According to conventional wisdom, by the late 1800s, the image of Bible as a supernatural and infallible text crumbled in the eyes of intellectuals under the assaults of secularizing forces. This book corrects the narrative by arguing that in America, the road to skepticism had already been paved by the Scriptures' most able and ardent defenders.

Michael J. Lee is Assistant Professor at Eastern University, USA.

PART I. The Eighteenth Century: The Battle Against Skepticism and Rationalizing the Bible Prologue: The European Background: Radical Critics and Rational Defenders of the Bible 1. American Puritans, Rationalism, and Revelation: Cotton Mather Naturalizes the Supernatural 2. Defending the Bible and Unintended Consequences: Jonathan Edwards and Jonathan Dickinson Battle the Deists 3. The Triumph of Rational Religion in America: Revealed and Natural Religion at Eighteenth-Century Harvard PART II. The Early Nineteenth Century: German Biblical Critics and the Betrayal of History 4. Blindsided by Germany: Buckminster, Textual Criticism, and the End of the Textus Receptus in America in the Nineteenth Century 5. The Historical Bible: The Unitarians Grapple with the Bible's Past Epilogue: The Orthodox Reconcile with the Past