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T H E E M A N C I PAT IO N O F B I B L IC A L P H I L O L O G Y I N
T H E D U T C H R E P U B L IC , 1 5 9 0 – 1 6 7 0
The Emancipation
of Biblical Philology
in the Dutch Republic,
1590–1670
D I R K VA N M I E RT
1
1
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
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© Dirk van Miert 2018
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2018
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
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You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
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for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
For Sarah and Myriam
Acknowledgements
This book was written in the context of a research project on ‘Biblical Criticism
in the Seventeenth Century’ (project no. 360-25-090), financed by the
Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), led by Piet
Steenbakkers (Utrecht University) and Henk Nellen (Huygens Institute for the
History of the Netherlands—Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences).
Apart from the continuous support and critical input of these two people, I am
heavily indebted to Jetze Touber, who as a fourth researcher on this project has
written a monograph on biblical philology in the Dutch Republic after Spinoza.
All three have read this entire monograph in various stages of (non-)comple-
tion, and I have benefitted immensely from their comments, in particular from
Jetze’s, and from the many discussions the four of us have conducted over the
years.
I am also grateful to Huygens ING and its executive board for having me
hosted for the more than three years it took to conduct my research in what
proved to be the most stimulating environment I could ever have wished for. I
owe special thanks to all members of the research group History of Science, and
notably to Charles van den Heuvel and Eric Jorink.
I am indebted to numerous colleagues who have read drafts and provided
comments and critique so solid that it often left me doubting the wisdom of
having signed up for this research. I single out Jan Bloemendal, Theodor
Dunkelgrün, Paul Gillaerts, Henk Jan de Jonge, Anthony Ossa-Richardson,
and a number of anonymous referees who commented on parts (originally) of
chapters 3 and 6, which were submitted to journals in revised form as inde-
pendent articles. The responses of audiences at various conferences, symposia,
and workshops in Amsterdam, Oxford, Leuven, Innsbruck, and Utrecht have,
in subtle ways, fed into this book.
I owe a very special thanks to James Gibbons, a very acute and knowledgeable
editor who polished up my English almost beyond recognition and put his
finger on a number of important inconsistencies. I also thank Mark Rogers for
scrutinizing the text.
Most of all, I am grateful for the unabated support of Geer, who kept me
going every time I lost confidence. This book is dedicated to our daughters,
Sarah and Myriam. In the years that they were born, during the protracted final
stages of editing this book, I realized how foolish it is to compare the writing
and publishing of libri with the carrying and delivery of liberi.
Contents
List of Illustrations xi
Preface xiii
Figure 1. The first page of the States’ Translation (1637). Image by courtesy
of Leiden University Library (shelf mark 1194 A 5). 91
Figure 2. Godefridus Udemans, engraving by Johannes Saragon, 1635.
Eight years before the outbreak of the Hairy War, he still had
some hair. Image by courtesy of Leiden University Library
(shelf mark PK-P-111.612). 176
Figure 3. Polyander à Kerckhoven at seventy-seven, engraving by Cornelis
van Dalen (I), after a painting by David Baudringien, 1645. Image
by courtesy of the Rijksmuseum (shelf mark RP-P-BI-6714). 184
Figure 4. The long-haired Florentius Schuyl in 1666; portrait (oil on copper)
by Frans van Mieris the Elder. Image by courtesy of Mauritshuis,
The Hague (Inventory Number 107). 185
Figure 5. A coin with the head of Moses (Saumaise, Epistola ad Colvium, 79).
