9). 19  Vives to Erasmus (Bruges, 1.4.1522), Epist. 1271 (Opus Epist., vol. 5, p. 40; Correspondence, vol. 9, p. 56).

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The ‘frater Froyke’, from whom Clement acquired Montfortianus is more mysterious. To begin, there has been a persistent confusion about his name. The description of the manuscript given in the London Polyglot (1657), written either by James Ussher or Brian Walton, states that Montfortianus was once the property of ‘brother Froy [sic] the Franciscan’ (fratris Froy Franciscani).20 James Rendel Harris suggested (1887) that this ‘frater Froy’ was actually William Roye, a member of the Observant Franciscan house in Greenwich, who would later earn notoriety as assistant to William Tyndale and author of a number of religious satires and translations of Protestant literature.21 This plausible hypothesis has been widely accepted. However, important evidence has appeared recently to cast doubt on this identification. The name of the friar in John Clement’s inscription is actually ‘Froyke’, not ‘Froyhe’.22 Another book from Clement’s collection was auctioned on 27 June 2005 by Sotheby’s of Milan: a copy of the Aldine edition of Theodore of Gaza’s Greek grammar (1495), bearing an ex libris marking on the recto of the second page: Wenefredę Clementis Liber, olim fratris Frowici obseruantis (‘This book belongs to Winifrid Clement, formerly to brother Frowyk the Observant’).23 Given the similarity with the inscription in Montfortianus, there can be little doubt that ‘frater Frowicus’ is the same man as ‘frater Froyke’. Francis Frowyk (also documented as Frowik, Frowike, Frowyc, Frwick, Frowicus, Froickus, and Frowycus) was an Observant Franciscan of the Greenwich house. It is likely that he was part of the illustrious Frowyk family that had provided many members of parliament, judges, and Lord Mayors of London, and which, like Thomas More’s family, had close ties with South Mimms and North Mymms in Hertfordshire. Francis Frowyk was ordained as an acolyte on 15 February 1505, and deacon on 28 March 1506.24 Promoted to the 20  Brian Walton (ed.), Biblia sacra polyglotta, complectentia textus originales (London: Roycroft, 1657), vol. 6, p. 1 (in section Variantes lectiones Græcæ Novi Testamenti): ‘Novum Testamentum quod olim fuit fratris Froy Franciscani, postea Thomæ Clementis, deinde Guilielmi Clerk [sic], & nuper Thomæ Montfortii, S.T.D. Cantabrig. In Evangeliis habet utraque κεφάλαια tum ordinaria tum Eusebiana cum στίχων numero.’ 21  James Rendel Harris, The Origin of the Leicester Codex of the New Testament (London: Clay, 1887), pp. 46–53. 22  John Clement invariably wrote his lower-case h with an incurving arch (as in thome), while the k in froyke has a distinctly different tail. Despite the lack of a loop on the arch, the fifth letter in the name of the friar is almost certainly a k. 23  Books from the John Rylands University Library of Manchester. Day of Sale: Thursday 14th April 1988 (London: Sotheby’s, 1988), nº 35; Libri, stampe e disegni: Lunedì, 27 giugno 2005 (Milan: Sotheby’s, 2005), p. 80. Judging from the inscriptions and stamps, the provenance of the book is as follows: Frowyk—John Clement—Winifred Clement—unknown—Jesuit library in Brussels (1643)—Louise Françoise de La Baume Le Blanc de La Vallière (1783)—George John, Earl Spencer—John Rylands Library, Manchester—unknown—present owner. 24  London Guildhall Library (now deposited in London Metropolitan Archive) ms. 9531/8, Register of Bishop William Barons, fol. 13v/89v (ordination as acolyte by the bishop of Gallipoli, at St Mary Without Bishopsgate, on 15 February 1505); London Guildhall Library, ms. 9531/8, sede vacante register 1506 (Davis’s Lonvac 4), fol. 17r/93r (ordination as deacon by John Bell, bishop of Mayo, at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, on 28 March 1506); ordination as priest on 26 February 1507 (London Guildhall Library ms. 9531/8, fol. 20r/96r; from ordination lists recorded in V. Davis, Clergy in London in the Late Middle Ages: A Register of Clergy Ordained in the Diocese

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rank of minister provincial of the Observant Franciscans in England, Frowyk attended the historic general meeting of the order at Rome in 1517, at which Leo X proclaimed the Bull of Union, and returned with a letter from Leo X to Henry VIII with instructions about the procedure for future elections of ministers general.25 On his way back from Rome, Frowyk stopped in Leuven in late August 1517 to visit Erasmus and to show him some of the Greek editions recently produced by Aldus, as Erasmus reported with excitement in a letter to Cuthbert Tunstall: Strabo’s De situ orbis (November 1516), Pindar with scholia (January 1513), as well as Gregory of Nazianzus’ Orationes lectissimæ XVI (April 1516). Frowyk also brought news of Greek editions still under the press when he had left Italy: the Old and New Testaments in Greek—which would be published by Aldus and Asulanus in February 1518 with a dedication to Erasmus himself—and Plutarch’s Lives, published at Florence on 27 August 1517 by Giunta.26 Without a sample of Frowyk’s Greek hand, it is impossible to be sure if he was the scribe of Montfortianus, but the fact that the scribe was evidently a Franciscan with a knowledge of Greek certainly makes him a candidate. Erasmus’ decision to include the Johannine Comma in his New Testament text, while simultaneously undermining the authority of the only manuscript in which he found the reading, caused a good deal of disagreement amongst those who had nothing to go by except Erasmus’ edition. Luther’s Septembertestament (1522) was based on the 1519 edition of Erasmus’ New Testament, and consequently excluded the Comma. In his lectures on 1 Jn (1527), Luther explicitly rejected the Comma as an ‘orthodox corruption’ of the text.27 Consequently, most editions of Luther’s translation produced in the sixteenth century excluded the Comma. However, sixteenth-century editions of the Latin Vulgate tended to include the Comma, as did most Greek editions after 1522. Some editions and translations marked off the Comma through typographical means or brackets. Lee’s accusation that Erasmus was trying to foment Arianism seems to have been groundless. However, Erasmus’ annotations to the New Testament text proved a decisive impulse in the development of Michael Servetus’ critique of traditional Trinitarian theology.28 The publication of Servetus’ De Trinitatis of London Based on Episcopal Ordination Lists, 1361–1539 (London: University of London, Centre for Metropolitan History, 2000); cf. ASD VI:4, p. 46 n. 45. 25  Leo X to Henry VIII, Rome, 16 June 1517, Kew, National Archives SP 1/15, fol. 177r; Silvestro de’ Gigli, bishop of Worcester, to Henry VIII, Rome, 17 June 1517, Kew, National Archives SP 1/15, fol. 180r–v. 26  Erasmus, Epist. 642, in Opus Epist., vol. 3, pp. 63–4; Epist. 643, in Opus Epist., vol. 3, p. 65. 27  Martin Luther, Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimar: Böhlau, 1883–), vol. 20, pp. 780–1. 28  Carlos Gilly, ‘Erasmo, la Reforma radical y los heterodoxos radicales españoles’, in Tomàs Martínez Romero (ed.), Les lletres hispàniques als segles XVI, XVII i XVIII (Castelló de la Plana: Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume I, 2005), pp. 225–376; Peter G. Bietenholz, Encounters with a Radical Erasmus: Erasmus’ Work as a Source of Radical Thought in Early Modern Europe (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2008), pp. 35–9.

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erroribus libri septem in 1531 led Philipp Melanchthon to add a section on the doctrine of God to the 1535 revision of his Loci, in which he cites the Johannine Comma as a proof text of the consubstantial Trinity, though without commenting further on the passage.29 For his next revision (1545), Melanchthon reworked this section again, making heavier use of the Comma and arguing that the testimony of the three witnesses reveals important truths about the way that God reveals himself: that he is creator, conserver, sustainer, and that there are three in heaven that have given testimony to these divine activities and attributes.30 Jean Calvin translated the 1545 edition of Melanchthon’s Loci, and was likewise struck by the apologetic utility of the Johannine Comma. Like Melanchthon, Calvin was bitterly opposed to Servetus’ radical ideas about the Trinity. Accordingly, he included the Comma in his French translation of the New Testament, though in a marginal comment he noted that it is missing in ‘many copies’.31 In his commentary on the Catholic Epistles (1551), Calvin declared that he was not entirely convinced by arguments that had been mounted against the genuineness of the Comma, and saw no compelling reason to reject it. He interpreted the Comma as meaning that God provides three witnesses that we should come to faith in Jesus. Moreover, he argued that just as the Spirit, water and blood in v. 8 are one in testimony rather than one in essence, v. 7 likewise refers to the unity of witness between the three persons of the Trinity, not to their ontological unity.32 Théodore de Bèze agreed with Calvin, and he included the Comma in his reworking of Erasmus’ New Testament (1556), as well as in his Greek text (1565), without typographical distinction or brackets.33 Calvin’s judgement on the Comma polarized opinion. The Lutheran theologian Aegidius Hunnius, who accepted the genuineness of the Comma, asserted somewhat hysterically that Calvin’s attitude to the passage opened a window to Judaism and Arianism. And as soon as one concession of this kind had been made to the Arians, Hunnius warned, another and yet another would follow until the Arian flood drowned the whole world.34 Despite such alarming predictions, most Calvinists still followed Calvin’s view. The exegetical notes accompanying the Statenvertaling, produced at the command of the Synod of Dordrecht, and translated into English by command of Parliament in 1657, 29  Philipp Melanchthon, Loci theologici recens collecti & recogniti (Wittenberg: Klug, 1535), fols c5v–6r, d3v. 30  Philipp Melanchthon, Loci theologici recens recogniti (Wittenberg: Seitz, 1545), fols A8r, D4r–v. 31  Jean Calvin (trans.), Le Nouveau Testament (Geneva: Riveriz, 1551), p. 905. 32  Jean Calvin, Commentarii in Epistolas Canonicas (Geneva: Jean Crispin, 1551), pp. 97–8. 33  Novum D.N. Iesu Christi Testamentum Latine iam olim à Veteri interprete, nunc denuò à Theodoro Beza versum (Geneva: Estienne, 1556), p. 318; Iesu Christi D.N. Nouum testamentum, siue Nouum fœdus. Cuius Græco textui respondent interpretationes duæ: vna, vetus: alter, noua, Theodori Bezæ, diligenter ab eo recognita (Geneva: Henri Estienne, 1565), pp. 603–4. 34  Aegidius Hunnius, Calvinus Iudaizans, Hoc est: Iudaicæ glossæ et corruptele, quibus Iohannes Calvinus, illustrissima Scripturæ sacræ loca & Testimonia, de gloriosa Trinitate, Deitate Christi, & Spiritus Sancti […] corrumpere non exhorruit. Addita est corruptelarum confutatio (Wittenberg: Welach, 1593), pp. 57–60.

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made the case for the authenticity of the text in greatly exaggerated terms, and revived an old argument—going back to the general preface to the Catholic Epistles, forged under the name of St Jerome—that the absence of the Comma from the earliest manuscripts was due to the machinations of the Arians: This verse seeing it contains a very clear testimony of the holy Trinity, seems to have been left out of some copies by the Arrians, but is found in almost all Greek copies, and even by many ancient and worthy Teachers also, who lived before the times of the Arrians, brought out of them for proof of the holy Trinity: and the opposition of the witnesses upon earth ver. 8. sheweth clearly that this verse must be there; as appears also by the ninth verse, where is spoken of this testimony of God.35

Erasmus could dismiss Lee’s fears of an Arian revival as groundless, but with the appearance of radicals such as Servetus and Socinus, the Arian threat had come frighteningly back to life, destabilizing the Nicene settlement which had lasted for a millenium. The divines at Geneva, Dordrecht, and Westminster saw themselves compelled to grasp at all weapons to hand, but in relying on the Johannine Comma, they did themselves few favours. Rationalist critics lampooned orthodox apologists who continued to rely on such feeble evidence for such a central dogma. Isaac Newton, in an extensive exposé of the entire issue, declared in disgust that ‘it is rather a danger to religion, than an advantage, to make it now lean upon a bruised reed. There cannot be better service done to the truth, than to purge it of things spurious.’36

35  Theodore Haak (trans.), The Dutch Annotations Upon the Whole Bible (London: Henry Hills, for John Rothwell, 1657), p. Kk4v. Original text in Biblia, Dat is: De gantsche H. Schrifture (Leiden: Paulus Aertsz. van Ravensteyn, 1637), NT, p. 149v, available online at: : ‘Dit vers / alsoo het een seer klaer getuygenisse vervat van de Heylige Dryvuldigheydt / schijnt van de Arrianen uyt eenige boecken uytgelaten geweest te zijn / maer wort in meest alle Griecksche boecken gevonden ende selfs oock by vele oude ende aensienlicke Leeraers / die voor de tijden der Arrianen geleeft hebben / tot bewijs der Heylige Dryvuldigheyt daer uyt bygebracht: ende de tegenstellinge van de getuygen op der aerde vers 8. toont klaerlick dat dit vers daer wesen moet / gelijck blijckt uyt het vers 9. daer gesproken wordt van dit getuygenisse Godts.’ 36  Isaac Newton, Opera quæ extant omnia, ed. Samuel Horsley (London: Nichols, 1779–1785), vol. 5, p. 496.

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3 Stronger than Fiction The ‘Velesian Readings’ of the Greek New Testament Jan Krans

INTRODUCTION From the time of Erasmus, or even earlier, with Valla, the relation between the Latin Vulgate and the Greek New Testament was hotly debated. One can even state that the involvement with the Greek New Testament, in the West, started off as a confrontation between Greek and Latin. Several elements need to be kept in mind when evaluating this history. First, the Vulgate occupied a historically dominant position. Second, the Vulgate being known as a translation from the Greek, the Greek text was promoted as the source text, on the basis of which any translation could be evaluated. Third, scholars gradually became aware of textual differences within the Greek textual tradition. Fourth, the Vulgate itself turned out to be a text with its own problems of transmission. Fifth, and in general, biblical textual criticism often served as a battleground for the freedom of intellectual inquiry. These factors resulted in scholars taking diverse, at times even diametrically opposed positions. For some, the Vulgate was, and remained, the authoritative text. This view could even be defended with scholarly arguments. In their estimate, the Vulgate was produced from better Greek manuscripts than the text generally found in the Greek printed editions or in the minuscule Greek manuscripts. The appeal to manuscripts such as the famous codex Vaticanus started to play a role in the defence of this position, even during Erasmus’ lifetime.1 For others, the only text to be trusted was the Greek text we now designate as the Textus Receptus, which is based on later Byzantine manuscripts used by 1  In June 1521, Paolo Bombace, one of Erasmus’ Italian friends, informed him of two passages in 1 John (1 Jn 4:1–3 and 1 Jn 5:7–11; see Ep. 1213). Later, Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda sent Erasmus a long list of readings from codex Vaticanus that show how the Vulgate rests on a Greek text different from Erasmus’ editions. See Opus Epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, eds P.S. Allen, H.M. Allen, and H.W. Garrod (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1906–1958), Epp. 2873; 2905; 2938; 2951; the list itself has regrettably not been preserved.

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Erasmus, but which still diverges from the so-called Byzantine text at many places, either because of particularities of those manuscripts or because of editorial decisions and errors made by Erasmus and his successors. These two positions, the Vulgate and its supposed Greek base text against the Textus Receptus, came to roughly correspond to the divide between the Roman Catholic church on the one hand and the churches of the Reformation on the other, and can even be found in official statements by councils, and in editions, either of the Greek and Latin texts or in vernacular translations. However, we should not underestimate the amount of contact between scholars on both sides of this divide. There was an extensive ‘circulation of knowledge’. Gregory Martin criticized Theodorus Beza, at length;2 Juan de Mariana refers to protestant editions, even though he does not mention Robertus Stephanus or Beza by name;3 Joannes Maldonatus read his Beza as well;4 Richard Simon read and used protest­ ant Bible commentaries and editions;5 scholars such as Jean Le Clerc, John Mill, and Johann Jakob Wettstein read Simon and derived arguments from him.6 2  Gregory Martin, A Discouerie of the Manifold Corruptions of the holy Scriptures by the Heretikes of our daies, specially the English Sectaries, and of their foule dealing herein, by partial and false translations to the aduantage of their heresies, in their English Bibles vsed and autorised since the time of Schisme (Rheims: Fogny, 1582). 3  Juan de Mariana, Tractatus VII (Cologne: Hieratus, 1609), and Scholia in Vetus et Novum Testamentum (Madrid: Sanctius, 1619). 4  Joannes Maldonatus, Commentarii in quatuor evangelistas (Pont-à-Mousson: Stephanus Mercator, 1596). 5  Richard Simon, Histoire critique du texte du Nouveau Testament, où l’on établit la Verité des Actes sur lesquels la Religion Chrêtienne est fondée (Rotterdam: Reinier Leers, 1689); Histoire ­critique des versions du Nouveau Testament, où l’on fait connoître quel a été l’usage de la lecture des Livres Sacrés dans les principales Eglises du monde (Rotterdam: Reinier Leers, 1690); Histoire critique des principaux commentateurs du Nouveau Testament, depuis le commencement du Christianisme jusques à nôtre tems: avec une dissertation critique sur les principaux Actes Manuscrits qui ont été citez dans les trois Parties de cet Ouvrage (Rotterdam: Reinier Leers, 1693). 6  Jean Le Clerc, Ars critica, in qua ad studia Linguarum Latinae, Graecae, et Hebraicae via munitur, Veterumque emendandorum, et Spuriorum Scriptorum a Genuinis dignoscendorum ratio traditur, 2 vols (Amsterdam: Gallet, 1st edn 1697); John Mill, Novum Testamentum. Cum lectionibus variantibus MSS. exemplarium, versionum, editionum, SS. Patrum et Scriptorum ecclesiasticorum; et in easdem notis. Accedunt loca Scripturae parallela, aliaque ἐξηγητικά et appendix ad variantes lectiones. Praemittitur dissertatio, in qua de libris N.T. et Canonis constitutione agitur, historia S. Textus N. Foederis ad nostra usque tempora deducitur, et quid in hac editione praestitum sit, explicatur (Oxford: Theatrum Sheldoniacum, 1st edn 1707); a more convenient edition is given by Ludolf Küster: Novum Testamentum Graecum, cum lectionibus variantibus MSS. exemplarium, versionum, editionum, SS. patrum et scriptorum ecclesiasticorum; et in easdem notis. Accedunt loca scripturae parallela, aliaque exegetica. Praemittitur dissertatio de libris N.T. et canonis constitutione, et s. textus N. Foederis ad nostra usque tempora historia. Studio et labore Joannis Millii S.T.P. Collectionem Millianam recensuit, meliori ordine disposuit, novisque accessionibus locupletavit Ludolphus Kusterus (Rotterdam: Fritsch and Böhm, 1710); Johann Jakob Wettstein, Prolegomena ad Novi Testamenti Graeci editionem accuratissimam, e vetustissimis codd. MSS. denuo procurandam; in quibus agitur de codd. MSS. N. Testamenti, Scriptoribus Graecis qui N. Testamento usi sunt, versionibus veteribus, editionibus prioribus, et claris interpretibus; et proponuntur animadversiones et cautiones ad examen variarum lectionum N. T. necessariae (Amsterdam: Wettstein and Smith, 1730), and Johann Jakob Wettstein, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη. Novum Testamentum Graecum editionis receptae cum lectionibus variantibus Codicum MSS., Editionum aliarum, Versionum et Patrum nec

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Gradually, Greek manuscripts became known that diverged from the established printed text, more often than not with readings that confirmed the Vulgate text. For the partisans of the Vulgate, these finds constituted clear proof of their position. The model answer, or at least a stock argument for the defenders of the Textus Receptus was introduced by Erasmus, and is known as ‘Latinization’: such Greek manuscripts had been made to conform to the Vulgate, and were thus clearly secondary. The lack of evidence and proper theory to back up either position occasioned an amount of confusion that was not to be resolved for some centuries. Latinization theories emerged and went down. Somewhere in these discussions, evidence and philological competence played a role: scholars would study manuscripts and readings, and a judgement had to be formed on their value.

