Prinster, Scott Gerard (Author)
Lederer, Susan Eyrich (Advisor)
This dissertation traces the development and reception of a particular accommodation between scientific knowledge and biblical knowledge, which I have named scientific biblical criticism, in the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. My research focuses on tensions that arose as American Protestants attempted to reconcile the biblical foundation of their worldview with the increasingly prominent accumulation of scientific facts and approaches. In juxtaposing the narratives in which each component of this method was developed, I document how nineteenth-century science was a multivalent and dynamic body of knowledge among disciples of religion as well as among disciples of nature. I also demonstrate how, viewed together, these accounts constitute an underappreciated religious discourse providing important insights into the formation and character of modern American science. The larger context of this research is the struggle for legitimacy of two bodies of knowledge sometimes appearing to be at odds with one another. By assembling a diachronic view of the formation of scientific biblical criticism and considering the internal development of both religious knowledge and scientific knowledge, this dissertation establishes an intellectual history of a schism within American Protestantism with important repercussions for the reception of modern science. Out of this split emerged two practically incommensurable cosmologies with divergent conceptions of what constitutes legitimate science and admissible interpretation of the Bible. Because both of these worldviews spread from professional circles to lay audiences, this project also examines both scholarly and popular literature to add considerable detail and nuance to the histories previously dominated by elite actors. In addition to chronicling the significant activity of the proponents of scientific biblical criticism in the United States, I illustrate how various communities of academics and laypeople received this scholarly method and the disruption to traditional epistemology that it entailed. Exploring the internal dynamics of Protestant networks on their own terms, my research offers important insights about scientific knowledge, its practice, and its boundaries among the religious adherents of science underrepresented in the historical literature.
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Chapter
England, Richard;
(2008)
Interpreting Scripture, Assimilating Science: Four British and American Christian Evolutionists on the Relationship between Science, the Bible, and Doctrine
(/isis/citation/CBB001031759/)
Chapter
Bono, James J.;
(2008)
The Two Books and Adamic Knowledge: Reading the Book of Nature and Early Modern Strategies for Repairing the Effects of the Fall and of Babel
(/isis/citation/CBB001031827/)
Chapter
Harrison, Peter;
(2008)
Hermeneutics and Natural Knowledge in the Reformers
(/isis/citation/CBB001031828/)
Chapter
Oosterhoff, Richard J.;
Meer, Jitse M. van der;
(2008)
God, Scripture and the Rise of Modern Science (1200--1700): Notes in the Margin of Harrison's Hypothesis
(/isis/citation/CBB001031829/)
Chapter
Mandelbrote, Scott;
(2008)
Biblical Hermeneutics and the Sciences, 1700--1900: An Overview
(/isis/citation/CBB001031754/)
Chapter
Harinck, George;
(2008)
Twin Sisters with a Changing Character: How Neo-Calvinists Dealt with the Modern Discrepancy between Bible and Natural Sciences
(/isis/citation/CBB001031763/)
Chapter
Yarchin, William;
(2008)
Biblical Interpretation in the Light of the Interpretation of Nature, 1650--1900
(/isis/citation/CBB001031755/)
Thesis
Lin, Yii-Jan Chen;
(2014)
The Erotic Life of Manuscripts: A History of New Testament Textual Criticism and the Biological Sciences
(/isis/citation/CBB001567633/)
Book
Dick van Miert;
Henk Nellen;
Piet Steenbakkers;
Jetze Touber;
(2017)
Scriptural Authority and Biblical Criticism in the Dutch Golden Age
(/isis/citation/CBB865945939/)
Book
Volpe, Tony;
(2008)
Science et Théologie: Dans les Débats Savants de la Seconde Moitié du XVIIe Siècle
(/isis/citation/CBB000950287/)
Chapter
Blowers, Paul M.;
(2008)
Entering “This Sublime and Blessed Amphitheatre”: Contemplation of Nature and Interpretation of the Bible in the Patristic Period
(/isis/citation/CBB001031822/)
Chapter
Remmert, Volker R.;
(2008)
“Our Mathematicians Have Learned and Verified This”: Jesuits, Biblical Exegesis, and the Mathematical Sciences in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries
(/isis/citation/CBB001031839/)
Chapter
Rudavsky, T. M.;
(2008)
Creation, Time, and Biblical Hermeneutics in Early Modern Jewish Philosophy
(/isis/citation/CBB001031834/)
Chapter
Meer, Jitse M. van der;
(2008)
Georges Cuvier and the Use of Scripture in Geology
(/isis/citation/CBB001031757/)
Chapter
Methuen, Charlotte;
(2008)
Interpreting the Books of Nature and Scripture in Medieval and Early Modern Thought: An Introductory Essay
(/isis/citation/CBB001031823/)
Chapter
Ashley, J. M.;
(2008)
Original Sin, Biblical Hermeneutics, and the Science of Evolution
(/isis/citation/CBB001031765/)
Chapter
Granada, Miguel A.;
(2008)
Tycho Brahe, Caspar Peucer, and Christoph Rothmann on Cosmology and the Bible
(/isis/citation/CBB001031835/)
Chapter
Carroll, William E.;
(2008)
Thomas Aquinas on Science, Sacra Doctrina, and Creation
(/isis/citation/CBB001031824/)
Chapter
Howell, Kenneth J.;
(2008)
The Hermeneutics of Nature and Scripture in Early Modern Science and Theology
(/isis/citation/CBB001031826/)
Chapter
Howell, Kenneth J.;
(2008)
Natural Knowledge and Textual Meaning in Augustine's Interpretation of Genesis: The Three Functions of Natural Philosophy
(/isis/citation/CBB001031821/)
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