Image by courtesy of Leiden University Library (shelf mark 603 G 1). 188
Figure 6. A coin, with the head of Moses (Schickardus,Tarich, 34). Image
by courtesy of Leiden University Library (shelf mark 388 C 14). 188
Figure 7. El Streto d’Anián (detail of a map in the paratext of the 2nd edition
of the States’ Translation (1657)). Image by courtesy of Leiden
University Library (shelf mark 1169 A 2). 219
Preface: What This Book is (Not) About
Around 1604, the famous French scholar Joseph Scaliger confided something
to his boarding students:
There are more than fifty additions or changes to the New Testament and to the
Gospels. It’s a strange case, I dare not say it. If it were a pagan author, I would speak
of it differently.1
This often-quoted passage reveals a great deal about the deconstructive power
of philology in general and of biblical philology in particular. This book deals
with the emancipation of biblical philology and this development’s conse-
quences for the authority of the Bible.
I understand ‘(biblical) philology’ to be the study of a (biblical) text by means
of textual criticism, linguistic analysis, and historical contextualization. These
terms are anachronistic in that the writers and scholars in the period under
consideration would not have understood what they were doing in this way,
but they are apt terms for what I aim to describe. The broad sense in which I use
textual criticism includes the identification of variant readings (and sometimes
opting for the best one) through the collation of manuscripts or on the basis of
comparisons of the Hebrew and Greek texts with the Septuagint and the
Vulgate; it also includes conjectural emendations. By linguistic analysis I mean
the discussion of semantics and syntax, which seventeenth-century scholars
often conducted by comparing different translations. Linguistic analysis in this
book encompasses the meanings and ambiguities of words, the study of idiomatic
expressions, and the sociolinguistic situation of the biblical authors. Historical
contextualization is my label for analyses of the political, military, religious
(ritual, calendrical, theological), and cultural situations in which the biblical
texts took shape, including aspects of material culture. Much of this historical
contextualization involved biblical antiquarianism. Perhaps one might as well
speak of ‘historical criticism’.2
I will consistently refer to this triad to avoid confusion with the term ‘biblical
exegesis’, which people use in the sense both of the study of textual or linguistic
criticism and the theological or dogmatic ‘interpretation’ of the text (more true
to the Greek meaning of the word). I will steer clear of dogmatic discussions if
these are not explicitly predicated in one way or another on textual criticism,
1 Secunda Scaligerana, 399, s.v. Josephe: ‘Il y a plus de 50 additions ou mutations au Nouveau
Testament et aux Evangiles; c’est chose estrange, je n’ose la dire; si c’estoit un Auteur profane, j’en
parlerois autrement.’
2 For the observation that philology had mutated into historical criticism by the end of the
sixteenth century, see Levitin, ‘From Sacred History to the History of Religion’, 1123.
xiv Preface: What This Book is (Not) About
5 See Steiger, ‘The Development of the Reformation Legacy’, 700, who singles out Gotlobb
Wilhelm Meyer, Hans-Joachim Krause, and Henning Graf Reventlow as originating the idea of a
‘precritical’ period. For Simon as the watershed between a pre-critical and a critical era, see
Gibert, ‘The Catholic Counterpart’, 763 and 767.
6 Shalev, Sacred Words and Worlds; Dunkelgrün, ‘The Multiplicity of Scripture’; McDonald,
Biblical Criticism.
Preface: What This Book is (Not) About xvii
Latin. The appearance of the States’ Translation in 1637 might have something
to do with this development. The translators of the States’ Translation pored
over manuscripts, ancient and recent translations, and a library of critical
apparatuses to provide their readers with a faithful vernacular version of God’s
Word. The printed marginalia of the edition bear traces of many of their philo-
logical discussions. It would require a separate monograph to address the
impact of the translators’ choices and their marginal annotations, but suffice it
to say here that the States’ Translation was a point of reference in polemics over
historical aspects of the Bible, such as the Sabbath, practices of usury, fashion
in hair, the antiquity of the world, and the origin of nations, which were partly
translated into Dutch or appeared in Dutch straightaway. These controversies
opened up biblical philology for larger segments of the population, including
women. They broadcast what had become a mainstream debate among philolo-
gists about the reconciliation of the growing historicity of the biblical text with
its authority as a guide for moral conduct.7 Crossing the linguistic boundary
was recognized as threatening when it concerned unorthodox ideas. When
discussed within the exclusive circle of Latinate ‘professionals’, such ideas might
be tolerated, but when they hit the presses in the vernacular, censorship was not
far away. Even women could then read what the highly educated men were
discussing.