THE ‘VELESIAN READINGS’: THE SHORT VERSION The so-called ‘Velesian readings’ allow a view into this discussion and the role of the evidence from a surprising angle. Around 1570, at least about 2,000 variant readings on the text of the New Testament, in Greek, were penned by Pedro Fajardo (more on him below) in the margin of a printed Greek New Testament. The annotated edition eventually came into the hands of Juan Luis de la Cerda (more on him below), who collected the variant readings and printed them as the ninety-first chapter of his Adversaria sacra, in 1626.7 The readings are called ‘Velesian’, after Fajardo’s title Marquis of los Vélez. Two simple examples may show what is at stake. In Matt. 6:1, it is said: ‘Take heed that ye do not your alms [. . .]’ (King James Version; προσέχετε τὴν ἐλεημοσύνην ὑμῶν μὴ ποιεῖν . . .). The Velesian reading gives δικαιοσύνην (‘justice’) instead of ἐλεημοσύνην (‘alms’).8 In Rom. 4:5 Paul writes ‘his faith is reckoned as righteousness’ (New Revised Standard Version; λογίζεται ἡ πίστις αὐτοῦ εἰς δικαιοσύνην). Here the Velesian reading is the addition of κατὰ πρόθεσιν τῆς χάριτος τοῦ θεοῦ (‘according to the purpose of God’s grace’).9 In the case of Matt. 6:1, the Velesian reading is nowadays found in the modern critical text, but in the case of Rom. 4:5 no Greek manuscript is known with the addition. non commentario pleniore ex Scriptoribus veteribus Hebraeis, Graecis et Latinis historiam et vim verborum illustrante. 2 vols (Amsterdam: Dommeriana, 1751–1752). 7  Juan Luis de la Cerda, Adversaria sacra. Opus varium ac veluti fax ad lucem quam multorum locorum utriusque Instrumenti, Patrumque et Scriptorum quorumcunque Christianae antiquitatis et sacrorum rituum pancarpia; politioris denique literaturae thesaurus multiplex. Accessit eodem autore Psalterii Salomonis ex Graeco Ms. codice pervetusto, Latina versio, et ad Tertulliani librum de Pallio commentarius auctior (Lyons: Prost, 1626). 8  ibid., p. 130a.    9  ibid., p. 138b.

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In a century avid to enlarge the stock of variant readings known for the Greek New Testament, the Velesian readings were welcomed by many;10 they found their way into Walton’s 1657 Polyglot,11 into Mill’s 1707 edition,12 and into von Mastricht’s 1711 edition,13 to name but a few. The story of the Velesian readings is a typical one of birth, flourishing, and decay; they are looked for in vain in present-day New Testament editions or handbooks.

THE ORIGIN OF THE ‘VELESIAN READINGS’ As somehow fitting to such stories, the origin of the collection of readings is a mixture of precise information and untraceable details. There once was a Spanish marquis, famous and learned, even in Greek. His name was Pedro Fajardo, in full: Pedro Fajardo y Fernandez de Córdoba, tercer Marqués de los Vélez, segundo Marqués de Molina, Grande de España (c. 1530–Murcia 1579). Much is known about his life (he even has a short Spanish Wikipedia page). There is, for instance, an inventory (at times, however, hopelessly vague, but

10  E.g., Gerardus Vossius writes to Grotius, on 7 September 1643: ‘For the New Testament, I find not without use for Your Excellence—you may have seen it already—the booklet of variant readings that constitutes chapter 91 in de la Cerda’s Adversaria’ (‘In Novo [Instrumento] censeo non inutilem Excellentiae tuae fore—forte iam videris—variantium lectionum libellum, qui in Adversariis Ludovici de La Cerda Hispani caput constituit XCI’— [retrieved 1 September 2013] = Hugo Grotius, Briefwisseling van Hugo Grotius, vol. 14, ed. H.J.M. Nellen and C.M. Ridderikhoff (The Hague: Instituut voor Nederlandse Geschiedenis, 1993), no. 6412, pp. 528–9). 11  Brian Walton, Ad Biblia sacra polyglotta appendix. In quo varii Tractatus, Annotationes, Lectiones variae, Hebr. Graec. Lat. Samarat. Chald. Syr. Arab. Aethiop. Pers. cum Indicibus, etc. quae tomum sextum constituunt (London: Roycroft, 1657); vol. six of the London Polyglot contains the appendix, with twenty sections of different sizes, each numbered separately. The Velesian readings are incorporated into part 16, which consists of thirty-six pages of ‘Variantes lectiones Graecae Novi Testamenti’; there they are marked ‘March. Veles.’ and introduced as ‘Lectiones variae quatuor Evangeliorum collectae per Marchionem Velesium Petrum Fraxardum Hisp. facta Collatione sexdecem exemplarium, quorum octo erant ex Bibliotheca Regis Hispaniae Laurentiana’ (p. 1). No source from which Walton took the readings is indicated, but it has to be de la Cerda’s ninety-first chapter; the use made of them is not limited to the Gospels. 12  See Mill, Novum Testamentum, p. 138b for Mill’s opinion on the readings; he incorporated them in the Appendix, indicating Walton’s Polyglot as his source. 13  Gerhard von Mastricht, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη. Novum Testamentum, post priores Steph. Curcellaei, tum et DD. Oxoniensium labores; quibus parallela Scripturae loca nec non Variantes Lectiones ex plus C. MSS. Codd. et antiquis Versionibus collectae, exhibuntur; Accedit tantus Locor. Parall. numerus, quantum nulla adhuc, ac ne vix quidem ipsa profert praestantiss. editio Milliana; variantes praeterea ex MSº Vindobonensi; ac tandem crisis perpetua, qua singulas Variantes earumque valorem aut originem ad XLIII. canones examinat [. . .]. Cum eiusdem Prolegomenis; et Notis in fine adiectis (Amsterdam: Wettstein, 1711).

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still very informative) of his library, made after his death;14 half of his books went to El Escorial, and the remainder was sold. My date of around 1570 for the origin of the readings is a well-informed guess; its narrative charm lies in the fact that it places our third marquis at his home just in the period when he refused to join his father in the military suppression of the Morisco Revolt in Andalucía (1568–1571). In any case, it is reported that our third marquis was rather feeble and inclined to scholarly and literary work. Still, he was important to the Spanish court of Philip II, in various offices, until in 1578 he fell out of grace and died not much later. Nothing is known directly about Fajardo’s motives or working method; everything has to be deduced from the collection of readings he left behind, and it took scholarship more than a century to reach reliable conclusions about the nature of the Velesian readings, as we will see. As for Fajardo’s motives in collecting them, there is still room for conjecture.

THE SOURCES As mentioned, Fajardo noted Greek variant readings in the margin of a Greek New Testament; we know which edition he used (to be discussed below), but the copy itself is lost, as far as I know.15 We are, however, well informed about Fajardo’s work, through two sources.16 The first one is Juan de Mariana (1535/6–1624), a famous Jesuit historian; Fajardo’s annotated edition came into his hands, and he used it for one of the chapters in an essay ‘Pro Editione vulgata’, published in 1609.17 With him, in a modest way, starts the reception history of the readings. He cites, in total and as just a small sample, twenty-seven readings, all of which confirm the Vulgate. To him then, the Velesian readings clearly demonstrate the (former) existence of Greek manuscripts that are closer to the Vulgate, and thus better than the current ones and the editions based on those. De Mariana writes: 14  Alfredo Alvar Ezquerra and Fernando J. Bouza Álvarez, ‘Tasación y almoneda de una gran biblioteca nobiliaria castellana del siglo XVI: la del tercer marqués de los Vélez’, Cuadernos bibliográficos 47 (1987), pp. 77–136. 15  Perhaps the edition may resurface one day; that would be an interesting check of the completeness of de la Cerda’s collection; in Mariana’s work (note 17), I only came across one reading not mentioned by de la Cerda (in 1 Cor. 15:31). 16  Wettstein, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη. Novum Testamentum Graecum editionis receptae cum lectionibus variantibus Codicum MSS., Editionum aliarum, Versionum et Patrum nec non commentario pleniore ex Scriptoribus veteribus Hebraeis, Graecis et Latinis historiam et vim verborum illustrante, Tomus I, Continens quatuor Evangelia (Amsterdam: Dommeriana, 1751), p. 60, also mentions a reading in Luis de Alcazar’s 1614 commentary on Revelation. 17  De Mariana, Tractatus VII, pp. 33–126 (the second ‘tractatus’). The Velesian readings are mentioned in chapter  17 (pp. 83a–87a), titled ‘Graecos codices novi testamenti olim variasse’ (‘That formerly Greek manuscripts of the New Testament diverged’).

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This idea is not stupid, but rather stands on a firm basis. I have confirmed this with more strength from a Greek New Testament, in which the outer margin was filled in red ink with various readings. They were added, in his own hand and through his own efforts on the basis of a collation of sixteen manuscripts, eight of which from the Royal Library of San Lorenzo and most very old, by Pedro Fajardo, Marquis of los Vélez. A great treasure, to be appreciated highly, if that man, excelling through his works and his Greek language skill, had noted from which books the individual readings were derived; perhaps someone else will take care to supply that information if he has got hold of the same manuscripts, and I did not despair that I will do so at some time.18

The only criticism raised here by de Mariana is the complaint that the manuscripts used by Fajardo lost their individual character. For the rest, one senses throughout a feeling of triumph, as if he says: ‘we finally have proof that once there were other Greek manuscripts, as close as possible to our cherished Vulgate’.19 In a later publication, the 1619 Scholia, de Mariana has already become somewhat more critical. He has come to realize that the agreement with the Vulgate is almost too good to be true. My research indeed shows a pattern of almost complete agreement with Vulgate readings, and no pattern at all in agreement with Greek variant readings known from elsewhere. De Mariana even mentions an old theory brought forward by Erasmus, according to which a number of Greek manuscripts have been conformed to the Vulgate after the Council of Florence. Less critical, however, is our second and most important source for the readings, Juan Luis de la Cerda. De Mariana, despite his wish to one day investigate the manuscripts from which the Velesian readings were taken, had the readings copied into another Greek New Testament, and passed that edition on to another scholar. De la Cerda painstakingly collected the readings in fifteen densely printed pages. His work even presents a clear case of editorial fatigue: the first pages have long descriptions and translations of the readings, but later on he mostly gives the Greek readings only.20 In the introduction to the readings he writes:

18  ibid., p. 83b: ‘Eam cogitationem inanem non esse, ac potius firmis radicibus stare, ex novo testamento Graeco magis confirmavi, ad cuius exteriorem marginem minio varias lectiones sua manu suoque labore sedecim codicum facta collatione, in quibus octo erant ex Regia bibliotheca D. Laurentii plerique vetustate insignes, adiecerat Petrus Fagiardus Velesius Marchio ingens thesaurus, magnoque aestimandus, si vir ille opibus et Graecae linguae peritia praestans, quibus ex libris singulae lectiones essent depromptae, notasset, quam diligentiam alius fortasse supplebit eosdem codices nactus, neque praestiturum me aliquando desperabaram.’ 19  De Mariana, in typical vein, also points out that the Greek of the New Testament is not more elevated than the Latin of the Vulgate (ibid., p. 86b). 20  As a consequence, earlier pages can have less than thirty readings per column, whereas later on one finds even more than ninety.

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Through a gift by the most reverent Joannes Mariana of our [Jesuit] order, I have a copy of the New Testament in which variant readings have been transcribed by hand, taken from a copy; these readings were noted, in his own hand, by the mostillustrious Velesian marquis Petrus Faxardus, on the basis of a collation of sixteen copies, eight of which were from the royal library of San Lorenzo [in the Escorial]; it is pleasing to incorporate these notes here, for the use of the readers, and to dedicate this chapter to this man, as said, marquis Faxardus, so that what he noted with his own hand, eventually at last through my efforts becomes public. It is a Greek [New] Testament, printed. All notes are in Greek as well, and handwritten; only the Latin translation will be mine, added to the individual notes, as understood above all in Matthew, for in the other parts the Latin translation will only be rare. And I include these notes especially for this reason, that most of them greatly support our Vulgate translation. Thus I begin with Matthew. And you will gather in passing, that the Greek book in circulation now differs much from the Latin version.21

At the end, he writes about how tedious the work was, how important it is, how one would like to have similar sources on the Septuagint, and that he skipped some readings of minor importance.22

DISSEMINATION AND INCIDENTAL CRITICISM In subsequent scholarship, the initial reaction was to simply accept the information passed on by de Mariana and de la Cerda, the only ones who had had access to the collation. As we saw, de Mariana started to have some suspicions, but de la Cerda ignored these. Uncritical reception can be typified in Denis Amelote, who in his French edition of the New Testament, simply defended his choice for the Vulgate as the 21  De la Cerda, Adversaria, p. 129b: ‘Dono reverentissimi Ioannis Marianae e Societate nostra habeo exemplar Novi Testamenti, in quo variae lectiones sunt manu transcriptae, exceptae ex exemplari, quas item manu propria adnotarat Illustrissimus Marchio Velesius Petrus Faxardus, facta collatione sedecim exemplarium, in quibus erant octo ex bibliotheca Regia beati Laurentii; quot sane Notas hic adiungere libuit ad utilitatem legentium, et hoc caput consecrare tanto viro, Marchioni, inquam, Faxardo, ut quod ille propria manu adnotavit, id tandem aliquando mea opera lucem videat. Testamentum id Graecum est, et excusum; Notae omnes, Graecae item, et manu scriptae, tantum mea erit versio Latina, quam singulis Notis adiungam, ut intelligar [sic; ‘intelligas’?] saltim in Matthaeo, nam in aliis non erit versio Latina nisi raro. Et eo magis adduco has Notas, quod plurimae illarum faveant impense interpretationi vulgatae nostrae. Incipio itaque a Matthaeo. Et suis obiter, Graecum codicem, qui nunc circumfertur, longe distare a Latino versione.’ 22  ibid., p. 144b. Just one phrase may raise suspicion, when de la Cerda writes ‘now that the Greek text is corrected in agreement with the translator of the Vulgate’ (‘emendatus Graecus textus ad normam vulgati Interpretis’). Richard Simon takes this phrase to mean that de la Cerda had suspicions similar to de Mariana’s (see ‘Dissertation critique’ in Histoire critique des principaux commentateurs du Nouveau Testament, p. 12b), but it seems de la Cerda simply describes the (happy) result of the collection, not its nature or origin.

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underlying text by pointing to the Velesian readings.23 It is also the era of the large polyglots and critici sacri; small wonder that de la Cerda’s collection is taken over, for instance, in Walton’s 1657 Polyglot; from there they found their way into Mill’s edition of the New Testament. The seventeenth-century reception of the Velesian readings is also marked by incidental criticism, which sometimes leads to almost wholesale suspicion towards the entire collection. Both Richard Simon and Jean Le Clerc can be named, as well as Gerhard von Mastricht. Here, the involvement of the Dutch Republic becomes clear, at least in the dissemination of knowledge. Simon’s books were published in the Netherlands, a necessity which, as Jonathan Israel tells us, did not make the French scholar feel any more sympathetic toward the Dutch ecclesiastical and intellectual climate.24 In any case, these scholars gathered information for their books and editions, and in doing so spotted some odd things. Richard Simon, that key figure in the development of biblical criticism, mentions the Velesian readings on various occasions. Simon’s views seem to have sharpened over time. In his Histoire critique du texte du Nouveau Testament (1689), Simon simply gives a description of the material based on de Mariana and de la Cerda.25 The context is a general discussion of the possibility that the Vulgate rests on other Greek manuscripts than the current ones, a possibility Simon reckons with. He does not yet evaluate the Velesian readings as such, but criticizes Amelote for pretending to have direct access to the Spanish manuscripts, whereas in fact he only had de la Cerda’s excerpts at his disposal.26 In his Histoire critique des principaux commentateurs (1693), Simon goes a step further, writing on Amelote: J’aurois seulement souhaitté qu’il eût été un peu plus moderé, quand il cite les manuscrits du Marquis de los Velez, sur lesquels on ne peut pas faire foy lors qu’ils ne sont appuyez d’aucun Exemplaire Grec; étant sans doute qu’ils ont été retouchez sur le Latin en plusieurs endroits.27

Thus Simon assumes the existence of the manuscripts, but doubts their value, and demands additional direct evidence. The ‘Dissertation critique’ at the end 23  Denis Amelote, Le Nouveau Testament de nostre Seigneur Jesus-Christ, traduit sur l’ancienne edition Latine corrigée par le commandement du Pape Sixte V, et publiée par l’autorité du Pape Clement VIII. Avec des notes sur les principales difficultez, la chronologie, la controverse, et plusieurs tables pour la commodité du lecteur (Paris: Muguet, 1st edn 1666). See the ‘Praefatio in notas’, p. * ivr-v, where he calls the edition with Fajardo’s readings one that ‘exceeds all valuation’ (‘excederet omnem aestimationem’), because of the added collations. In his notes, Amelote often invokes the authority of the Velesian readings. 24  Jonathan I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 99–100. 25  Simon, Histoire critique du texte du Nouveau Testament, pp. 344b–345a. 26  ibid., p. 347. 27  Simon, Histoire critique des principaux commentateurs du Nouveau Testament, p. 884a.

