The History Of Biblical Criticism

"A careful study of the history of Biblical Criticism will demonstrate that this discipline has its roots in attempts to overthrow the authority of the Bible in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, particularly in France, where the libertines challenged the Christian consensus that prevailed almost universally in Europe at that time.1 For example, Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), in his Tractatus-theologico-politicus (1670), sought to find contradictions in the Pentateuch in order to undermine the prevailing viewpoint of the Bible as infallible." Also mentions Spinoza, Hugo Grotius, and Jean LeClerc.