Finally, biblical philology started to appear on the curricula of Dutch univer-
sities in the 1650s, when students defended disputations that did not merely
uphold the self-evidence and perspicuity of Scripture, as they had done in
previous decades, but that also dealt with questions of a philological nature.
As to geography, Leiden University takes centre stage. Scaliger lived and
worked in Leiden during his most influential years. Spinoza’s house in Rijnsburg
was about an hour-and-a-half ’s walk from Leiden University. Scaliger’s stu-
dents Grotius and Heinsius were raised in Leiden. Drusius and Gomarus
participated, from highly different perspectives, in the great debate over
Remonstrantism in the 1610s, which brought the Dutch Republic to the brink
of civil war, and both were accomplished biblical critics. Saumaise practised
biblical philology in Leiden as well, where he was frequently joined by the
young Vossius. La Peyrère was inspired by Saumaise when he met him in
Leiden and before he provoked Vossius to enter the fray of biblical philology.
This is to say that some of the major protagonists in the history of biblical
philology of the first half of the seventeenth century had a strong connection
with Leiden. So deeply influenced were they by Scaliger that one might speak
of a ‘Scaliger school’: Scaliger exerted a huge ‘programmatic influence’.8 In
England, for example, seventeenth-century scholars of natural philosophy and
7 Levitin, ‘From Sacred History to the History of Religion’, 1127; Malcolm, Aspects of
Hobbes, 420.
8 Levitin, ‘From Sacred History to the History of Religion’, 1124.
xviii Preface: What This Book is (Not) About
theology, orthodox and heterodox alike, all invested heavily in the type of critical
and humanist scholarship that had been developed on the continent by the likes
of Scaliger and Isaac Casaubon (1559–1614): a textual-critical and sociolinguistic
approach, sensitive to the unique cultural contexts of texts from antiquity.9
One such influence was Scaliger’s interest in Near Eastern languages. In his
wake, scholars such as Thomas Erpenius, Jacobus Golius, and Constantin
L’Empereur made Leiden an intellectual powerhouse of Arabic and Hebrew
studies, at a time when Franeker University had also become a stronghold of
Hebrew studies. The study of Maimonides in particular proved a stimulus for
the development of biblical philology.10
Admittedly, these chronological and geographical limitations are practical,
if not arbitrary. Surely, Valla and Erasmus, Bombergh and Benito Arias Montano
(1527–1598), Beza and Henricus Stephanus (Henri Estienne), to name but a
few, are part of a grand narrative which could be extended further back into the
sixteenth century than I have done here.11 Surely, too, scholars in France,
the Vatican, the Habsburg Empire, England, the German countries, just as the
biblical critics in Scandinavian regions and Central and Eastern European
territories, take an active part in this history, as chapter 1 demonstrates.
My goal, then, is limited: this book presents but one part of a much larger
story. But it is a part that deals with a crucial period and place, when biblical
philology was on the eve of turning radical. The widely entrenched tradition of
biblical philology, with all its rival confessional agendas and political interests,
was not only firmly in place, but even proved popular when Spinoza seized on
it in his Theological-Political Treatise. How Spinoza precisely did this is not the
subject of this study. Anthony Grafton, following previous aborted attempts by
now largely forgotten scholars, has recently demonstrated that Spinoza, in the
philological chapters of the Treatise, was indeed intimately, if not perfectly,
familiar with this tradition. What I want to show is that, before Spinoza, more
people than ever before were well aware that the biblical text posed textual,
linguistic, and historical problems and that these, ironically, became more
serious with every new attempt to solve them.