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of the volume elaborates the point, based on the suspicions already raised by de Mariana, without, however, citing specific examples: Il est à-propos de ne les [= the Velesian readings] citer qu’avec de grandes precautions, et de n’y ajouter gueres de foy que lors qu’ils conviennent avec d’autres Exemplaires: car alors ils ne peuvent plus être suspects. Ce Marquis avoit apparemment vû quelques-uns de ceux dont s’est servi le Cardinal Ximenes dans son édition Grecque du Nouveau Testament: mais n’ayant fait connoître aucun de ses MSS. en particulier, et étant d’ailleurs évident qu’il y a des leçons, même en assez grand nombre, qui ont été prises du Latin de la Vulgate, il faut user de la precaution du Jesuïte Mariana.28

The main problem, to Simon, is that some of the Velesian readings depend on the Vulgate, and that the manuscripts from which they are taken are unknown. Finally, in the Preface of his 1702 Nouveau Testament, Simon takes up the issue once again; he is now almost doubting the existence of the Velesian manuscripts themselves: Ce Pere [Amelote] est tombé dans une autre faute, quand il a cité, comme de veritables exemplaires grecs du Nouveau Testament les manuscrits qui ont été publiés sous le nom du Marquis de los Velés. Car il est évident que le grec de ces manuscrits a été fait sur le latin de nôtre Vulgate. C’est pourquoy je ne me suis point servi de leur autorité dans mes remarques critiques.29

A surprising voice in the criticism of the Velesian readings is that of Isaac Newton. For his dissertation on the Comma Johanneum (1 Jn 5:7–8), written about 1691 and sent as letters to John Locke, Newton had to make up his mind on the relation between the Greek and the Latin text of the New Testament, and thus on the quality of the Velesian readings. He presented some examples which were devastating for the Velesian readings. Most of these were taken from Revelation, and one from Hebrews. A final example he found in 1 Pet. 3:8. Here, the Greek text invariably has τὸ δὲ τέλος (‘finally’), but the Vulgate varies between ‘in fine’ or ‘in finem’ (‘finally’) and ‘in fide’ (‘in faith’). The latter is obviously the result of textual corruption within the Latin transmission, yet there is a Velesian reading, ἐν τῇ πίστει δέ. Newton concludes: ‘These and such like instances put the thing out of dispute.’ There is some real brilliancy in his way of doing textual criticism here, and the pattern detected through his examples could have finished the role of the Velesian readings, if only Newton’s dissertations had been published. Newton’s textual criticism, however, led a limited if significant existence among the learned, and thus provides a good example for 28  ibid., ‘Dissertation critique’, p. 11b. 29  Amelote, Le Nouveau Testament de nôtre Seigneur Jesus-Christ (Trevoux: S.A.S., 1702), p. í vir. Indeed, on one of the rare occasions the Velesian manuscripts are mentioned in the notes to the translation, Simon simply states that their ‘grec a été fabriqué sur nôtre Vulg.’ (note on Luke 4:19).

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the importance and workings of a ‘scribal community’. The letters to Locke were finally published only in 1754.30 Still, Newton and others, without much reflection, assume that Fajardo took the readings from one or more real Greek manuscripts.31 These manuscripts then may have no critical value at all, as they have been conformed to the Vulgate, but they are still there, in the shadows where Mariana already had wished to look for them and where even a French ambassador asked by Amelote had been unable to find them.32 Things start to change with Le Clerc, who gives a striking example in his Ars critica (1697). Rev. 9:11 says about the king of the locusts of the abyss: ‘his name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he is called Apollyon’ (New Revised Standard Version) (ὄνομα αὐτῷ Ἑβραϊστὶ Ἀβαδδών, καὶ ἐν τῇ Ἑλληνικῇ ὄνομα ἔχει Ἀπολλύων). Here, the Vulgate adds an element not found in any Greek manuscript: ‘et latine habet nomen Exterminans’ (‘and in Latin he is called Exterminans’), which only makes sense in a Latin-speaking context. Yet there is a Velesian reading, as Le Clerc notes, which provides the Greek for this add­ ition: Ῥωμαϊστὶ ἔχων ὄνομα Ἐξτέρμινανς, with ‘Exterminans’ simply transcribed in Greek characters.33 Le Clerc draws the conclusion: these words must have been translated and transcribed from the Latin.34 He goes even further, elab­orating on Fajardo’s alleged sixteen Greek manuscripts: If ever such manuscripts really existed, they were reconstructed after the Vulgate translation; but most probably the Spaniard made up these variant readings which

30  Isaac Newton, Two Letters of Sir Isaac Newton to Mr Le Clerc, Late Divinity Professor of the Remonstrants in Holland. The Former Containing a Dissertation upon the Reading of the Greek Text, 1 John, v. 7. The Latter upon that of 1 Timothy, iii. 16. Published from authentick MSS in the Library of the Remonstrants in Holland (London: J. Payne, 1754). The title is misleading in so far as the letters were sent to Locke; Locke then sent them to Le Clerc, with Newton’s permission. 31  This is also more or less Mill’s position. 32  Simon on Amelote; see Simon, Histoire critique du texte du Nouveau Testament, p. 347. For Amelote’s efforts to find the original notes, see his Le Nouveau Testament de nôtre Seigneur JesusChrist, p. * ivr: ‘I remember sparing no letters, no favour by friends to get hold of the original of such a work’ (‘Nullis me literis, nulli amicorum gratiae memini parcere, ut eiusmodi operis exemplum perveniret in manus’). The efforts were in vain, but Amelote could work with de la Cerda’s publication. 33  See de la Cerda, Adversaria, p. 143b. The Velesian reading (as reported by de la Cerda) actually is ἐλληνιστὶ δὲ Ἀπολλύων, Ῥωμαϊστὶ ἔχων ὄνομα Ἐξτέρμινανς for καὶ ἐν τῇ ἐλληνικῇ ὄνομα ἔχει Ἀπολλύων, thus agreeing even more closely to the Vulgate reading, more specifically the form found in the Sixto-Clementina, ‘graece autem Apollyon latine habens nomen Exterminans’. 34  Le Clerc, Ars critica, vol. 2, (1697) pp. 387–8. In the 1697 edition, Le Clerc only refers to de Mariana, which explains the simplified form in which he gives the Velesian reading; in the 1712 edition (Ars critica, in qua ad studia Linguarum Latinae, Graecae, et Hebraicae via munitur, Veterumque emendandorum, et Spuriorum Scriptorum a Genuinis dignoscendorum ratio traditur, Amsterdam: Henricus Schelte, vol. 2, p. 292), he adds a reference to de la Cerda.

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never existed, for the sake of the Latin translation, as no one except him could see those manuscripts.35

Interestingly, Le Clerc must have derived the example from Newton, without, of course, saying so.36 In late 1690 or early 1691, he received, via Locke, Newton’s two dissertations (see above), in view of their publication in French. His letters to Locke show that he found them significant, and he regretted Newton’s later wish (in 1692) to suppress them.37 With hindsight, the assumption seems reasonable that Simon’s sharpened position on the Velesian readings in 1702 was due to his reading of Le Clerc’s 1697 Ars critica, and thus indirectly to Newton’s dissertations.

COMPLETE DEMISE Johann Jakob Wettstein, first inspired by Simon and later by Le Clerc, von Mastricht, and Newton as well, goes one step further, and provides convincing proof for the suspicions Le Clerc and Simon already had. Already in the first edition of his Prolegomena (1730), Wettstein reaches the astonishing conclusion that Fajardo had no Greek manuscripts to begin with; he had used Latin manuscripts, not Greek ones. A series of examples demonstrates the point convincingly.38 Still, Wettstein continues to study the matter in subsequent years, and through an accident of history he gains access to Newton’s letters to Locke, as he finds them among Le Clerc’s papers.39 35  ‘Si fuerint umquam in rerum natura eiusmodi MSS. fuerunt ad Vulgatam Versionem reficti; sed verisimillimum est hominem Hispanum, Latinae Versionis causa, finxisse eas varias lectiones, quae nusquam erant; cum nemo, praeter illum, eos Codices videre potuerit’ (Le Clerc, Ars critica, vol. 2, (1697) p. 388). 36  Newton knew Simon’s work, but Simon does not give examples. 37  Jean Le Clerc, Epistolario, vol. 2 (1690–1705), ed. Maria Grazia Sina and Mario Sina, Le Corrispondenze letterarie, scientifiche ed erudite dal Rinascimento all’Età moderna, 2 (Florence: Olschki, 1991), p. 70 (letter no. 196). 38  Johann Jakob Wettstein, Prolegomena ad Novi Testamenti, pp. 121–2. Wettstein refers to Simon’s preface to his French New Testament, but the examples he gives clearly demonstrate independent research. 39  See Wettstein’s letter to his cousin Gaspar of 15 June 1736 (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fonds français 14629, fols 24r-v): ‘J’ai entre mes mains la correspondance de Mr. le Clerc, que ses heretiers ont donné a notre Bibliotheque [. . .]. Il y a aussi deux lettres critiques sur 1. Tim. III. 16. et 1. Jo. V. 7. [. . .].’ It concerns Newton’s letters to Locke, which Locke in turn had sent to Le Clerc. Other letters in the collection show that Wettstein admired Newton’s critical spirit, that he tried to lay hands on the missing pages of the letters, and that he wanted to have them published. Thus a missing piece in the puzzle of the 1754 publication of the Newton letters is now found: the papers came to England thanks to Wettstein’s continuous correspondence with his cousin in London, and they were published at least partly because Wettstein had shown considerable interest in them.

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In the Prolegomena to the first volume of his 1751 Novum Testamentum Graecum, he builds on his previous results. Important elements are added to the argumentation, besides more examples of Velesian readings that can only be explained as retroversions from the Latin. Wettstein now even demonstrates which precise Greek edition Fajardo must have used for his collation and his marginal notes, namely the famous 1550 edition by Robertus Stephanus.40 His clue is a Velesian reading that would have been completely superfluous, had it not ‘corrected’ a glaring typesetter’s error:41 in 1 Pet. 3:11 Stephanus’ edition omits the words ἀγαθόν, ζητησάτω in ποιησάτω ἀγαθόν, ζητησάτω εἰρήνην καὶ διωξάτω αὐτήν (‘let him do good, let him seek peace and pursue it’). The Velesian reading simply corrects this error by supplying the missing words; there would have been no Velesian reading at this point if Fajardo had used any other edition. Wettstein also draws attention to the information passed on by de Mariana and de la Cerda, that Fajardo would have used sixteen manuscripts, eight of which were from the Spanish Royal Library. These numbers, according to Wettstein, are a telling, even most unlikely coincidence: the 1550 Stephanus edition, precisely the one used by Fajardo, also has sixteen sources, eight of which were from the Royal Library of the French King. No coincidence thus, but an instance of pure imitation. This observation, together with a number of striking errors in Greek grammar, which Newton had not drawn attention to, settles the case even more: there never existed Velesian Greek manuscripts; there are only Velesian readings, produced in toto by none other than Fajardo.42 Wettstein’s research concludes the complete unmasking of the readings and their origin; other scholars, even contemporary ones such as John Berriman, go over the material without attributing anything new.43

40  Some copies of this edition are indeed listed among Fajardo’s books: see Ezquerra and Álvarez, ‘Tasación’, p. 104, no. 500/123: ‘Novum Testamentum Roberto Stephano greçe folio’; p. 116, no. 834/454: ‘Novum Testamentum graece Roberto Stephano folio’; the list contains some other (Greek) New Testaments without further description. 41  Sometimes, the Textus Receptus is also divided in itself: Erasmus’ editions were not always followed by Stephanus; Stephanus’ third edition on some occasions differs from his other ones; Beza adopts some readings different from Stephanus. In such instances, the Velesian readings invariably depart from the reading found in Stephanus’ 1550 edition (e.g. Luke 2:22 αὐτῶν or 1 Cor. 15:31 ἡμετέραν). 42  The only point not touched upon by Wettstein is the nature of Fajardo’s Vulgate text; in both editions of his Prolegomena, he speaks about Latin ‘codices’ (‘manuscripts’), whereas in my view it is far more likely that Fajardo simply used a (single) printed edition of the Latin Vulgate. 43  John Berriman, Θεὸς ἐφανερώθη ἐν σαρκί. Or, a Critical Dissertation upon 1 Tim. iii. 16. wherein Rules are laid down to distinguish, in various Readings, which is genuine; an Account is given of above a hundred Greek Manuscripts of St. Paul’s Epistles (many of them not theretofore collated;) the Writings of the Greek and Latin Fathers, and the Ancient Versions are examin’d; and the common reading of that text, God was manifest in the Flesh, is prov’d to be the true One. Being the Substance of Eight Sermons preach’d at the Lady Moyer’s Lecture, in the Cathedral

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WHAT DID FAJARD O WANT? One question remains, however: why would Fajardo have taken such pains to go through the entire Stephanus edition, noting on average three to four readings on every page in its margins?44 Several answers are possible. The most obvious answer is the following: the Velesian readings are a subtle (or not-so-subtle) case of forgery; misinformation, pia fraus. Manuscripts that confirm the Vulgate must have existed, and Fajardo knew (or could reconstruct) what they must have contained. If they are lost, or have not yet resurfaced, a replacement can and should be provided for. This possible scenario reminds me of the emergence of the Hebrew version of Matthew’s gospel, in the sixteenth century: from the Church Fathers, it was known that the Greek version of Matthew’s Gospel was only a translation of a  Hebrew original (a piece of information, by the way, not accepted by any bib­lical scholar today), and once the scholarship was in place to handle the task, such a Hebrew version was produced. It had to be there, and if it could not be found, it could at least be produced.45 With his Greek readings, Fajardo thus set in motion an extensive campaign to vindicate the Vulgate once and for all. With de Mariana and de la Cerda’s use of his work, his goal was reached, even more so when de la Cerda’s collection was promulgated. Interestingly, this is not the scenario Wettstein comes up with; instead, he speculates that Fajardo was trying to mislead the Spanish Inquisition: whenever he came across places where the Vulgate obviously differs from the Greek text of Stephanus’ edition, he did not write the readings down in Latin, but translated them into Greek, which would never raise suspicions. The idea is appealing, since from the second half of the sixteenth century onwards, biblical criticism was suspect in Spain. Many works, both printed and handwritten, were seized by the Inquisition or put on the index, or purged, and many scholars were imprisoned and sentenced; even de Mariana’s and de la Cerda’s own works did not escape being censured. However, Wettstein’s theory seems far-fetched, most importantly because the readings were completely innocent in Latin to begin with. Of course, there are variant readings within the Vulgate transmission, and to discuss those openly might seem to call into question the Vulgate’s authority, but that is not Church of St. Paul, London, in the years 1737, and 1738 (London: Innys and Nourse, 1741), pp. 129–37. 44  My estimate (in search of a better one) is that there are about 2,000 readings in de la Cerda’s collection (based on an average of about seventy per column). 45  Admittedly, Sebastian Münster at least states in the Preface of his edition that it is not the original Hebrew text, but an effort to reconstruct it: Evangelium secundum Matthaeum in lingua Hebraica, cum versione latina atque succinctis annotationibus [. . .] (Basel: Heinrich Petri, 1st edn 1537), p. a3r. The blatant anti-judaism of the book would merit further study.

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what Fajardo did. Whenever from a present-day perspective such a reading is followed by Fajardo, it can be safely assumed that it was simply the reading of his edition. Nowhere does he mention several readings for the same variation unit.46 My guess is that Wettstein’s theory was inspired by the story of his own life; he came up with it in a period in his own life when he himself was questioned and put on trial for heresy, in Switzerland, directly related to his own text-critical work. There may be yet a third, less spectacular possibility for Fajardo’s motive: scholarly interest, more or less detached from direct polemics, but informed by the gap between the Greek text and the Vulgate. I imagine someone, working his way through the New Testament, having a printed Greek version and a printed Latin one side by side, and doing the essential, and in essence straightforward collation work, trying to find out what the Greek should be (or should have been) in order to justify the Latin translation. Here another parallel suggests itself: the origin of Erasmus’ own Greek New Testament. In the years before 1516, Erasmus made notes, in Greek and Latin, in a printed version of the Vulgate, on the basis of a collation of the Latin text with Greek manuscripts. He wanted to better understand the New Testament, he wanted to produce a commentary on Paul, and to critically evaluate the Vulgate. In any case, by means of these notes he produced the famous Annotationes on the New Testament, and even his own Latin translation, initially still very much a critically, though not thoroughly revised, version of the Vulgate. The difference between Erasmus and Fajardo is striking as well. On the one hand, Erasmus, who collates Greek and Latin, most of the time corrects the Vulgate by stating how the Greek should have been rendered, though in passing he sometimes notes what the Greek should have been in order to warrant the Vulgate reading he knows, and, at some rare occasions, is inclined to prefer that Vulgate reading and the underlying Greek text he reconstructs for it. On the other hand, Fajardo at every notable instance retranslates the Latin into Greek, thereby often producing a reading that indeed exists in the Greek transmission, but just as often a reading that is completely unattested, or even plainly wrong, either because he underestimates the translational freedom found in the Vulgate, or comes up with strange and ungrammatical Greek. In Fajardo’s case, the result of the collation, the margins filled with readings in red ink, was perhaps even more innocent: just a scholarly exercise, never intended to prove anything, never destined for publication. Only when, after his death, his edition fell into the hands of Mariana, someone engaged in the international debate and publishing on the international stage, his readings became a polemical 46  One can, of course, speculate that Fajardo simply made a choice when confronted with several Latin variant readings, and translated only one of those, but this assumption is unnecessary. He most probably used a sixteenth-century edition, rather close to what eventually became the Sixtine Edition.

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tool. In this case, the idea that he had taken them from sixteen Greek manuscripts is either a misunderstanding (linked to the nature of Stephanus’ edition), or creative mythmaking by someone else, probably Mariana himself. Fajardo’s work betrays a number of elements, as far as we can gauge from de la Cerda’s collection: (1) Fajardo was a mediocre Greek scholar; he made some conspicuous errors. (2) The collation and retranslation are performed in an almost mechanical fashion. There are hardly any traces of textual scholarship. Fajardo possessed a copy of the Complutensian Polyglot,47 and could have used the New Testament volume of that edition as well, but nothing indicates that he did so. Neither did he read the New Testament volume of his Basle edition of Erasmus’ Opera omnia. Indeed, this was one of the most surprising aspects to me, when I went through the Velesian readings for the first time: several times, I came across readings for which I remembered Erasmus’ comments, with each time Erasmus explicitly pointing out that the Vulgate was wrong, and why, and mostly correctly so as well.48 The marquis did not read his Erasmus, I concluded, or chose to disregard the information. (3) Fajardo sometimes uses grammatical forms and words that fall completely outside the range of New Testament Greek; this may show the breadth of his Greek reading or the quality of his library, but it also betrays a limited understanding of what the New Testament actually was, a limitation he shared with most of his contemporaries. (4) His use of Stephanus’ edition is remarkable. Just after its publication, Robertus Stephanus had joined the side of the Reformation in Geneva. His 1550 editio regia had still been published for the French king, but for Catholics Stephanus’ reputation was tarnished, besides the fact that (Greek!) textual criticism was no safe area in the first place. Hence Fajardo’s adoption and use of this edition betrays an openness of mind, or at least the willingness to use the best material available on the market.

