Hahn and Morrow wrote this volume to answer a 1988 call by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, later known as Pope Benedict XVI, “for Bible scholars to examine the history of the discipline of biblical studies in order better to understand its scholarly limits as well as its often-hidden philosophical underpinnings” (1). It traces the roots of modern, historical-critical biblical scholarship in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in an effort to argue that biblical scholarship is based in political as well as theological principles that facilitate the transition from a model of ecclesiastically informed rule in Europe under the auspices of the Roman Catholic Church to a model of national rule informed by the largely secular world view of the Enlightenment. It follows upon an earlier book, Benjamin Wiker and Scott W. Hahn, Politicizing the Bible: The Roots of Historical Criticism and the Secularization of Scripture, 1300–1700 (Herder and Herder, 2013), which traced the earlier roots of modern scholarship from the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries.

The first chapter sets the agenda for the volume by summarizing the argumentation and results of Politicizing the Bible. It discusses Marcilius of Padua, William of Ockham, John Wycliffe, Niccolò Machiavelli, Martin Luther, King Henry VIII, René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, Baruch Spinoza, Richard Simon, John Locke, and John Toland, who transformed the reading of the Bible. Such a process transformed biblical studies from a theological and liturgical discipline intended to serve as a source of reform in church and society to one in which church and society would be re-formed in keeping with a secular-scientific world view that would be taught in public universities to educate secular government and professional personnel. With such a transformation, biblical studies would support the growing sense of national identity in the emerging nation states that would replace the church as the patron of university education.

Chapter 2 examines the transformation of higher education from a church-supported enterprise—in which dissident freethinking scholars were often supported by noble patrons—to state-supported universities. A key figure in the early eighteenth-century transformation was Johann Lorenz Schmidt, whose 1735 Wertheim Bible built upon earlier scientific biblical interpretation by Spinoza and others to produce a critical translation and annotation of the Pentateuch that would point to ultimate fulfillment in Jesus Christ. His work drew especially on ancient Greek culture and a moral assessment of the Old Testament that denigrated Jews to present a “universal” interpretation of the Bible.

Chapter 3 examines the work of Johann Selamo Semler, who established the complete freedom of biblical exegesis by his application of the scientific method that rejected church dogmatism and questioned the canonical status and divine inspiration of books such as Ruth, Ezra-Nehemiah, and Chronicles—works that were considered too Jewish. By contrast, the New Testament Gospels would encourage readers to develop their own moral judgment concerning G-d and his son, especially in relation to the Prussian state.

Chapter 4 examines the work of Johann David Michaelis, who advocated scientific exegesis in order to uncover the true meaning of the biblical text and make it relevant for contemporary times. His interests in the aesthetics of Hebrew poetry led him to hold up the Prophets as the key component of the Old Testament and to relegate the “law” and Jews to a secondary status in favor of Arab culture, which he believed represented the true character of ancient Israel.

Chapter 5 examines the work of Johann Gottfried Eichhorn and Jean Astruc, who raised questions concerning the older literary sources that Moses would have used to construct the Pentateuch, particularly in relation to the historical research on Homer current in their time. Eichhorn applies such methods to the New Testament as well, prompting interest in the historical Jesus, in an effort to uncover a universal history that would lead to the improvement of (German) man.

Chapter 6 examines the role of German Romanticism, particularly in the work of Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette, who rejected Kantian rationalism and emphasized spirit over law, particularly in his efforts to sideline Judaism and the Roman Catholic Church in his efforts to conceive and advance romantic Enlightenment biblical interpretation. In de Wette's view, myth characterized the Old Testament, particularly the Pentateuch, as key to understanding its world view and role in the reconstruction of the history of the text. De Wette's views inspired the work of later figures, including Heinrich Ewald, Karl Heinrich Graf, and Julius Wellhausen, to reconstruct the compositional history of the biblical text.

Chapter 7 examines the New Testament work of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Johann Jakob Griesbach, and others in reconstructing the historical Jesus and the history of the New Testament text as background for understanding Pentateuchal and Gospel source criticism.

Chapter 8 examines the work of Julius Wellhausen on Pentateuchal source criticism, which provided biblical foundations for Wellhausen's understanding of the ancient Israelite state and the contemporary Prussian state and German nationalism, particularly in relation to the role of the Grimm brothers in studying ancient German folklore as a foundation for German national identity. Examination of William Robertson Smith points to his role in bringing German critical scholarship, particularly the work of Wellhausen, to the English-speaking world.

Hahn and Morrow excel in pointing to the interplay of anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic impulses in emerging Enlightenment scholarship. Nevertheless, they overlook the role of Greek chauvinism in relation to the ancient Near Eastern world in informing the worldview of Enlightenment scholarship. Likewise, they largely overlook the role played by such chauvinism in informing European imperialism. Nevertheless, they have made an important contribution to understanding the political and cultural foundations of modern critical biblical scholarship.