The history of early modern biblical scholarship has often been told as a teleological narrative in which a succession of radical thinkers dethroned the authority of the sacred word. This book tells a very different story. Drawing on a mass of archival sources, Timothy Twining reconstructs the religious, cultural, and institutional contexts in which the text of the Old Testament was considered and contested throughout post-Reformation Europe. In so doing, this book brings to light a vast array of figures from across the confessional spectrum who invested immense energy in studying the Bible. Their efforts, it shows, were not disinterested, but responded to pressing contemporary concerns. The Limits of Erudition employs a novel conceptual framework to resurrect a world where learning mattered to inquisitors and archbishops as much as to antiquaries, and in which the pursuit of erudition was too important to be left to scholars.

Short-listed, 2025 First Book Prize, Ecclesiastical History Society

‘This is a landmark work, written with great lucidity and based on an extraordinary command of the documentary evidence contained in archives all over Europe. Everyone interested in the history of knowledge in early modern Europe will benefit from reading this book.’

Sir Noel Malcolm - University of Oxford

‘The Limits of Erudition is a superlative book - one of the best and most important I've ever read. It is astonishingly rich in every respect, from its mastery of archival detail to the sweep of its gripping and exciting narrative.’

Thomas Roebuck - University of East Anglia