CONCLUSION: LONG-TERM CONSEQUENCES As a long-term consequence of the history of the Velesian readings, Latinization theories were perceived as more probable by association. Greek manuscripts that closely agree with the Latin Vulgate were suspected of having been tampered with. Later scholarship in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has 47  Ezquerra and Álvarez, ‘Tasación’, p. 99 (no. 388): ‘Biblia complutense en seys cuerpos en/ bezerro en treynta ducados.’ 48  A most telling example is Luke 10:30, where the Greek, without any variation, has ὑπολαβών (‘answering’). The corresponding participle in the Vulgate is ‘suscipiens’, but within the Vulgate transmission the reading ‘suspiciens’ (‘looking up’) has arisen as well, clearly due to textual corruption. Erasmus explains the case in his Annotationes, and even chooses ‘respondens’ as his translation in order to prevent similar corruption of his own edition. Still, Fajardo retranslates this ‘suspiciens’ (the only reading he knows) as ἀναβλέπων (de la Cerda, Adversaria, p. 134b; see also Wettstein, Novum Testamentum Graecum 1, p. 60).

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noticed that several earlier critics, most notably Wettstein, fell victim to a kind of Latinization theory that made them mistrust all readings resembling the Vulgate. I surmise that in the case of Wettstein, his analysis of the Velesian readings played an important role in this intuition. In the end, something more than just unmasking befell the Velesian readings: in the time when they were not yet forgotten, they even made it more difficult for the Vulgate and by implication the Old Latin, and even other translations, to be taken seriously as witnesses to the early text of the New Testament. There may have been detached scholarly interest on Fajardo’s part, or pious fraud, or even (but far less likely) an effort to mislead the Inquisition; in any case the collection attracted both comical and tragic consequences in one-and-a-half centuries of misunderstandings and misinformation. As an instrument to promote the Vulgate and disparage the Textus Receptus, it backfired.

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Part II The Boundaries of Early Modern Orthodoxy Challenged

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4 The Janus Face of Scaliger’s Philological Heritage The Biblical Annotations of Heinsius and Grotius Dirk van Miert*

INTRODUCTION In an unpublished and undated letter, a hardly known Oxford poet once wrote to the great English scholar John Selden: I proclaim that those living compendia of the great Scaliger: Grotius and Heinsius, although they were nourished from a tender age by the praises of such a great man (a miracle who matched your own virtues) nevertheless grow red that they were unable to obtain your praises.1

It is no coincidence to see the names of Scaliger, Grotius, Heinsius, and Selden linked. Nor is it correct that Grotius and Heinsius failed to obtain Selden’s praise. It was, after all, Selden who famously declared, according to his Table Talk, that: Lay-men have best interpreted the hard places in the Bible, such Johannes Picus, Scaliger, Grotius, Salmasius, Heinsius, &c.2

Selden clearly acknowledged that the generation of Grotius, Saumaise, and Heinsius was indebted to the biblical philology of Joseph Scaliger. This chapter * This chapter was written in the context of the research project Biblical Criticism and Secularisation in the Seventeenth Century (OND1316730), which was financed by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). I wish to thank Henk Nellen, Piet Steenbakkers, Jetze Touber, and the audience gathered at the conference ‘God’s Word Questioned’ (Utrecht, August 2012) for their comments on previous drafts of this contribution. 1  Franciscus Palmer to Selden, s. d. (Oxford: Bodleian Library, Ms. Selden supra 108, fols 149–50): ‘Testor viva illa Magni Scaligeri compendia, Grotium, Heinsiumque, qui licet tanti viri laudibus a teneris innutriti (Miraculum non multo virtutibus tuis impar!) encomia tamen vestra assequi non posse erubescunt.’ 2  John Selden, Table-Talk 1689, ed. Edward Arber, English Reprints (London: Alex. Murray, 1868), p. 20, s.v. ‘Bible, Scripture’, no. 6.

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will ignore Selden (who has been treated by Jason Rosenblatt) and Saumaise (who never published a systematic biblical commentary, although he contended with Heinsius and Grotius as a third stellar scholar to prepare annotations on the Bible).3 Instead, I will focus on Heinsius and Grotius, who were trained in similar ways (philologically) by the same master (Scaliger) and who worked on the same material (the text of the New Testament) within the same genre (annotationes, i.e. selective notes) in the same decade (1630–1640), but who ended up publishing two widely dissimilar types of biblical annotations, with different repercussions for the authority of God’s Word. Two circumstances which shaped these different outcomes are important: first the wider agenda to which they subjugated the instrument of philology; second, the freedom they enjoyed as embodied philologists. These contexts neutralized or stimulated the potential subversivity of biblical philology. But first it is important to sketch how the notion of ‘philology’ is used in this chapter, and how it functioned in the hands of Scaliger.

JOSEPH SCALIGER: ‘I WISH I WERE A GO OD GRAMMARIAN’ It is well known that Joseph Scaliger was a brilliant philologist who was extremely able in three particular manifestations of philology: textual criticism, linguistic analysis, and historical contextualization. I make these modes of philology explicit, for ‘philology’ is a somewhat diffuse term. Just like its counterpart ‘exegesis’—that is, the critical examination or interpretation of a text—it can take up a variety of meanings. Certainly, in the early modern definition of the philologist’s toolkit, the Ars critica, the two are not easy to separate. Broadly speaking, I see philology as the examination of the constitution, language, and history of a text, and exegesis as the interpretation which teases out the philosophical or theological implications of a text. In this sense, Scaliger was foremost a philologist and not an exegete. Philosophical and theological exegesis are hardly manifest on the agenda of Scaliger’s output. Philosophically, he was an Aristotelian, and anti-Ramist. Theologically, he was a Calvinist, a convert who as a young man consciously 3  In his De usuris, Saumaise mentioned his notes on the Old Testament and on the Acts of the Apostles. According to his biographer, Philibert de La Mare, Saumaise’s annotations (like Scaliger’s) were largely found in the margins of a printed copy (Beza’s Greek–Latin New Testament of 1580). Although Saumaise spoke of his annotations on other occasions, they were never printed as a separate collection. See Abbé Papillon, Bibliothèque des Auteurs de Bourgogne, tome seconde, M-X (Dijon: François Desventes, 1745; Geneva: Slatkine reprints, 1970), p. 281. Besides, Saumaise, although he had been tutored at a distance by Scaliger, never actually sat at Scaliger’s table, as Grotius and Heinsius had done. For Saumaise, as a student of Scaliger’s, see Dirk van Miert, ‘Joseph Scaliger, Claude Saumaise, Isaac Casaubon and the Discovery of the Palatine Anthology (1606)’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 74 (2011), pp. 241–61.

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made the choice to leave the Catholic church and join the Huguenots. This was a sincere conversion, not a political, pragmatic, or opportunistic choice, for during the three decades after his conversion, from the early sixties until the accession of Henri IV in 1593, Scaliger served a Catholic nobleman in the service of the French king who battled the Protestants. Scaliger did not hate Catholics. He could have said ‘Some of my best friends are Catholics.’ His friends were among the politiques in Paris.4 Scaliger did loathe Jesuits, and, more generally, ultramontane Roman Catholics, but not for dogmatic or theological reasons. De Jonge has argued that Scaliger’s historical and philological arguments were framed by his anti-Catholic tendencies. ‘The undermining of Catholic conceptions was the goal of various exegetical notes by Scaliger.’ Scaliger argued against the existence of purgatory and associated the pope with the anti-Christ.5 More importantly, ‘His lifework was an immense effort to shew that there could be another learning than the Catholic, and that in fact the critical use of the historical sources removed the foundations of Catholic tradition.’6 With biblical philology it was possible to deconstruct things, but if it was not geared to a higher goal (theological, philosophical, political), how could one evaluate its outcomes as positive or negative? In other words, ‘what was criticism for?’7 Therefore, it would seem that Scaliger’s scholarship served the interest of Calvinism. However, the negative responses from Geneva to his chronological work show that some co-religionists thought that Scaliger’s historical and philological scholarship could be harmful for Protestantism. Scaliger’s historicism ran, potentially and sometimes actually, counter to the tendency within Calvinism to close the ranks and stabilize a reformed orthodoxy. Scaliger concluded, printed in black on white, that the world must be older than the oldest possible calculation the Bible allowed for. In a marginal note in his Thesaurus temporum (1606), he referred to the epoch of the first Egyptian dynasty, which preceded the Mosaic account of Creation, as a ‘proleptic interval’. This was a radical remark, potentially subversive for biblical authority, if not destructive for his own career. It proved not to be: the Thesaurus temporum remained a standard work. Perhaps those who read the work could not link this loose observation to a recognizable agenda on Scaliger’s account. Scaliger, 4  For Scaliger’s Catholic contacts, see Dirk van Miert, ‘The Limits of Transconfessional Contact in the Republic of Letters: Joseph Scaliger, Isaac Casaubon and their Catholic Correspondents’, in Jeanine De Landtsheer and Henk Nellen (eds), Between Scylla and Charybdis: Learned Letter Writers Navigating the Reefs of Religious and Political Controversy in Early Modern Europe (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010), pp. 367–408. 5  Henk Jan de Jonge, ‘The Study of the New Testament’, in Th.H. Lunsingh Scheurleer and G.H.M. Posthumus Meyjes (eds), Leiden University in the Seventeenth Century: An Exchange of Learning (Leiden: Universitaire Pers Leiden/Brill, 1975), pp. 65–109 (87). 6  De Jonge, ‘The Study of the New Testament’, p. 86. 7  N.J.S. Hardy, ‘Impartiality and the Early Modern Ars Critica: The Case of John Selden’s Historie of Tithes (1618)’, in Kathryn Murphy and Anita Traninger (eds), The Emergence of Partiality (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014), pp. 289–303 (302).

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moreover, had hardly drawn attention to his solution: he normalized it by comparing it to a Hebrew notion of an astronomical era which stretched back beyond the date of Creation. He ignored the question of what precisely the nature was of this Egyptian pre-history.8 Not everyone was fooled or satisfied: Genevan doyens did protest, and even Casaubon himself, privately, condemned his much admired colleague for holding on to the primacy of the Egyptian lists of pharoas against the authority of the Old Testament chronology.9 But Scaliger was never forced to backtrack, and no open controversy broke out. Because he had evaded the consequences of his solution, he got away with it. Scaliger was no philosopher and not a political thinker. It seems incorrect to stick the label ‘humanist’ on Scaliger, due to his apparent lack of philosophical, educational, or anthropological interests. Even theological notions are hardly ever discussed in his works. De Jonge is probably right in framing Scaliger’s historical studies in the light of his anti-Catholic tendencies and his support for the Protestant cause. He was convinced that biblical philology served Protestantism, but his approach of Reformed thought was historical rather than theological. But the two became amalgamated: Scaliger preferred Protestantism because it took better account of history. For Scaliger, Calvinism offered a historically more correct understanding of the past. Because history and theology concurred in Scaliger’s vision, even Calvinism could have suffered from flaws in the inter­ pretation of Christian history. Unmasking these as the result of human failing would necessarily advance the cause of true Christianity. Scaliger’s philology could only backfire with the Calvinist establishment, because he, a great friend of Calvinism, thought of himself as a greater friend of the philological truth. The primacy of philology is sharply formulated in his famous declaration: I wish I were a good grammarian. Because it suffices for someone who wants to properly understand the authors to be a good grammarian. Furthermore, those who call learned men ‘merely grammarians’ are themselves very ignorant; you will always see this. Discord in religion hinges on nothing else than ignorance of grammar.10 8  Anthony Grafton, Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship, vol. 2: Historical Chronology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), p. 718. 9  Anthony Grafton, ‘Isaac Vossius, Chronologer’, in Eric Jorink and Dirk van Miert (eds), Isaac Vossius 1618–1689): Between Science and Scholarship (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012), pp. 43–84 (63, n. 66), citing Casaubon’s marginal ‘note in his copy of Scaliger, Thesaurus temporum (Cambridge University Library, shelfmark Adv. a. 3–4), at “Isagogici chronologiae canones”, 309: “Ego non video quae magna utilitas sit ad veram historiam in istis stultarum gentium figmentis. Nam de periodo Iuliana est aliud.” ’ 10  Prima Scaligerana, in Pierre Des Maizeaux (ed.), Scaligerana, Thuana, Perroniana, Pithoeana, et Colomesiana, Ou Remarques historiques critiques, morales & littéraires de Jos. Scaliger, J. Aug. de Thou, le Cardinal Du Perron, Fr. Pithou, & P. Colomiés, Avec les notes de plusieurs savans, 2 vols (Amsterdam: chez Cóvens et Mortier, 1740), vol. 2, p. 96, s.v. ‘Grammatica’: ‘Utinam essem bonus grammaticus; sufficit enim ei qui auctores omnes probe vult intelligere esse bonum Grammaticum. Porro quicunque doctos viros, Grammaticos pour tout potage vocant, sunt ipsi indoctissimi, idque semper observabis. Non aliunde dissidia in Religione pendent, quam ab ignoratione Grammaticae.’

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A grammarian was what we would nowadays call a ‘philologist’: not someone who knew merely something about syntax, but also about semantics, textual criticism, the historical context of text, and who knew how to deal with these in at least Latin and Greek. Grammarians were learned (docti), but in a letter Scaliger showed himself irritated by people who branded grammarians as merely ‘learned’ and who admired only themselves as ‘wise’, although they ascribed all sorts of opinions to authors which these authors had never fostered.11 Here is an argument to take authors on their own account and a warning against prejudiced interpretations. For Scaliger, studying the past came to be an aim in itself, not a means to an end. From the two quotations with which this chapter started, one can gather that contemporaries thought that Scaliger had made ‘school’: his philological techniques constituted a legacy which was developed at Leiden University. This antiquarian ‘Scaliger school’ was expected to benefit the Calvinist cause, but in other respects it had a low level of ideological usefulness. It posed a break with the political and philosophical antiquarianism of a Justus Lipsius.12 Whereas Lorenzo Valla’s radical criticism in the case of the Donation of Constantine served the purposes of his patron, and whereas Isaac Casaubon publicly unmasked Hermes Trismegistus in the context of his emphatically anti-Baronian Exercitationes, commissioned by James I in the heat of the confessional polemics on ecclesias­ tical history, Scaliger was not enlisted by any patron or by any church. Nobody asked him to make comparative chronology into a discipline of its own. The establishment of the Gregorian calendar reform was not the incentive for Scaliger’s chronological quest, even if he opposed this reform emphatically in the last part of his De emendatione temporum, which came out in 1583—the very year that the Catholic world skipped ten days.13 Scaliger was not a religious polemicist at all. To quote his Catholic friend Jacques-Auguste de Thou, As for Scaliger’s sentiments on religion, I solemnly affirm that I never heard this great man dispute on the controverted points of faith; and I am well assured that he never did discuss them but upon provocation, and then reluctantly.14 11  Scaliger to Gilbert Seguin, 21 May [1591?] in Joseph Scaliger, The Correspondence of Joseph Scaliger, eds Paul Botley and Dirk van Miert (Geneva: Droz, 2012), vol. 2, p. 172 (lines 14–18): ‘Sed sophistarum et aretalogorum hic est mos, ut in veteribus scriptis hariolentur ea quae ipsis scriptoribus nunquam in mentem venerunt; et inscitiae suae velum sese putant obtendere, cum “doctos” grammaticos vocant, sese autem solos mirantur, se solos sapientes praedicant.’ 12  On the program of Lipsius’ antiquarianism, see Karl A.E. Enenkel, ‘Ein Plädoyer für den Imperialismus: Justus Lipsius’ kulturhistorische Monographie Admiranda sive de magnitudine Romana (1598)’, Daphnis 33 (2004), pp. 582–622. See also Andrea Steenbeek, ‘Lipsius’ Motive für die Saturnales Sermones, “die über die Gladiatoren” ’, in Rhoda Schnur (ed.), Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Bonnensis: Proceedings of the Twelfth International Congress of Neo-Latin Studies, Bonn 3–9 August 2003 (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2006), pp. 759–68. 13  The last part of De emendatione temporum, book VIII, was on the Gregorian calendar reform and was added in a very late stage. See Grafton, Joseph Scaliger, vol. 2, p. 141. 14  Quoted by Anthony Grafton, Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship, vol. 1: Textual Criticism and Exegesis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), p. 123.

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The same De Thou, for years on end, put pressure on Scaliger to publish his notes on the New Testament, but Scaliger categorically refused to do so. His reluctance seems to have had a very practical reason. For he is also recorded to have spoken the now famous words: There are more than fifty additions or changes to the New Testament and to the Gospels. It’s a strange case, I dare not say it. If it were a pagan author, I would speak of it differently.15

With the ‘additions or changes’ Scaliger no doubt meant interpolations or changes to the text by copyists. Clearly, Scaliger never collected, let alone published, his observations on the New Testament (which were scattered over his own published and unpublished works and in the margins of his books), for fear of running into trouble with his fellow Calvinists. One can think of an additional reason why Scaliger was left in peace by his fellow Calvinists: he was very much respected and figured as a hero in the Calvinist campaign against Rome. No one felt the need to draw the ultimate consequences from Scaliger’s positing of a period before Creation, because Scaliger was the consul of the Republic of Letters and a princely superprofessor at Leiden University. In short: the fact that, first of all, Scaliger had no recognizable subversive philosophical or theological agenda and that, secondly, he enjoyed the full backing of the Calvinist community who paid and supported him as their champion, ensured that he got away with it. Scaliger was a superprofessor indeed, and that meant he was not obliged to engage in public teaching. Instead, he picked the best and most sympathetic of the Leiden students and taught these in his home, in what seem to have been irregular tutorials. The remainder of this article will deal with two of these students: Daniel Heinsius and Hugo Grotius.

DANIEL HEINSIUS: BASHING BEZA AND HELPING HELLENISM Heinsius was thirteen years old when Scaliger came to Leiden. From 1600 onwards, when he was around twenty years of age, he established himself as Scaliger’s star pupil, quickly ascending through the ranks of the University to chairs of Greek and, later, History. He was also appointed librarian in 1607. When Scaliger died, Heinsius became responsible for keeping his papers, and 15  Secunda Scaligerana, in Des Maizeaux (ed.), Scaligerana, Thuana, Perroniana, Pithoeana, et Colomesiana, vol. 2, p. 399, s.v. ‘Josephe’: ‘Il y a plus de 50 additions ou mutations au Nouveau Testament et aux Evangiles; c’est chose estrange, je n’ose la dire; si c’estoit un Auteur profane, j’en parlerois autrement.’

