Biblical Criticism in the Nineteenth Century

Against the background of the Enlightenment and the weakening of the restrictions imposed by the Westminster Confession, this chapter seeks to trace the development of biblical interpretation in Scotland in the nineteenth century, in terms of the evolution of ‘lower criticism’ focusing on philological and textual evidence and of ‘higher criticism’ aiming to identify the social and historical contexts within which the biblical writers operated. The chapter begins with the pioneering work of Alexander Geddes (1737–1802) and considers Scottish participation in the culmination of ‘lower criticism’ in the production of the Revised Version (1870–95) and of ‘higher criticism’ in the work especially of William Robertson Smith (1846–94).