This project began as an extension of my inquiry in Explaining Religion. Just as the earlier book sought to trace the emergence of the study of religion independent of theology, this one investigates the rise of a critical, historical and comparative study of scriptures independent of their theological interpretation from Jewish or Christian “insider” perspectives. My work thus offers an alternative version of what generally passes for “critical biblical study. ” The standard account taught in the theological schools resembles the one masterfully presented in H.-J. Kraus. For him, the critical breakthrough was not the separation of interpretation from all theological constraints, but a breakthrough to a new theological perspective that could accommodate criticism, and adapt criticism to itself. This theological achievement, which occurred in eighteenthcentury Germany, succeeded in breaking the stranglehold of the orthodox theory of inspiration.

In my alternative version, the rise of the study of religion required a more fundamental alteration: the Bible's uniquely privileged (i.e., canonical) status had to be set aside entirely in order to open the way for comparing the Bible with other ancient texts, and the biblical religions with other religions around the world. I maintain that Spinoza was the first to accomplish this. By making biblical assumptions (especially its religious ones) part of the historical data rather than the norm of his inquiry, he achieved the critical breakthrough for the study of both the Bible and religion: theology, rather than being part of the explanation of religion, now became part of its data.