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together with some of his colleagues he published a number of these. During the troubles of the Twelve Years’ Truce, Heinsius, who had never had much sympathy for Arminius, kept a low profile, but in the final years of the decade, he tended openly towards the Counter-Remonstrant camp. After the Synod of Dordt, at which he acted as the secretary of the delegates of the States General, he re-invented himself as a biblical critic, advising the Elzevier firm on the edition of the Textus Receptus (a term he coined), contacting John Selden to procure permission to republish Selden’s work on the pagan gods mentioned in the Bible (this second edition of De diis Syris was printed in 1629), and publishing two major biblical commentaries himself. First, in 1627, he published the Aristarchus sacer, a hybrid commentary on Nonnus’ paraphrase of the Gospel of John, which was also a meta-commentary on John itself. After its publication, he started to work on a commentary proper of the New Testament, which he entitled Exercitationes. In fact, these ‘exercises’ had much in common with the established philological genre of the annotata or annotationes: notes on selected verses. According to Heinsius himself, his treatment of the text served two goals, which he explicitly identified. First of all, he aimed to voice critique of an existent Latin translation by a recent and much-respected commentator, who ‘could not achieve that nobody disagreed with him, including the great Scaliger’.16 This commentator was Theodorus Beza, although Heinsius never mentioned him by name. A second motive was to present his linguistic theory regarding the status and nature of New Testament Greek, which he labelled as a Hellenistic dialect. He was under the impression that with this identification, he again followed Scaliger, but he either misunderstood or twisted Scaliger’s comments. As most of his contemporaries, Heinsius acknowledged that New Testament Greek was heavily influenced by Hebrew grammar and idiom, which he thought made the language a class of its own: not just a Hebraizing koinè Greek, but a pure biblical language which he called Hellenistic, and which was, unlike classical Greek, uniquely adequate to express the divine message.17 This double agenda served no particular interest of Heinsius’ church. On the contrary: his constant critique on Beza, who had been Calvin’s successor, might have been grist to the mill of Rome. As we will see, many of Heinsius’ co-religionists were irritated at his Beza-bashing. His other motivation, the 16  Daniel Heinsius, ‘Prolegomena’ to Sacrarum Exercitationum ad Novum Testamentum libri XX (Leiden: ex officina Elseviriorum, 1639), p. 37: ‘[Interpres postremus], qui tamen (homo enim fuit) obtinere non potuit ut nemo alibi ab eo dissentiret. Inter quos et ille, quo coniunctior magisque amicus nemo illi vixit, magnus Scaliger’. Cited in De Jonge, ‘The Study of the New Testament’, p. 95. Heinsius exaggerated the bonds between Scaliger and Beza. On their relation, see Jeltine L.R. Ledegang-Keegstra, ‘Théodore de Bèze et Joseph-Juste Scaliger: critique et admiration réciproques’, Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français 159 (2013), pp. 441–58. 17  See De Jonge, ‘The Study of the New Testament’, pp. 95–6.

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propounding of his theory on the particular status of New Testamentary Greek, had no religious consequences. I have the impression that Heinsius turned to biblical criticism for personal reasons: he recognized it as the cutting edge science of the day and he wanted to be part of the avant-garde. Doing biblical criticism was part of his self-fashioning as a universal scholar, and as Scaliger’s heir. For he himself was convinced that with both his critique on Beza and his explanation of the status of the Hebraizing Greek of the New Testament, he developed two thoughts which Scaliger had already spoken of more than once. If we maintain the triple modi of philology, we should first look at Heinsius’ textual criticism, then at his linguistic analyses, and finally at his historical contextualization. First, we turn to the constitution of the text. Henk Jan de Jonge has concluded that Heinsius was no systematic collator of manuscripts, no ‘collector of variants’, and that as such he was different from Robertus and Henricus Stephanus, from Beza and from Grotius.18 The study of his involvement with the edition of the Textus Receptus of 1624 has confirmed his self-professed conservatism in textual criticism. Heinsius argued: neither to one single manuscript, nor to several, more should be attributed than is justified; nor should changes be made in what has been accepted; and before all, it should be warned that no one take it upon himself to [change the text] on the basis of conjecture [ex ingenio], lest he give us his own private version of the text [propriam editionem].19

One’s private version of the text could not replace the Word of God. Heinsius had a colleague in the Faculty of Theology, Professor Constantin l’Empereur, who scrutinized a draft of his Exercitationes. L’Empereur objected to Heinsius’ admittance that the text of the New Testament might have been corrupted in certain places. On the occasion of Acts 7:15–16, for instance, Heinsius suspected that the text was corrupted and that some incompetent scribe or commentator had filled up a gap in the text. As if Heinsius knew that he was treading on thin ice, he added that ‘the great Augustine warns us that the first thing to do, when we get stuck in Sacred Scripture, is to diligently consider whether the 18  Henk Jan de Jonge, ‘The “Manuscriptus Evangeliorum antiquissimus” of Daniel Heinsius (Vatic. Reg. gr. 79)’, New Testament Studies 21:2 (1975), pp. 286–94 (293). 19  Heinsius, ‘Prolegomena’, in Sacrae Exercitationes, p. 6: ‘ne vel uni codici, vel pluribus, plus aequo tribuatur, aut quod iam receptum facile immutetur, ante omnia ne quisquam ex ingenio id sibi sumat et hanc histrioniam exerceat, ut propriam editionem nobis donet. Ne iam dicam, etiam aetate nostra optimos atque antiquissimos iam pridem codices collatos’. Cited by De Jonge, ‘The Study of the New Testament’, p. 93; and by Jan Bloemendal and Henk Nellen, ‘Early Enlightement or High Philology? Biblical Textual Criticism and Exegesis by Two Famous Alumni of Leiden University, Daniel Heinsius and Hugo Grotius’, in Gertraud Mitterauer, Ulrich Müller, Margarete Springeth, Verena Vitzthu (eds), Was ist Textkritik? Zur Geschichte und Relevanz eines Zentralbegriffs der Editionswissenschaft (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2009), pp. 113–28 (117, n. 24).

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manuscripts are corrupted’.20 Heinsius’ conjecture was rejected by L’Empereur, who would rather harmonize apparent contradictions and not intervene in the text.21 Heinsius was acutely aware of ‘the great variation between the manuscripts (of which the Fathers of the church themselves continually speak)’ but he rejected ‘those who want to see themselves permitted to use the freedom which they are glad to seize on in the profane authors, in casting doubt on the sacred authors’, which shows he was well aware of Scaliger’s dictum that the status of the New Testament as a godly text prevented him from treating it freely as a pagan text.22 Heinsius also followed Scaliger’s theory that citations of the Sacred Text found in the Church Fathers were probably nearer to the original text than the often copied codices of the biblical text themselves.23 But L’Empereur was worried: he acknowledged that citations found in the texts of a Church Father were sometimes different from the transmitted text. But the transmitted text was unequivocal and it would be disastrous to destabilize the text in such cases only because a citation elsewhere had a different reading: If it were once allowed, that because of a deviation which occurs elsewhere, we should create it, even where there is not one variant, and even with such a difference of letters, what will then be certain in the Holy Scriptures?24

Strictly speaking, L’Empereur does not deny that the different manuscripts of the sacred text do present different readings, and that in those cases it could be necessary to choose a variant or assume a reading by conjecture, for here he speaks only of unnecessary conjectures. But he is plainly reluctant and obviously anxious that the certainty, and hence, the authority of Holy Writ would suffer under too much interference with the text on account of philologists like Heinsius. Like the Aristarchus sacer, the Exercitationes was largely a vehicle for Heinsius to present his theory on the Hellenistic language. L’Empereur, an accomplished orientalist, aided him in pointing out the Hebrew and Aramaic background of certain expressions. Both men, then, were willing to attempt to understand New Testament Greek on its own terms, acknowledging it was a product of its time. Heinsius’ linguistic theory did not change the text, but provided a 20  Heinsius, Sacrae Exercitationes, p. 277: ‘[…] quam prudenter magnus Augustinus moneat, Primum esse, si in Sacris haereamus, diligenter cogitare, utrum corrupti sint codices’. 21  Peter T. van Rooden, Theology, Biblical Scholarship and Rabbinical Studies in the Seventeenth Century: Constantijn L’Empereur (1591–1648), Professor of Hebrew and Theology at Leiden (Leiden: Brill/Universitaire Pers Leiden, 1989), pp. 138–9. 22  See the phrase in Des Maizeaux, Secunda Scaligerana, p. 399: ‘si [le NT] estoit un auteur profane j’en parlerois autrement’. 23  Cited after the translation in Van Rooden, Constantijn L’Empereur, p. 139. For Scaliger’s remark regarding the Church Fathers, see Des Maizeaux, Secunda Scaligerana, p. 589. 24  ‘Si id semel admittatur, ut propter varietatem, quae alibi occurrit, etiam ubi nulla varietas est, eam faciamus, et quidem tot vocibus mutatis; quid erit certi in sacris?’ Cited after Van Rooden, Constantijn L’Empereur, p. 140, n. 170.

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philological tool, opening up new opportunities to get to grips with the texts. These need not oppose dogma; they might as well help Calvinist theological inter­pretations. But that was up to the theologians, of course. Heinsius was a keen linguist, and he did not fail to point out parallels between biblical passages and idiom from ancient Greek and Roman authors. His commentary on Nonnus’ paraphrase of the Gospel of John is linked to his interest in late-Greek poetry. Even of the primarily theological public oration which he delivered in 1619 at the University of Leiden, in which he argued against the five articles of the Remonstrance, a contemporary declared that it was: obscure and confused, and that the author interpreted Holy Scripture often with a poetic license and interpreted it daringly in a strange sense, to his own liking, as if he was dealing with the fables of Ovid.25

This characterization of the homily is misguided, but it was probably influenced by the reputation of its author: Heinsius was famous as a poet, a poetical theorist, and a philologist. By treating the Gospel, in casu John 17:9, as if he dealt with an ancient pagan text, he followed in Scaliger’s footsteps and proved himself flexible in dealing with biblical philology.26 In his biblical annotations, Heinsius is remarkably silent on the most controverted points of faith, either those over which Catholics and Protestants clashed (such as the nature of the Eucharist) or those causing discord between Calvinists and Remonstrants (such as election, faith, grace and free will). He ignored, for example, John 17:9, which had been the subject of his homily in 1619. The genre of Exercitationes allowed him to pass over theological battlefields.27 Important topics in these contexts are the relation between state and church, the Eucharist, and the interdependence of grace, predestination, and election. Passages about such issues were contested amongst Catholics themselves, but also in debates between Catholics and Protestants, and between different kinds of Protestants. Heinsius largely ignores these, and consciously drew up a philological commentary. This was 25  Geeraert Brandt, Historie der Reformatie, en andere kerkelyke geschiedenissen, in en ontrent de Nederlanden. Met eenige aentekeningen en aenmerkingen (Amsterdam: Rieuwertsz, 1704), vol. 4, pp. 83–4: ‘Maer een der geleerdste Remonstranten te deeser tijdt, een der afdrukselen van goede handt bekoomen hebbende, verwonderde sich over de slechte en onbequaeme verhandeling der stoffe: seggende dat […] het schrift duister was en verwardt: dat de Schrijver de Heilige Schriftuur dikwils met een poeetsche dertelheit en vermetelijk in eenen vremden en naer sijn eigen sin trok, als of hy de fabelen van Naso voorhadt’. Brandt, an outspoken Arminian historiographer who, of course, seized every opportunity to slash Heinsius’ anti-Arminian oration, did not disclose who this witness was. 26  Daniel Heinsius, Homilia in locum Iohannis Cap. XVII vers. ix in qua de Electione, et quae ab ea pendet quinque articulorum doctrina, deque eius quae in Ecclesiis recepta est, usu ac aedificatione, agitur (Leiden: Elzevier, 1619). 27  Van Rooden, Constantijn L’Empereur, p. 134, sees this as a general characteristic of the genre of annotationes commentary, in contrast to the systematic theological commentary. For this distinction, see also Henk Jan de Jonge, De bestudering van het Nieuwe Testament aan de Noordnederlandse universiteiten en het Remonstrants Seminarium van 1575 tot 1700 (Amsterdam: Noord-Hollandse Uitgevers Maatschappij, 1980), pp. 39–40.

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not because he was peevish. After all, his colleagues took offence at his butchering of Theodorus Beza’s Latin translation. But Heinsius was hardly as outspoken on more general issues pertaining to the realm of politics and religion as Grotius was.

HUGO GROTIUS: IRENICISM AND ECUMENISM Grotius’ Annotationes cannot be assessed in isolation of the pamphlet war he was conducting with André Rivet at the moment when he was preparing his annotations for the press. But in his Annotationes, Grotius was far less polemical than in his pamphlets, and his religious politics are not as explicit as in other works which appeared at the same time as the Annotationes, during the last five years of his life (1640–1645). Like Heinsius’ Exercitationes, Grotius’ Annotationes had a long gestation period. The work was already conceived in 1620, when Grotius was imprisoned at Loevestein castle.28 But whereas the first part of his annotations on the New Testament and all the annotations on the Old Testament appeared in 1641 and 1644, respectively, the second and third parts of his annotations on the New Testament were published posthumously in 1646 and 1650.29 Although Grotius had already decided that he would publish, he waited until Heinsius’ Exercitationes had come out,30 curious as he was ‘if Heinsius has left something for us to say’.31 (Evidently, he had.)32 Moreover, Grotius wanted to 28  Grotius to N. van Reigersberch, 23 July 1644 (Hugo Grotius, Briefwisseling van Hugo Grotius, eds Henk J.M. Nellen and Cornelia M. Ridderikhoff (The Hague: Instituut voor Nederlandse Geschiedenis, 1996), vol. 15, p. 597, no. 6972): ‘In mijne Louvesteinsche gevanckenisse heb ick God belooft mijn best te doen om alle ’tgunt ick in mijne gevanckenisse aen[getekend heb op] ’t Nieuwe Testament gemeen te maecken voor de naecomelingen.’ 29  Hugo Grotius, Annotationes in libros Evangeliorum (Amsterdam: Johannes and Cornelius Blaeu, 1641); Annotata ad Vetus Testamentum (Paris and Amsterdam: Sebastianus Cramoisy and Johannes Blaeu, 1644); Annotationum in Novum Testamentum tomus II (Paris: widow Gulielmus Pelé, 1646); Annotationum in Novum Testamentum tomus III (Paris: widow Theodorus Pepingué and Stephanus Maucroy, 1650). 30  Grotius to W. de Groot, 9–16 July 1639 (Briefwisseling van Hugo Grotius, ed. B.L. Meulenbroek (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976), vol. 10, p. 445, no. 4196): ‘Plane sentio non esse differendam editionem Notarum nostrarum ad Evangelia, postquam exierint Heinsianae.’ Grotius to I. Vossius, 13 August 1639 (ibid., p. 526, no. 4255): ‘Nos opperimur Heinsiana ad Novum Testamentum, iis visis parati et nostra dare edenda aut hic aut Amstelodami.’ See also Grotius to Opitz, 1 September 1639 (ibid., p. 564, no. 4276): ‘Nunc Heinsii notata ad Novi Foederis libros exspectamus, quibus conspectis ego quoque mea ad quatuor Evangelia editurio.’ Grotius to W. de Groot, 3 September 1639 (ibid., p. 571, no. 4280): ‘Heinsiana ad Novum Testamentum, ubi primum poteris, mittas rogo.’ 31  Grotius to M. Casaubon, 19 September 1639 (ibid., p. 612, no. 4301): ‘Heinsiana ad Novum Testamentum ubi accepero – expecto autem in horas – cogitabo, an aliquod nobis quod dicamus reliquum fecerit.’ 32  Grotius to W. de Groot, 1 October 1639 (ibid., p. 635, no. 4314): ‘Heinsiana ad Novum Testamentum simul huc venerint, percurram. Rogo tamen, si qua est apud vos mittendi occasio, ea ne negligatur neque vero exspectetur ipsius Heinsii magnifica pollicitatio. Quicquid inter ipsum et Salmasium geretur, sive magnum id sive parvum sit, rogo per te cognoscam.’

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know what responses Heinsius would draw (in particular from Saumaise).33 In November 1639, Grotius finally managed to procure a copy of Heinsius’ book. He agreed with much of the Exercitationes.34 A week later, he was still reading (‘It is a long work’): ‘There are many things I approve of.’35 In the same way as Heinsius had his Exercitationes read and commented on by Leiden theologians before publication, so Grotius circulated his unpublished work, first among his next-of-kin and his closest ally Gerard Vossius,36 then by enlisting the supervision of the Remonstrant Brotherhood, who acted as a sort of board of readers; finally, he also subjected it to the theologians of the University in Paris for a Parisian printer in order to obtain privilege.37 So both Heinsius and Grotius were keen to test the water before going entirely public. Much more than Heinsius, Grotius was willing to take into account variant readings and different translations. Grotius acknowledged that the biblical text had changed over time: that was inevitable. Still, he posited that this was not the case during the first two centuries of Christianity. It is important to make clear that Grotius was convinced that these corruptions need not bear upon theological reasonings. As he phrased it in his best-selling book on The Truth of the Christian Religion (1627): It shall never, by no true cunning or in any other way, be proven that all the examples are corrupted and particularly not in those places which pertain to dogma or to some important chapter of history.38 33  Grotius to S. Johnson, 30 September 1638 (Briefwisseling van Hugo Grotius, ed. B.L. Meulenbroek (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973), vol. 9, pp. 598–9, no. 3781): ‘Ego ubi Heinsiana et, ut credo, etiam Salmasiana ad Novum Testamentum videro, quid mihi de meis faciendum sit, constituam.’ Grotius to W. de Groot, 24 January 1639 (ibid., vol. 10, p. 54, no. 3945): ‘[Heinsii] notae in Novum Testamentum cum Aristarcho in magnam molem excrescunt et iam ad NNNNN pervenerunt. Salmasius in secunda de Usuris parte promittit se quamplurimos eius errores demonstraturum.’ Grotius to W. de Groot, 5 February 1639 (ibid., p. 77, no. 3958): ‘Illius ad Novum Testamentum Notae et Salmasiana, quae praelum fatigant, […] quando publici iuris futura sint, fac sciam, siquid aut nosti aut coniectas.’ 34  Grotius to Willem de Groot, 19 November 1639 (ibid., p. 756, no. 4395): ‘Erunt in quibus ipsi dicta et ante ipsum mihi, sed non ante edita, magnis argumentis probabo.’ 35  Grotius to Willem de Groot, 26 November 1639 (ibid., p. 771, no. 4405): ‘Heinsiana adhuc lego; longa enim sunt et saepe interpellor. Sunt eius multa quae confirmabo.’ 36  Vossius had no opportunity to do more than glance at it; see Vossius to Grotius, 27 September 1640 (Hugo Grotius, Briefwisseling van Hugo Grotius, eds B.L. Meulenbroek and Paula Witkam (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981), vol. 11, pp. 536–7, no. 4854); Willem de Groot to Grotius, 20 August 1640 (ibid., p. 465, no. 4791); Grotius to Willem de Groot, 2 February 1641 (Hugo Grotius, Briefwisseling van Hugo Grotius, ed. Paula Witkam (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1986), vol. 12, p. 68, no. 5039): ‘Caetera Vossianae epistolae digna sunt ipso. Ostendit se quaedam correxisse in iis, quae non vidi. Gratiam habeo.’ 37  Henk Nellen, Hugo Grotius: A Lifelong Struggle for Peace in Church and State (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 618–29. 38  Grotius, De Veritate, bk 3, ch. 15, in Hugo Grotius, Opera omnia theologica, in tres tomos divisa, ante quidem per partes, nunc autem coniunctim et accuratius edita (London: Prostant venalia apud Mosem Pitt, 1679), vol. 1, p. 55: ‘At vero dolo aut alio quovis modo omnia exempla vitiata et quidem in iis quae ad dogma aut insigne aliquod historiae caput pertinerent, nunquam probabitur.’

