
Contents
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The German Influence and Higher Criticism The German Influence and Higher Criticism
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Scientific Challenges to the Bible Scientific Challenges to the Bible
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Answering the Challenges Answering the Challenges
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The Twentieth Century and Beyond The Twentieth Century and Beyond
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Suggested Reading Suggested Reading
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References References
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13 Biblical Inerrancy and Higher Criticism
Get accessPaul C. Gutjahr is Ruth N. Halls Professor of English at Indiana University, and the author or editor of An American Bible: The History of the Good Book in the United States, 1777–1881 (1999), Popular American Literature in the Nineteenth Century (2001), Charles Hodge: Guardian of American Orthodoxy (2011), The Book of Mormon: A Biography (2012), Bestsellers in Nineteenth-Century America: An Anthology (2016), and The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in America (2017).
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Published:20 November 2023
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Abstract
This article looks at Higher Criticism and the flowering of the doctrine of biblical inerrancy in American conservative Christian circles during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Dating back to at least the third century ce, Christians believed the Bible to be inspired by a God that could utter no falsehood, and thus his words to humanity were by necessity without error. The rise of ever more sophisticated and codified views of inerrancy began largely with the sixteenth century’s Protestant Reformation, but a belief in biblical inerrancy reached new levels of importance and influence in nineteenth and twentieth-century American Christianity. The rising importance of the doctrine of inerrancy grew out of American Christianity’s engagement with German philosophy and Higher Criticism, but it was also shaped by Christian responses to new scientific advances in both geology (dating the earth) and biology (evolution and natural selection).
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