To better understand the pertinent chronology and geography, however, it
seems wise to provide, by way of an introduction in chapter 1, an admittedly
very general chronological and geographical survey of the tradition of biblical
philology, of which this book treats only one part.
Of course, the history of biblical philology in the Renaissance should be, and
has been, considered in the context of other crucial developments, notably in
natural history (or physics), astronomy (or mathematics), and philosophy.
12 Methuen, ‘On the Threshold of a New Age’, 272 (Copernicans), 277 (Kepler) and 687
(Newton); Wiles, ‘Newton and the Bible’.
13 Gregory, The Unintended Reformation, 63 and 413, note 116. My emphasis.
14 Van Miert, ‘Philology and Empiricism’.
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Philippe, less the odious character of that scoundrel.”
When the French diplomatic representatives
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emperor, being banished and confined to the island of St. Helena.
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The Napoleonic empire had already transcended the limits which the
emperor Nicholas would at one time have allowed; it was in direct
contradiction to the stipulations of the congress of Vienna, which
formed the basis of the national law of Europe. The emperor’s allies,
however, looked on the matter somewhat differently. Austria and
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to Napoleon III he did not call him brother, but “le bon ami” (good
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artfully put forward with a secret motive by Napoleon III; his cunning
calculations were justified without delay; the Russian troops crossed
the Pruth in 1853, and occupied the principality, as a guarantee, until
the demands presented to the Ottoman Porte by the emperor
Nicholas were complied with. Austrian ingratitude opened a safe
path for the snares of Anglo-French diplomacy. The Eastern War
began, at first upon Turkish territory and afterwards concentrated
itself in the Crimean peninsula around Sebastopol; France, England,
and afterwards, in 1855, little Sardinia, in alliance with Turkey, took
up arms against Russia; on the side of the allies lay the sympathy of
all neutral Europe, which already dreamed of wresting Russia’s
conquests from her.b
EVENTS LEADING UP TO THE CRIMEAN WAR
This fight had lasted from four in the morning until four in the
evening, when the allies saw a white flag over the tower battlements.
The commander asked an armistice of two hours, which was
granted. He recommenced firing before the interval was over. The
French batteries overthrew the armaments, whilst the Vincennes
chasseurs acting as free-shooters attacked the cannoneers.
Resistance ceased towards evening and the tower yielded at three
o’clock in the morning. One officer and thirty men were made
prisoners. On Monday no notice was taken of provocation from the
fortress, but preparations were made for the morrow.
On the morning of August 15th the English attacked the north
tower. In six hours three of their large cannon had been able to
pierce the granite and make a breach of twenty feet. The north tower
was not long in surrendering; four English and two French vessels
directed their fire on the large fortress. A white flag was hoisted on
the rampart nearest the sea. Two officers of the fleet were sent to the
governor, who said, “I yield to the marine.” This officer had only a few
dead and seventy wounded, but smoke poured in through the badly
constructed windows, bombs burst in the middle of the fortress,
without mentioning the carbine fire of the free-shooters. A longer
resistance was useless.g
In 1855 the Russians bombarded Sveaborg. The allies attacked
the fortified monastery of Solovetski, in the White Sea, and in the
sea of Okhotsk they blockaded the Siberian ports, destroyed the
arsenals of Petropavlovsk, and disturbed the tranquillity of the
Russians on the river Amur.
Menaced by the Austrian concentration in Transylvania, and by the
landing of English and French troops at Gallipoli and Varna, the
Russians made a last and vain attempt to gain possession of
Silistria, which they had held in a state of siege from April to July at
the cost of a great number of men. In the Dobrudja an expedition
directed by the French was without result from a military point of
view, the soldiers being thinned out by cholera and paludal fevers.
The Russians decided to evacuate the principalities, which were at
once occupied by the Austrians in accord with Europe and the
sultan. The war on the Danube was at an end.
The object of the Russians was to turn the right and seize
Balaklava, burn the shipping in the port, and, cutting off our
communication with the sea, establish themselves in our rear. To