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Time and again Grotius signals the variants between the text he used (the 1613 edition by Raphelengius39) and the readings of the Codex Alexandrinus, the oldest existing Greek manuscript of the Bible (which included the Old Testament in the Septuagint translation), collations of which Grotius managed to lay hands on, just like Heinsius had and Saumaise attempted.40 The Annotationes were the first printed source to have published variants from the Codex Alexandrinus.41 Contrary to Heinsius, Grotius did not shrink from commenting at length on vexed loci, such as the Eucharist in Matthew 26 or the passages on grace and election in Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. Even here he used the Codex Alexandrinus. Grotius often cites Church Fathers such as Jerome, Origen, 39  Henk Jan de Jonge, ‘Hugo Grotius, Exégète du Nouveau Testament’, in The World of Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), Proceedings of the International Colloquium Organized by the Grotius Committee of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Rotterdam 6–9 April 1983 (Amsterdam and Maarssen: APA—Holland University Press), 1984, pp. 97–115 (108, n. 27). 40  Heinsius acquired collations from three chapters of Genesis and one from ‘Saint Paul’ (it is not clear from which Epistle). See Heinsius to Simon d’Ewes, (no date) 1642 (Leiden, University Library, Ms. Bur F 4, printed in Petrus Burmannus (ed.), Sylloges epistolarum a viris illustribus scriptarum tomi quinque (Leiden: apud Samuelem Luchtmans, 1727), vol. 2, p. 470): ‘Annotationes autem nullas ad Novum Testamentum habeo, aut ullis unquam, quae non extant, usus sum. In augendis nostris exercitationibus iam sum totus. Atque utinam tam sim felix, ut, procurante aliquo, in nostram gratiam Manuscripti, quos antiquissimos esse in Brittannia vestra novi, conferantur codices. Quod sperare quam consequi facilius: ego sane publice me gratum probarem.’ See also D’Ewes to Heinsius, 31 May 1642 (Leiden, University Library, Ms. BPL 246): ‘Varias ex vetustissimo Novi Testamenti in Regia Bibliotheca elementis Graecis capitalibus ante mille annos exarato exemplari M[anu]s[cripto] lectiones propediem ad te mittere decrevimus’; Heinsius to Patricius Junius, 16 May 1633 (in Johannes Kemke (ed.), Patricius Junius (Patrick Young), Bibliothekar der Könige Jacob I. und Carl I. von England: Mitteilungen aus seinem Briefwechsel (Leipzig: M. Spirgatis, 1898), no. 109, p. 68); Paul R. Sellin, Daniel Heinsius and Stuart England, with a Short-Title Checklist of the Works of Daniel Heinsius (Leiden and Oxford: Leiden University Press/Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 108; P. Junius to Heinsius, 30 June 1633 (Kemke, Junius Briefwechsel, no. 111, p. 70). In 1639, Grotius saw his efforts rewarded: Patrick Young (via Franciscus Junius F.F.) sent him excerpts of the apostolic letters, promising to add more collations from the book of Revelations, the Acts, and three gospels (Matthew was largely missing from the Alexandrinus). See Grotius to Franciscus Junius F.F., 23 September 1638 (Sophie van Romburgh (ed.), ‘For my Worthy Freind mr Franciscus Junius’: An Edition of the Correspondence of Francis Junius F.F. (1591–1677) (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004), p. 622, no. 120); Grotius to Franciscus Junius F.F., 22 January 1639 (ibid., p. 628, no. 122); Franciscus Junius F.F. to Grotius, 9 February 1639 (ibid., p. 630, no. 123); Grotius to Franciscus Junius F.F, 19 February 1639 (ibid., p. 632, no. 124). In May 1640, the second set of collations reached Grotius in Paris. The New Testament in the Codex Alexandrinus was collated against the 1633 Elzevier Textus Receptus. The manuscript with the variants, or an apograph thereof, which Grotius received from Young is now in Amsterdam, University Library, ms. III H 171. This manuscript contains variants from the last three chapters of Matthew, from Mark, Luke, and John, the Acts, and the Apocalypse. Half a year later than Grotius, Saumaise also tried to obtain these collations, but Patrick Young had only time to inspect the variant readings which Saumaise would list; see Gronovius to Saumaise, 15 June 1639 (Burmannus, Sylloge, vol. 2, pp. 595–6, no. 339). See also Nellen, Hugo Grotius, pp. 513–14. 41  De Jonge, ‘Grotius, Exégète’, p. 109. Cf. Grotius to W. de Groot, 5 May 1640 (Grotius, Briefwisseling, vol. 11, p. 249, no. 4632): ‘Ad Annotata in Evangelium addo quaedam ex vetustissimo Angliae manuscripto, quae brevi mittam.’ Previous attempts by English scholars to publish the Alexandrinian Codex or at least collations from it, failed; see Scott Mandelbrote, ‘Isaac Vossius and the Septuagint’, in Eric Jorink and Dirk van Miert (eds), Isaac Vossius 1618–1689): Between Science and Scholarship (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012), pp. 85–117 (88–90).

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Ambrose, and Chrysostom. He does so for two reasons: either to research the constitution of the text in their times, or to substantiate or belie a theological point. When it comes to linguistic analysis, Grotius often illuminates the meaning or range of different meanings of a word.42 He focuses on those passages which are historically or grammatically unclear.43 In the use of technical vocabulary and idiom, he often adduces parallels in texts of classical antiquity, thus con­ textualizing the linguistic mindset of the producers and users of the Bible. In his volumes on the New Testament, Grotius frequently translates into Latin, thereby taking the Vulgate as a basis, though he departs from it occasionally, and in most cases accounts for his reasons to do so. Grotius often clarifies what went on in the minds of the apostles or their audiences by paraphrasing their words and making explicit the feelings these people were likely to have had in the inter­ action. Such paraphrases demonstrate the power of Grotius’ imaginative historicism: he placed himself in the position of the historical actors. He did the same for the language the people in the time of Jesus and the apostles must have heard and spoken. Grotius ascribed deviations from koinè to the influence of Syriac.44 My books and those which I edited and those which I will edit, show that Jews called Hellenistic are those who used the Greek language in the Synagogues. But their language was full of Syriac expressions, which were very different from pure Greek.45

Grotius, then, largely agreed with Heinsius when it came to the oriental influences of the New Testament Greek, but this impression was shared by most philologists. Even Saumaise, who attacked Heinsius’ theory, agreed that New Testament Greek was heavily marked by Hebraisms. Far more spectacular is that Grotius consistently pointed out textual parallels with pagan texts from Greek and Roman Antiquity in an attempt to contextualize the linguistic mindset of the historical interlocutors acting in the Bible and to reconstruct the linguistic universe of the first century ad. This brings us to historical contextualization. The Annotationes bristle with historical contextualizations, not only linguistic, but also political, ritual, and religious ones. The way in which Grotius traces pagan antecedents of the Eucharist takes on a dangerously radical tone when 42  H. von Reventlow, ‘Humanistic Exegesis: The Famous Hugo Grotius’, in Benjamin Uffenheimer and Henning Graf von Reventlow (eds), Creative Biblical Exegesis: Christian and Jewish Hermeneutics through the Centuries (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1985), pp. 175–91 (177). 43  Willem Cornelis van Unnik, ‘Hugo Grotius als uitlegger van het Nieuwe Testament’, in W.C. van Unnik, Woorden gaan leven: Opstellen van en over Willem Cornelis van Unnik (1910–1978) (Kampen: Kok, 1979), pp. 172–214 (192). 44  ibid., p. 193. 45  Grotius to W. de Groot, 12 October 1641 (Grotius, Briefwisseling, vol. 12, p. 565, no. 5412): ‘Mei libri et quos edidi et quos editurus sum, ostendent Hellenistas dictos Iudaeos qui in Synagogis Graeca lingua utebantur; eorum vero sermonem plenum fuisse locutionum Syriacarum a puritate Graeca longe abeuntium.’

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drawing attention to the cannibalistic rituals of human sacrifices of certain pagan peoples.46 Grotius also uses Jewish tradition in order to make sense of the Hellenistic Jewish world of the peoples figuring in the New Testament. Perhaps even more significant in his historicizing method is that Grotius plays down the divine inspiration of the Bible. During the first stage of Christianity (when exactly remains unclear), tradition is important because the apostles spoke many words which they themselves did not record, but which others did jot down and passed on.47 According to Grotius, only the prophets, the Apocalypse, the predictions of the apostles, and of course Christ’s own words are divinely inspired. The historical books and the books of wisdom were written with a pious spirit, but not inspired.48 Grotius did not steer completely clear of theological interpretations. Some­ times, his textual-critical, his linguistic, and his historical approaches of the Bible spill over into statements which dovetail with Arminian and even Catholic thought regarding free will. There are no clear lines of demarcation between strictly philological observations on the one hand and theological readings on the other. For instance, in Acts 13:48, Grotius explains that the phrase ‘and as many [gentiles] as were ordained to eternal life believed’ meant that these gentiles themselves made the choice to convert. Here, Grotius counters arguments that this passage spoke of those who were predestined to faith. He does so on the basis of the assumption that a Hebraism was used in the Greek: ‘It happens frequently in Hebrew that a passive voice is used instead of a reciprocal voice: a niphal (passive or reflexive) instead of hithpael (reflexive).’ This is to say that ‘they were ordained’ in fact is a Hebraism for ‘they ordained themselves’.49 De Jonge sees this as an attempt to favour a Remonstrant interpretation: one in which the believer has a choice to believe or to reject Christian faith. Likewise Romans 8:8 and Ephesians 1:5 would have been influenced by Grotius’ 46  Grotius, Opera omnia theologica, vol. 2:1, p. 251 (Annotations ad Matth. 26:26). 47  Van Unnik, ‘Hugo Grotius’, p. 188. 48  Grotius, Rivetiani apologetici Discussio (in Hugo Grotius, Opera omnia theologica in quatuor tomos divisa (Basel: apud E. et J.R. Thurnisios fratres, 1732), vol. 4, pp. 722b–723a): ‘Afflatu Dei locutos quae locuti sunt, scripsisse quae scribere iussi sunt, Prophetas toto animo agnoscit Grotius: idem iudicat de Apocalypsi et Apostolorum praedictionibus. Christi dicta omnia quin Dei sint dicta, dubitari nefas. De scriptis historicis et moralibus Hebraeorum sententiis, aliud putat. Satis est quod pio animo scripta sint et optima fide et de rebus summis.’ Grotius, Animadversiones in Animadversiones Riveti (ibid., p. 647): ‘Multum autem fallitur D. Rivetus, cum putat omnes eos libros Veteris Testamenti qui in Hebraeo exstant Canone, dictatos a Spiritu Sancto. Esdras secundum omnes Hebraeos neque Propheta fuit, neque Spiritum Sanctum habuit. Sed liber eius et tota collectio librorum vetustiorum ab ipso facta, approbata est παρὰ τῆς συναγωγῆς τῆς μεγάλῆς, in qua erant et Prophetae nonnulli; quamquam de libro Ecclesiastae haesitatum fuisse aiunt Hebraei: sed praevaluisse sententiam eorum, qui eum reciperent. Quorum sententiae libens subscribo. Lucas quoque scripsit verissima, sed unde ea haeserit dixit ipse in praefatione.’ See also Van Unnik, ‘Hugo Grotius’, p. 187. 49  For the semantic overlap between the two Hebrew modes, see Joel S. Baden, ‘Hithpael and Niphal in Biblical Hebrew: Semantic and Morphological Overlap’, Vetus Testamentum 60 (2010), pp. 33–44.

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Remonstrant inclinations. ‘With Grotius, exegesis of the dogmatic and normative sort has not entirely disappeared’, as De Jonge put it, after examining a Grotian interpretation that would have served as a response to critique on certain passages in his De iure belli ac pacis (1625). ‘Grotius has not always resisted the temptation of an exegesis which seeks the confirmation of certain modern theological and political ideas through the authority of the Bible.’50 In Grotius’ Annotationes, then, there are no waterproof partition walls between textual-critical, linguistic, and historical criticism on the one hand and ­theological-dogmatic interpretation on the other. It was Grotius’ heroic accomplishment to shift the focus of biblical commentaries from theological and dogmatic exegesis for the benefit of contemporary life to historical annotations on the ancient context of the biblical world.51 But it should be made clear that all such remarks are framed by his religious political ideal. This ideal was a Christian unity that took the earliest church as its model, and a fundamental ethical message of the doctrine of Christ as its central theology, relegating discussions of adiaphora to a secondary status. Significantly, the preparation and publication of the various parts of his Annotationes on the Old and New Testaments ran parallel with a host of polemical writings about Grotius’ attempts to unify Protestant and Catholic churches, most memorably by denying the identification of the Pope as the Antichrist.52 Such a larger agenda is lacking with Heinsius, and that can explain the dissimilar outcomes of two students who wielded such similar tools.

THE EMB ODIED BIBLICAL PHILOLO GIST There was something inherently subversive in biblical philology, but this potential was only given space if the philologist allowed for it. This space was both philosophical and social. Scaliger’s philosophy probably was to defend a new historical truth against the Catholic institutionalized version of the chronology of Christian and ecclesiastical history. Heinsius’ philosophical agenda seems to have been non-existent: it was rather linguistical in its critique of Beza’s translation of the New Testament and in its assessment of biblical Greek. Yet, he silently subjugated to Reformed theology. Grotius had an ecumenical programme and used biblical philology for his irenicist agenda. Neither Heinsius nor Grotius tried to follow passively where biblical philology led them: they held a thorough grip on it. In this sense, Scaliger was more willing to ‘follow’ philology into philosophically or theologically awkward conclusions. But his legacy could go two ways: the passively conservative Heinsian way and the actively progressive Grotian way. 50  De Jonge, ‘Grotius, Exégète’, p. 113.    51  ibid., p. 114. 52  Nellen, Hugo Grotius, pp. 602–18, notably 616–17.

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From Erasmus to Grotius, the historicization of the biblical world and of the transmission of the text had been variously applied by different philologists. Overall, the assessment of the biblical text grew more complicated and more advanced, because insight into the oriental context of the text accumulated over time. In the long run, the potential subversivity of philology with regard to the authority of Scripture was bound to become manifest, but the speed, the rhythm, and the structure of the process were far from predictable. There was a century-and-a-half between Erasmus’ edition of the New Testament and Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, and those 150 years saw religious turmoil on an unprecedented scale. The devastation brought by the endemic wars could have opened up ever so many radical interpretations of Scripture. But whenever these did occur, they were not the result of biblical philology. On the contrary, biblical philology served the powers that be: the most impressive accomplishments were done on the side of the Catholic Polyglot Bibles. On the other side of the confessional divide, Theodorus Beza was an accomplished philologist, and he used philology to strengthen Calvinist exegesis. It required a philosophical space before philology was granted enough room to manifest its deconstructive potentiality. This philosophical space—i.e. a programme rising above a mere textual, critical, linguistic, and historical understanding of the text—was to a large extent theological-political. This held true for Grotius, with whom biblical philology was more radical than with Scaliger or Heinsius, and it held, of course, all the more true for Spinoza. Spinoza did not invent the type of biblical criticism he exercised in the Tractatus TheologicoPoliticus.53 He used biblical philology to enhance his radical theological-political, or rather philosophical, agenda: the reduction of religion to general ethical doctrines. There was a social context as well. Scaliger, however individualistic, was recruited into a profoundly Calvinist elite and served within the framework of a university. He feared that the consequences of his biblical philology would cause him trouble and refrained from assembling and publishing his annotations. Heinsius was also anxious: he was subjected to the authority of theological colleagues, and throughout his life, he was confronted with the limits of freedom set by his institution. The same does not apply for Grotius, who was much more independent, and who considered his own irenicist policies as serving the agenda of Sweden. But he, too, was subject to political forces: eventually, he was called back as an ambassador in 1645, according to some contemporaries because of his ideals of religious unification.54 Spinoza was, of course, far freer than any of them. After his expulsion from the Jewish community in Amsterdam no one pulled his strings anymore.

53  See Anthony Grafton’s contribution in this volume, chapter 8. 54  Nellen, Hugo Grotius, p. 717.

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So, philology was inherently radical, but it needed a revolutionary philosopher with social independence to actualize that radicality. Anthony Grafton is surely right in stressing the importance of humanist philology for the history of the seventeenth century and the development of radical biblical criticism. And Jonathan Israel is right in emphasizing the uniquely radical character of Spinoza’s philosophy. Spinoza’s biblical criticism provides a clear link between humanist scholarship and the Enlightenment.

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5 The Naked Truth of Scripture André Rivet between Bellarmine and Grotius Anthony Ossa-Richardson*

There is something great in the moment when a man first strips himself of adventitious wrappages; and sees indeed that he is naked […]; yet also a Spirit, and unutterable Mystery of Mysteries. —Diogenes Teufelsdröckh

André Rivet would have turned in his grave to hear of it. His own son, promoting religious tolerance in print! In 1676, there appeared at the London bookstalls a polemic in high burlesque—Mr Smirke, Or, The Divine in Mode, by Andreas Rivetus, Jr. It was nothing out of the ordinary, only the latest salvo in one pamphlet war out of a hundred. Rivetus was writing to support the bishop of Hereford, Herbert Croft (1603–1691), who in late 1675 had published a tract, The Naked Truth, thumping the tub for doctrinal freedom within the Church of England.1 In the apostolic era, Croft wrote, ‘the simple naked Truth [was] without any Surplice to cover it, without any Ecclesiastical Policy to maintain it’.2 A man’s salvation depended only on allegiance to those few truths easily deducible, without ‘humane argument’, from the Scripture, and so the state, rather than pressing new articles of faith, should leave all else to the individual conscience. If a point is not fully expressed in the Bible, theologians will differ in their interpretations: ‘what one Man thinks clearly deduc’d, another may think not so; * I am grateful to Theo Dunkelgrün, Dirk van Miert, and Joanna Weinberg for their helpful comments. I am also indebted to the Leverhulme Trust for the Fellowship during which I have undertaken this research. 1  By 1675 The Naked Truth (the phrase from Horace, Carmina I.24.7, ‘incorrupta fides, nudaque veritas’) was already a conventional title for pamphlets—previous examples were written by John Toldervy (1656) and Isaac Penington (1674), and Edmund Hickeringill published a number of follow-ups under the heading in 1681–1682. On ‘the naked truth’ as a trope in religion and culture, see, for instance, Judy Kronenfeld, King Lear and the Naked Truth: Rethinking the Language of Religion and Resistance (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), pp. 17–40. 2  Herbert Croft, The Naked Truth, ed. Herbert Hensley Henson (London: Chatto and Windus, 1919), p. 36.

