A collection of original essays on biblical criticism and the process of secularization in the Netherlands during the long seventeenth century, as advances in the field of philology drew into question the authority of Scripture. By treating biblical philology as an engine of religious and philosophical innovation, this book adds to a growing body of new work that highlights the thick lines of continuity running from Renaissance humanism and Reformation-era controversies to the Enlightenment. It will benefit not just specialists in early modern biblical scholarship but anyone interested in the intellectual origins of modernity.