David Lincicum: Fighting Germans with Germans: Victorian Theological Translations between Anxiety and Influence

Abstract

Abstract Between 1825 and 1895, Victorian Britain witnessed a significant blossoming of interest in foreign theological literature. Much of this interest, together with a concomitant anxiety, focused on the negotiation of German biblical criticism and the new challenges and possibilities this criticism introduced. This article thematizes this transnational literary and theological encounter, paying particular attention both to the major book series that undertook to mediate (especially German) criticism to Britain, and to the burgeoning periodical literature that supplied ’foreign intelligence’ and short translations. Translation served as both a liberalizing force as it introduced critical results that troubled some proponents of orthodoxy, but also offered a channel for resistance as doctrinally conservative strands of German biblical scholarship found a warm reception. The article is followed by a chronologically organized bibliography of translated works published in Britain from 1825 to 1895.