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I mean, not another ignorant and weak, but as learned, and as able’. Charity, therefore, prescribed toleration.3 Rivetus, answering one of Croft’s critics, Francis Turner—another was Gilbert Burnet4—defended moderation most immoderately, and to buttress his argument he included a historical essay on creeds and councils, giving way to a critique of ecclesiastical authority in general. The Christian’s conscience, maintained Rivetus, could rely only upon its own lights, and if any human creed intruded itself upon him, it was for the individual to search it out against the litmus of Scripture, in which ‘Christ and his Apostles speak articulately enough . . . without any Creed’.5 Mr Smirke, and the appended essay, drew complaints from the Bishop of London, the Lord Chancellor, and others, and its anonymous printer was jailed; but no responses were published. The elder Rivet (1572–1651), as we said, would have disapproved of Mr Smirke. As one of the foremost theologians of the Dutch Reformed church, he had been notorious for his tireless assault on Hugo Grotius, whose eirenicism he rejected for a narrow and militant orthodoxy in a long exchange of booklets across the early 1640s. In fact, however, Rivetus was no son of his after all. The author of Mr Smirke was instead the ageing poet Andrew Marvell, theologically a rather diffident figure, sympathetic to tolerance, but Puritan by upbringing, and savagely critical both of Arminianism and of the restored Stuart court—not an easy fit for the categories of Dutch religious affiliation.6 In any case, as Mr Smirke’s title-page admitted, Marvell’s chosen pseudonym was not a mark of allegiance, but only an anagram of Res nuda veritas, ‘Truth [is] a naked thing’, a reiteration of Croft’s credo. Despite the mismatch between Rivet and Rivetus, the themes and motifs of the Croft dispute had close counterparts in the Huguenot’s own intellectual milieu.7 Like so many of the period, Rivet’s thought, and his career, had been nourished in religious controversy: when the Leiden theology faculty headhunted him in 1619—the great orientalist Thomas Erpenius was their envoy—it was to replace 3  ibid., pp. 7–12. 4  [Gilbert Burnet], A Modest Survey of the Most Considerable Things in a Discourse Lately Published, Entitled Naked Truth (London: Moses Pitt, 1676), p. 5, compared Croft’s latitudinarian position to that of the Arminian theologians Simon Episcopius and Étienne de Courcelles, whose disciples he had encountered during a visit to the Netherlands in the summer of 1664. On this visit, see Gilbert Burnet, ‘Remaining Fragments’, in H.C. Foxcroft (ed.), A Supplement to Burnet’s History of My Own Time (Oxford: Clarendon, 1902), pp. 90–5, naming Arnold Poelenburg, de Courcelles’ student and the editor of Episcopius’ posthumous Opera (1665). 5  ‘Andreas Rivetus, Jr.’, Mr Smirke; Or, The Divine in Mode: Being Certain Annotations, upon the Animadversions on the Naked Truth (London, 1676), pp. 61–2. 6  On Marvell’s religious attitudes, see Pierre Legouis, Andrew Marvell: Poet, Puritan, Patriot (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968), pp. 220–3, and Takashi Yoshinaka, Marvell’s Ambivalence: Religion and the Politics of Imagination in Mid-Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge: Brewer, 2011), esp. pp. 78, 274, 278–9. On Mr Smirke, see Legouis, Andrew Marvell, pp. 202–6. Croft would later write to Marvell to thank him; see Elizabeth Story Donno (ed.), Andrew Marvell: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge, 1978), pp. 64–5. 7  For a biography of Rivet, see Huibert Jacob Honders, Andreas Rivetus als invloedrijk gereformeerd theoloog in Holland’s bloeitijd The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1930).

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the Arminian leader Simon Episcopius, dismissed for his heterodoxy after the Synod of Dort.8 With some regret at leaving his family, Rivet, an impeccable Calvinist, joined the following year.9 Plucked from the French backwaters, he now rubbed shoulders with the cream of Reformed learning.10 The elder Vossius, since 1622 a professor of rhetoric and history, proved a close ally, and the two remained on warm terms until Vossius’ death in 1649. In 1621, Rivet married Marie du Moulin, Pierre du Moulin’s sister and the aunt of Samuel Bochart, whom Rivet later tutored; he thus attached himself to a great Huguenot dynasty, stretching down to Pierre Jurieu and Jacques Basnage in the eighteenth century. Upon his arrival at Leiden he held disputations alongside his colleagues Antonius Walaeus, Johannes Polyander, and Antonius Thysius; these were collected in 1625 as the Synopsis purioris theologiae, a key manifesto of Dutch Reformed doctrine.11 But Rivet’s primary duty was to lecture on the Old Testament. He first discussed ‘some prophetic books’, evidently including Hosea and Isaiah 53, on which he published a joint commentary in 1625.12 Next he turned to Genesis, and finally to Exodus.13 1627 saw the first edition of his Isagoge seu introductio generalis ad Scripturam Sacram Veteris et Novi Testamenti, a treatise on hermeneutics arranged by topic; two years later Rivet published an edition of Opuscula theologica by Pierre Picherel (d. 1590), a Catholic exegete with Reformist sympathies and a personal correspondence with Beza.14 8  On various contexts for Episcopius’ dismissal from Leiden after Dort, see John Platt, Reformed Thought and Scholasticism: The Arguments for the Existence of God in Dutch Theology, 1575–1650 (Leiden: Brill, 1982), p. 161, and Jonathan Israel, ‘The Intellectual Debate about Toleration in the Dutch Republic’, in Christiane Berkvens-Stevelinck, Jonathan Israel, and G.H.M. Posthumus Meyjes (eds), The Emergence of Tolerance in the Dutch Republic (Leiden: Brill, 1997), pp. 3–36, p. 14. 9  André Rivet, ‘Praefatio’, in his Opera theologica, 3 vols (Rotterdam: Arnold Leers, 1651–1660), vol. 1, sig. *2r. 10  On theology and biblical studies at Leiden, see two excellent articles in Th.H. Lunsingh Scheurleer and G.H.M. Posthumus Meyjes (eds), Leiden University in the Seventeenth Century: An Exchange of Learning (Leiden: Universitaire Pers Leiden and Brill, 1975)—on the Old Testament, J.C.H. Lebram, ‘Ein Streit um die hebräische Bibel und die Septuaginta’, pp. 20–63, and on the New, H.J. de Jonge, ‘The Study of the New Testament’, pp. 65–109. 11  Synopsis purioris theologiae (Leiden: Elzevier, 1625), now being edited in three volumes as Johannes Polyander, Andreas Rivetus, Antonius Walaeus, and Anthonius Thysius, Synopsis Purioris Theologiae/Synopsis of a Purer Theology, ed. and trans. Dolf te Velde, Riemer Faber, Rein Ferwerda et al., vol. 1– (Leiden: Brill, 2014–). Rivet held the disputations on Providence (# 11), original sin (#  15), idolatry (# 19—with his nephew Bochart), the New and Old Testaments (# 23), Christ’s humiliation (# 27—with his son Samuel), the faith of the holy (# 31), Christian liberty (# 35), purgatory and indulgences (# 39), sacraments (# 43), the false sacraments of the popes (# 47), and the Resurrection and Last Judgement (# 51). These are collected in his Opera, vol. 3, pp. 745–97. 12  André Rivet, Commentarius in Hoseam Prophetam […]. Accessit explicatio cap. LIII. Esaiae Prophetae (Leiden: Commelinus, 1625); the quotation is from Rivet’s dedication to his Theologicae et scholasticae exercitationes CXC in Genesin [henceforward Exercitationes], in Opera, vol. 1, sig. *5r, ‘quosdam libros propheticos’. 13  On 5 September 1628, to mark the shift to Exodus, Rivet delivered a public lecture on the afflictions of the church; see Opera, vol. 1, pp. 716–20. 14  Pierre Picherel, Opuscula theologica, ed. [André Rivet] (Leiden: Elzevier, 1629). On Picherel, see Eugène and Émile Haag, La France Protestante, ou, Vies des protestants français, 9 vols (Paris: Cherbuliez, 1846–59), vol. 8, p. 231.

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In 1632, just as the Elzevir press was going to press with his lectures on Genesis, Rivet entered the service of Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, as a tutor to his son William II.15 It is for his late dust-up with the more famous Grotius that Rivet has been chiefly studied, when he is studied at all.16 But from start to finish, his career had been distinguished by polemics, even in an era of ceaseless polemics: his work found its wellspring in resistance, with the Catholics (and especially the Jesuits) on one side, and the Socinians and Arminians on the other. His positions, moreover, remained impressively consistent across decades: arguments espoused against Grotius in 1643 had been offered already against the Jesuit Guillaume Baile over thirty years earlier. Baile’s 1607 summary of confessional talking-points, the Catéchisme et abbrégé des controverses de nostre temps, had provided Rivet with an attractively comprehensive punch-bag, and he responded with two point-by-point critiques.17 Many of his jabs appeared again, sometimes 15  Rivet to G.J. Vossius, 10 April 1632, announced his new appointment, noting ‘Aliud jam sub praelo Elzeviriorum, sudat lucubrationum mearum in Genesin.’ See Gerardus Joannes Vossius, Epistolae argumentis et indicibus necessariis auctae, ed. Paul Colomiès, 2 vols (Augsburg: Laurentius Kronigerus, 1691), vol. 2, pp. 105–6 (#144). The circumstances of publication are given in more detail in the dedication to the Exercitationes, Opera, vol. 1, sig. *5r–v. Rivet’s engagement with Frederick Henry is studied at length in Alexander Gijsbert van Opstal, André Rivet, een invloedrijk Hugenoot aan het hof van Frederik Hendrik (Harderwijk: Flevo, 1937). 16  Honders, Andreas Rivetus, pp. 88–106, is the longest account, but hardly adequate. Hans Bots and Pierre Leroy edited the extensive Correspondance intégrale d’André Rivet et de Claude Sarrau, 3 vols (Amsterdam: APA-Holland University Press, 1978–1982), chiefly for its insights into the Grotius dispute. Further letters are catalogued in Paul Dibon, Inventaire de la correspondance d’André Rivet, 1595–1650 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971). See also Hans Bots, ‘Hugo Grotius et André Rivet: Deux lumières opposées, deux vocations contradictoires’, in Henk Nellen and Edwin Rabbie (eds), Hugo Grotius, Theologian: Essays in Honour of G.H.M. Posthumus Meyjes (Leiden: Brill, 1994), pp. 145–55. Other notice of Rivet’s work has been minimal. See, for instance, on Rivet’s views on the Septuagint, Lebram, ‘Ein Streit um die hebräische Bibel’, pp. 38–9, and on his patristics, Irena Backus, ‘The Fathers and Calvinist Orthodoxy: Patristic Scholarship’, in I.  Backus (ed.), The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West: From the Carolingians to the Maurists, 2 vols (Leiden: Brill, 1997), vol. 2, pp. 839–65. Rivet’s involvement with his nephew Bochart’s Geographia sacra has also been studied, drawing on the Sarrau correspondence; see most recently Zur Shalev, Sacred Words and Worlds: Geography, Religion, and Scholarship, 1550– 1700 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 156–67. He turns up as an attendant lord in broader surveys of the period, such as François Laplanche, L’Écriture, le sacré et l’histoire: érudits et politiques protestants devant la Bible en France au XVIIe siècle (Amsterdam and Maarssen: APA-Holland University Press, 1986), and Peter van Rooden, Theology, Biblical Scholarship and Rabbinical Studies in the Seventeenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 1989); and in monographs on contemporary figures, such as C.S.M. Rademaker, Life and Work of Gerardus Joannes Vossius (1577–1649) (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1981). 17  The publication history is rather intricate and needs further work to unpick. Rivet’s two initial efforts were Sommaire et abrege des controverses de nostre temps touchant la religion (La Rochelle: Haultin, 1608), second edition (Geneva: Alexandre Pernet, 1609), and Triomphe de la verité en suite du Sommaire des Controverses de nostre temps touchant la religion (Saumur: Thomas Portau, 1610), apparently responding to a new edition of Baile’s Catéchisme (‘Pour examen et destruction des restes de la fausse doctrine de Guillaume Baile Iesuite, adioustés tant à la derniere Edition de son Catechisme’). The Sommaire and Triomphe seem to have been composited as Le catholique orthodoxe opposé au catholique papiste en iv traitez (Saumur: Thomas Portau, 1616),

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near-verbatim, in the 1627 Isagoge, which though a textbook in form, was no less reactive and polemical in nature. The polemical magnum opus, however, was his volume of Exercitationes on Genesis, which finally appeared in 1633; this work, more than his other ­published commentaries, represented Rivet’s major contribution to scriptural exegesis, the twin of his theoretical analysis in the Isagoge. The two books filled a gap in the Reformed church after Dort. If the Synopsis offered a common foundation of dogmatics—later augmented by the huge volumes of disputations published by Gisbertus Voetius in Utrecht (1648–1669)—there was no comparable treatise on hermeneutics until the Isagoge, and, until the Exer­ citationes, nothing to match the exegetical work of Catholics such as Cornelius a Lapide and Benedict Pereira, or Lutherans such as David Paraeus. As its title indicates, Rivet’s book is not strictly a line-by-line commentary, but a series of 190 essays or miniature treatises on contentious words and verses: an average of just under four per chapter of Genesis, though wildly uneven in its spacing.18 Despite its structural novelties, his volume, like previous commentaries, functions as a summa of past readings, a guide not only to the interpretation of Genesis, but to the history of its interpretations. It is, in other words, profoundly reactive, dependent on earlier work, and above all that of his Catholic enemies, for almost all its cues. For this reason, and by virtue of its length, it has received very little attention from historians of theology.19 Indeed, what to do with it? A thousand-odd pages, tooth-combing its subject, and stuffed with recondite exposition and controversy—it resists summary. The reader swims in its paragraphs. With his eyes trained on theological heavens, he swiftly loses sight of land, the affective warmth of biography, and is dragged into the deep. All early modern scholars sought the naked truth. Grotius once received a letter from the Heidelberg theology professor Georg Michael Lingelsheim, praising with dedicatory verses by the Scotsman Zachary Boyd. This edition is given as the third, probably counting the two Sommaires as predecessors; it was later translated into Latin as Catholicus orthodoxus oppositus catholico papistae, 2 vols (Leiden: Abrahamus Commelinus, 1630). G.J. Vossius, who read the last of these, informed Rivet in a letter (31 January 1632) that ‘Testis tuus Catholicus orthodoxus, quem quoties in manus sumo, toties quod discam, reperio.’ See Vossius, Epistolae, vol. 1, p. 223 (# 174). 18  The designation Exercitationes also placed Rivet in an eminent scholarly tradition represented by J. C. Scaliger, Isaac Casaubon, and Rivet’s Leiden colleague Daniel Heinsius, whose Exercitationes on Nonnus’ paraphrase of John’s Gospel had been published in 1627. 19  One major exception to this is Arnold Williams, The Common Expositor: An Account of the Commentaries on Genesis, 1527–1633 (Chapel Hill, CA: University of North Carolina Press, 1948), which makes ample use of Rivet and many other commentators for its survey of themes and doctrine in the exegesis of Genesis. Given its scope and arrangement, however, there is little focus on Rivet’s particularities, nor on the textual or historical details of given cruces. Though undeniably helpful as a guide to the primary literature, Williams’ survey is also weakened by its neglect of exegesis outside volumes devoted entirely to commentary.

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his De satisfactione Christi: ‘You have presented the matter clearly and perspicuously, and confirmed it with such strong evidence that the naked truth is revealed and all fallacies fly away.’20 But why ‘naked’? Why not just ‘truth’? The answer lies in number: to say that truth is naked is to say that it is simple, and single, left behind when fallacies (plural) are stripped away.21 This was true of Scripture above all—to challenge the unity of its truth, as some Catholic exegetes did, was for Rivet to vitiate its sanctity and doctrinal authority. His career was a prolonged battle, in textual, hermeneutic, and doctrinal matters, not only against error, but against multiplicity. To the modern historian, multiplicity in all these domains appears ineluctable and irreducible, but to Rivet and many like him, it was a contingent effect of human sin and blindness, a challenge to be overcome. The most interesting aspect of his work is his sedulity in taming the ocean; even in his applied exegesis, Rivet constantly thought not only about the meaning of this or that passage, but about the conditions of possibility of scriptural meaning as a whole. Conveniently, these conditions had been the first subject broached by Baile, who prefaced his defence of Catholic teaching and practice with an extensive commentary on the corruption and obscurity of Scripture, and on its insufficiency to settle debate and establish doctrine. Rivet could easily respond to Baile’s claims seriatim, thus constructing his own defence of Reform on the basis of scriptural integrity and self-sufficiency.22 But Baile’s sequencing was no fluke; rather, it had become standard in works of both confessions.23 Its architect was the Jesuit Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621), who had taught theology at Rome from 1576 to 1588, and published his arguments from 1586 under the title Controversiae, beginning with De verbo Dei, a treatise on Scripture and oral tradition.24 To his colleagues, Bellarmine had become an unofficial spokesman for the Counter-Reformation; to his Protestant enemies, Bellarmine was the most dangerous theologian in the Catholic church—he was, in John Gordon’s memorable anagram, errorum tabens bullis, ‘rotting away in bubbles [or papal bulls] of errors’.25 Student disputations against De verbo Dei were held at 20  Georg Michael Lingelsheim to Grotius, late September 1617, in Hugo Grotius, Briefwisseling, ed. P. C. Molhuysen et al., 17 vols (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1928–2001), vol. 1, p. 589 (# 538): ‘Rem ipsam clare et perspicue exhibuisti, et demonstrationibus ita firmasti, ut veritas nuda pateat et fallaciae omnes profligentur.’ 21  Cf. Nicomachean Ethics II:6, 1106b33, in a moral context: ‘ἐσθλοὶ μὲν γὰρ ἁπλῶς, παντοδαπῶς δὲ κακοί’. Francis Bacon was more poetic: ‘truth is a naked and open day-light that doth not show the masks and mummeries and triumphs of the world, half so stately and daintily as candle-lights’. See Bacon, ‘Of Truth’, in his Major Works, ed. Brian Vickers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 341. 22  Guillaume Baile, Catéchisme et abbregé des controverses de nostre temps, touchant la religion, 2nd ed. (1607; Lyon: Pierre Rigaud, 1625), pp. 1–89; Rivet, Le catholique orthodoxe opposé au catholique papiste, pp. 33–283. 23  Laplanche, L’Écriture, pp. 354–5.    24  ibid., pp. 165–7. 25  John Gordon, Antitortobellarminus, sive Refutatio calumniarum, mendaciorum et imposturarum Laico-Cardinalis Bellarmini (London, 1610), sig. A3r: Errorum tabens bullis tu nomine, sic re Bullatis nugis dogmata plena seris;

