Hubristic Specialists: Catholic Responses to Higher Biblical Criticism

The historical fact of the emergence of higher biblical criti-cism among German Protestants was critical in setting the tone of the conversation between the Roman Catholic Church and historical criticism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. While the twentieth century saw a sea change in attitudes toward historical criticism, the Catholic Church continues to view historical criticism with some suspicion. Catholic approaches to biblical criticism tend to reduce history to one aspect of the broader interpretive process. New trends in the study of the Bible emphasize the importance of its reception in Catholic tra-dition and continue to deflect questions about the histori-cal foundations of key