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Leiden from the 1590s onwards, and elsewhere an impressive array of counterBellarminists and counter-counter-Bellarminists sprang up; already by 1608, when Rivet came to Baile, it was this context above all that had shaped his views on Scripture. For example, one of his bêtes noires, the authority of oral Catholic tradition over the Bible, had been raised in the fourth book of De verbo Dei and then in Baile’s Catéchisme; Rivet rejected it vehemently in the latter, and turned to it again in the course of his quarrel with Grotius.26 Agreeing on the scriptural text to be discussed was no small matter. The Catholics had insisted on the historical unreliability of the Greek and especially of the Hebrew; a 1546 session at the Council of Trent established the Vulgate as the canonical Latin version of the Bible, and this decree later came to be understood, thanks primarily to the efforts of Spanish theologians, as an assertion of the Vulgate’s superiority to the Hebrew and Greek texts—and even of its infallibility.27 Among some, then, doctrine was to lean on divinely inspired Jerome, not on his sources, which had since been corrupted by the malice and ignorance of the Jews and Greek heretics.28 Added to this impasse was the controversy over the antiquity of the Hebrew vowel-points, provoked by Elijah Levita in 1538 and reaching its climax (though not its conclusion) a century later in the dispute between Louis Cappel and the two Buxtorfs.29 The post-Tridentine solution, or rather evasion, of the scriptural problem was entirely unacceptable to the Reformed church. As Rivet asserted in his Isagoge: What the Philistines once did to Abraham and Isaac in Gerar—blocking up their wells of living water, lest they draw and drink the water they needed—the Papists Dum Papae bullis hominum corda inscia ludis, Et levibus Bullis quae leviora, doces. Another popular Protestant play on the Jesuit’s name was ‘Bella, arma, minae’—this would be wittily turned back against his adversaries in the prefatory verses to Jacob Gretser, Controversiarum Roberti Bellarmini defensio, 2 vols (Ingolstadt: Adamus Sartorius, 1607–1609), vol. 1, sig. d2v. 26  On the controversy about tradition with Grotius, see Rivet’s Opera, vol. 3, pp. 968–71, 1029–31. Rivet was conscious of the Catholic overtones of Grotius’ position; see Rivet to G.J. Vossius, 10 November 1641 (Vossius, Epistolae, vol. 2, p. 242, # 326), after his first inspection of the latter’s Annotationes on the Old Testament: ‘Mira item mihi videntur quae a tali Viro Papatui conceduntur.’ 27  Canones et decreta sacrosancti oecumenici Concilii Tridentini (Ratisbon: Georg Joseph Manz, 1874), p. 15 (session 4, decree 2). On this, see Theodor Dunkelgrün, The Multiplicity of Scripture: The Confluence of Textual Traditions in the Making of the Antwerp Polyglot Bible (1568–1573) (Ph.D. thesis, University of Chicago, 2012), pp. 44–6 and 218, with further references. 28  On the mediaeval backstory of the alleged Hebrew corruption of the Bible, see Irven M. Resnick, ‘The Falsification of Scripture and Medieval Christian and Jewish Polemics’, Medieval Encounters 2 (1996), pp. 344–80. 29  This controversy has received considerable attention. See, for instance, Christian David Ginsburg, ‘Life of Elias Levita’, in his The Massoreth Ha-Massoreth of Elias Levita (London: Longmans, 1867), pp. 44–61; Georg Schnederman, Die Controverse des Ludovicus Cappellus mit den Buxtorfen über das Alter der hebräischen Punctation (Leipzig: Hundertstund and Preis, 1878); Lebram, ‘Ein Streit um die hebräische Bibel’; Richard A. Muller, ‘The Debate over the Vowel Points and the Crisis in Orthodox Hermeneutics’, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 10 (1980), pp. 53–72. On Rivet’s involvement with, and ambivalence to, the works of Cappel, see Laplanche, L’Écriture, pp. 220, 224–7, 303.

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of today attempt in a much more serious way, for they want nothing so much as to block up the sources of our Holy Books, doing whatever they can to render them suspect.30

Throughout his works, Rivet was adamant on the philological and therefore the doctrinal value of the Masoretic Text.31 To support this he could draw not only on fellow Protestants but, still more attractively for polemical purposes, on the more humanistic Catholic voices of the past sixty years—the Roman canon Marco Marini; Benito Arias Montano, overseer of the Antwerp Polyglot; and the Parisian Hebraist Gilbert Génébrard, who, although in Rivet’s words ‘a most bitter enemy of the truth’, had nonetheless defended the validity of the Masoretic text in a 1574 letter to Montano.32 The original of this letter was acquired by Andreas Colvius, a Dordrecht minister and scholar with a fat Rolodex and a collection of his learned colleagues’ autograph correspondence. It was first printed in 1650, appended to an edition of the Psalms by a friend of Colvius and Rivet, the Leiden orientalist Antonius Hulsius, who went on to defend the authenticity of the Hebrew Bible against Isaac Vossius twelve years later.33 Rivet himself had seen the letter in person, via Colvius.34 Bellarmine, finally, and perhaps surprisingly, was roped in by Rivet as a defender of the Hebrew against his more hardline Catholic colleagues. This Catholic literature focused on many specific passages which putatively had or had not been corrupted. But three general arguments stood out in favour of Hebrew purity: theological, logical, and cultural. The first was providential: 30  Rivet, Isagoge, in Opera, vol. 2, p. 887: ‘Sed quod olim Philistaei Abrahamo et Isaaco in Gerar fecerunt, dum puteos aquae vivae occluserunt ipsis, ne possent bibere et suis aquam necessariam praebere, idem hoc tempore, in graviori causa facere conantur Pontificii, nihil enim magis in votis habent, quam ut fontes Sacrorum librorum nobis occludant, id satagentes quantum possunt, ut eos suspectos reddant.’ The reference is to Gen. 26:15. Cf. the discussion at Noel Malcolm, Aspects of Hobbes (Oxford: Clarendon, 2002), pp. 414–22. 31  Especially Rivet, Le catholique orthodoxe, pp. 270–7, and Isagoge, cap. 8, in Opera, vol. 2, pp. 887–95. 32  The letter (dated 25 November 1574), now held at Stockholm, Kungliga Biblioteket, Ms. A 902, fols 61r–62v, has been recently edited by Baldomero Macías Rosendo in Benito Arias Montano, La Biblia Políglota de Amberes en la Correspondencia de Benito Arias Montano (Huelva: Universidad de Huelva, 1998), pp. 348–57. 33  Gilbert Génébrard, ‘De fontis Hebraei puritate Testimonium’, in ‫ספר תהלים‬: Psalterii Davidis editio nova, ed. Antonius Hulsius (Leiden: J. Maire, 1650), sigs Z5v–Z10v. The later defence is Antonius Hulsius, Authentia absoluta S. Textus hebraei vindicata contra criminationes Cl. Viri Isaaci Vossii (Rotterdam: A. Leers, 1662), responding to Vossius’ De Septuaginta interpretibus eorumque tralatione et chronologia dissertationes (The Hague: Adrianus Vlacq, 1661). Vossius replied to Hulsius in his Appendix ad librum de LXX interpretibus (The Hague: Adrianus Vlacq, 1663), pp. 35–122. On the context of this work, see Scott Mandelbrote, ‘Isaac Vossius and the Septuagint’, in Eric Jorink and Dirk van Miert (eds), Isaac Vossius (1618–1689): Between Science and Scholarship (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 94–5, and on Vossius’ manuscript annotations on Hulsius, see Susan Derksen, ‘Manuscript Notes in Books from the Vossius Collection’, in Jorink and van Miert (eds), Isaac Vossius, pp. 255–80. 34  Rivet, Isagoge, in Opera, vol. 2, p. 892a. The reference is absent from the 1627 edition of the Isagoge.

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it was simply untenable that God should have allowed the primary text of the Scriptures to have been corrupted by the Jews.35 Second, the Jews could have altered their own texts, but had no capacity to alter those of the Christians, and, moreover, in some instances of discrepancy between the two texts, the Hebrew supported Christian beliefs better than the Latin.36 The third argument, finally, turned on the devoutness—even the superstitiousness—of the Jews before their holy texts.37 In his preface to a 1632 edition of the Junius-Tremellius Bible, Rivet declared: We can only marvel at the faithfulness of those ‘porters’ [bajuli, i.e., the Jews38], who were so careful to respect the words and vowels of the Law and prophetic writings which they transmitted, that they would not allow a single tittle to be removed knowingly and willingly.39

So much could turn on a tittle, or two.40 Among Christians, one of the most important verses in the Hebrew Bible was the Protoevangelium, the first glimmer of Christ—Gen. 3:15, rendered in the King James, ‘I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.’ But the text contained serious problems, above all in the gender of the pronoun governing the clause ‘shall bruise thy head’. Where the KJV has ‘it’, the Masoretic Text reads ‫( הוּא‬hu), ‘he’, and the Septuagint

35  Dunkelgrün, The Multiplicity of Scripture, pp. 268, 271. 36  Cf., e.g., Génébrard to Montano, in Arias Montano, La Biblia Políglota, pp. 350–2. 37  Cf., e.g., Benito Arias Montano, De varia in Hebraicis libris lectione, ac de Mazzoreth ratione atque usu, in Arias Montano, Biblia sacra, vol. 8, p. 1; for a discussion, see Dunkelgrün, The Multiplicity of Scripture, p. 263, nn. 2–3. 38  On this word, Rivet cites Augustine, without a specific reference. I have not found this usage in the Father’s works, but cf. his sermon ‘De luctatione Jacob cum angelo’, here glossing Gen. 25:23 (and Rom. 9:12), ‘Major serviet minori’: ‘Et sparsi per orbem terrarum, facti sunt [sc. Judaei] quasi custodes Librorum nostrorum. Quomodo servi, quando eunt in auditorium domini ipsorum, portant post illos codices, et foris sedent; sic factus est filius major filio minori.’ See Augustine, Opera omnia (Maurine edition), 11 vols (Paris: Gaume, 1837), vol. 5.1, col. 47. 39  André Rivet, Preface, in Biblia sacra, trans. Immanuel Tremellius and Franciscus Junius (Amsterdam: J. Janssonius, 1648), sig. A2r–v: ‘Admiranda tamen in eo fuit Bajulorum fidelitas, qui de lege, quam portabant, et scriptis Prophetarum, quod verba, et voces spectat, adeo fuerunt soliciti, ut ne apicem quidem excidere passi sint scientes et volentes.’ The implicit reference is to Matt. 5:18. As if to demonstrate the dangers of a little learning, several copies of the JuniusTremellius Bible in the libraries of Oxford and Cambridge—including the 1669 Amsterdam edition owned by William Wordsworth, at St John’s College Cambridge, Wf 1669.1—are identified in their online catalogues as possessing a preface by ‘Andreas Rivetus [i.e., Andrew Marvell]’. The Junius-Tremellius Bible initially appeared between 1569 and 1579, with Rivet’s preface first added to the 1632 Amsterdam edition by Johannes Janssonius, on which, see T.H. Darlow and H.F.  Moule, Historical Catalogue of the Printed Editions of Holy Scripture in the Library of the British and Foreign Bible Society, 2 vols (London: The Bible House, 1903–1911), vol. 2.2, # 6214. 40  An early modern discussion of controversial tittles in Scripture, aspiring to something like completeness, can be found in Théophile Raynaud’s Minutalia sacra, appended to his O Parasceuasticum (Lyon: Christophor Fourmy, 1661).

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likewise has αὐτός.41 The Vulgate, however, reads ipsa, ‘she’.42 In the Latin, then, it is Eve who will bruise the serpent’s head, and, by prophetic extension, the new Eve, Mary—proof of her intercessory value in the soteriology of the Catholic church.43 The early reformer Martin Chemnitz (1522–1586), in his vitriolic Examen of the Tridentine decrees, had pointed out that the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts referred the action not to Eve or Mary but to Eve’s seed, although he did not specify whether that seed should be understood as the human race in general (ipsum), or as Christ specifically (ipse), as later commentators would debate.44 The ‘intercession and protection’ of Mary, at any rate, could not be demonstrated from the verse.45 In defending their Marian ipsa against Chemnitz and other Protestants, Catholic scholars did more than insist on the superior witness of the Vulgate— they turned to the reading and interpretation of the Hebrew, and to a lesser extent the Septuagint. Bellarmine, whose De verbo Dei appeared twenty years after Chemnitz’s Examen, provides a useful point of reference. In discussing this passage, his grasp of Hebrew, developed at Louvain in the early 1570s and attested by a manuscript notebook now in Rome, came to the fore.46 He notes first that some Vulgate editions offer the variant reading of ipse, and second that he has seen one Hebrew ‘codex’ reading not hu but hi, ‘she’.47 Third, Bellarmine 41  These readings, to take only one influential example, are found in the Complutensian Polyglot, which also includes an interlinear translation of the Septuagint as ipse: see Vetus testamentum multiplici lingua, 6 vols (Alcalà de Henares, Arnaldo Guillén de Brocar, 1514–1517), vol. 1, sig. a4r. The Hebrew lectio, which I focus on here, is also found in the Bomberg rabbinic Bible of 1524–1525, and in Kittel’s Biblia Hebraica, 2 vols (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1906; 2nd edn 1913, 3d edn 1929–1937). 42  Some editions offered ipse as a variant reading—for instance, the ‘Vatable Bible’, Biblia, with Vulgate and Zurich translations, comm. François Vatable (Paris: Robert Estienne, 1545), vol. 1, fol. 3r (note that the foliation is discontinuous, although the quire signatures run on: this page is sig. a3r); Biblia ad vetustissima exemplaria nunc recens castigata, ed. Johannes Hentenius (Louvain: Bartholomeus Gravius, 1547), fol. 1v. Note also that the possessive pronoun rendered in ‘his heel’ is absent from the Hebrew, and that neither the Latin (eius) nor the Greek (αὐτοῦ) mark its gender— this word, then, did not contribute to the debate. 43  For a survey of Marian readings of this passage up to Trent, see Tiburtius Gallus, Interpretatio mariologica Protoevangelii (Gen. 3.15) tempori postpatristico usque ad Concilium Tridentinum (Rome: Herder, 1949). 44  Williams, The Common Expositor, pp. 128–30. 45  Martin Chemnitz, Examen decretorum Concilii Tridentini (Frankfurt a. M.: Simon Hüter and Sigmund Feyerabend, 1566), p. 278, commenting on Session 4, Decree 2, ‘De versione seu translatione Scripturae in alias linguas’. 46  On Bellarmine’s Hebrew studies, see Piet van Boxel, ‘Robert Bellarmine, Christian Hebraist and Censor’, in Christopher Ligota and Jean-Louis Quantin (eds), History of Scholarship: A Selection of Papers from the Seminar on the History of Scholarship held annually at the Warburg Institute (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 250–75. 47  Robert Bellarmine, De verbo Dei, in Disputationes de controversiis christianae fidei, 3 vols (Lyon: Claude Michel, 1590–1593), vol. 1, col. 102 (II:12). On the Latin variants, see above, n. 42. Bellarmine’s word ‘codex’ is ambiguous, as Daniel Chamier complained, Panstratiae catholicae, sive Controversiarum de religione adversus pontificios corpus, 2nd edn, 4 vols ([Frankfurt a. M.], 1629), vol. 1, p. 253: ‘Enimvero, inquam, hunc codicem oporteret [sc. a Bellarmino] indicari, sitne manuscriptus, an potius typis excusus: item quo exscriptore, saltem, qua aetate, sit manuscriptus:

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observes that the Pentateuch regularly substitutes, for ‫‘( ִהיא‬she’), the form ‫;הוא‬48 ִ further, in the unpointed pre-Masoretic text, the two forms ‫ הוּא‬and ‫ ִהוא‬were originally indistinguishable. On account of two tittles—the chireq below the initial he, and the shureq in the medial vav—the pronoun in Gen. 3:15 may as well mean she as he: the Hebrew contains a radical indeterminacy. Theodor Dunkelgrün has written with grace and erudition of the textual multiplicity of Scripture, both as a general problem and as represented in the Antwerp Polyglot of 1568–1573, the most prestigious bible of the sixteenth century and a favourite text in Rivet’s Leiden.49 Nowhere is this better shown than in the Polyglot’s protean readings of Gen. 3:15. In the main text of the Old Testament (volumes 1–4), we find Vulgate ipsa, Septuagint αὐτός, and ipse in the Latin translation of the Septuagint. The Hebrew, remarkably, reads ‫—הוא‬the only word on the page left unpointed, epicene, avoiding confrontation. But there is a second Hebrew text in the sixth volume, and, as Dunkelgrün has shown, the two are not the same.50 Indeed, the second text reads ‫( ִהות‬with the chireq and no shureq; that is, the pro-Vulgate reading) and, in Pagnini’s interlinear translation, ipsum.51 The Polyglot thus offers all of the competing possibilities; it also contains a typo in this most controversial word—the final letter of the Hebrew in the second text being a tav instead of an aleph. The lynx-eyed castigator Franciscus Lucas of Bruges observed the mistake in his Notationes (1580), attributing it to the typesetter Guy Lefèvre de la Boderie, and in subsequent decades both Catholics and Protestants picked up on and elaborated Lucas’ comments.52 Typos continued to proliferate. The Jesuit Leonardus Marius, for aut apud quos editus.’ Another problem, in light of what follows, is the printing of the Hebrew ‘‫’היא‬, while the characters (of the variant reading) in this passage: the 1608 Paris edition has i.e., ‘‫ ִהוא‬hi’ (?). Contemporary quotations of the passage favour the 1590 Lyon edition prints latter reading. 48  Bellarmine adduces the parallel examples of Gen. 3:12 and Ex. 3:8. Traditionally, the form ‫ִהוא‬ has been presented as the letters of the word for ‘he’ (‫ )הוּא‬with the pointing of the word for ‘she’ (‫)היא‬, ִ to show that it is the latter word (hi) which the speaker pronounces; this kind of substitution is known as qere perpetuum. See, for instance, Wilhelm Gesenius, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, trans. Edward Robinson (Boston, MA: Crocker and Brewster, 1844), s.v. ‫הוּא‬, p. 250b; Jacob Weingreen, A Practical Grammar for Classical Hebrew, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), p. 23. More recently, it has been argued on philological grounds that the ‫ ִהוא‬is in fact an authentic epicene pronoun denoting either ‘he’ or ‘she’, later respelled ‫( ִהיא‬when it meant ‘she’) to reflect its pronunciation. See Gary Rendsburg, ‘A New Look at the Pentateuchal HW’ ’, Biblica 63 (1982), pp. 351–69. 49  Dunkelgrün, The Multiplicity of Scripture, pp. 1–38, 469 and passim. 50  ibid., pp. 329–63. 51  Biblia sacra, ed. Benito Arias Montano, 8 vols (Antwerp: Plantin, 1569–1573), vol. 1, pp. 8–9, and vol. 6, Pentateuch, p. 2. (The British Library copy I consulted, shelfmark 6.h.4–11, gives the interlinear text in vol. 7. On this confusion, see Dunkelgrün, The Multiplicity of Scripture, p. 319, n. 129.) The Hebrew word is given in both texts with its cantillation, a yetiv (