"The Old Testament... especially in the first five books, the so-called Pentateuch... reeks with irreconcilable contradictions and patent imbecilities. ...Such things must have been noticed by sensible men at a very early time; we know, indeed, that there were bitter controversies... But it was not until the Twelfth Century of our era that the Pentateuch as a whole was subjected to rational scrutiny. The man who undertook the ungrateful task was a learned Spanish rabbi, Abraham ben Meir ibn Esra. He unearthed many absurdities, but he had to be very careful about discussing them, and it was not until five hundred years later that anything properly describable as scientific criticism... came into being. Its earliest shining lights were the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes [with his Leviathan], and the Amsterdam Jew, Baruch Spinoza. Spinoza's "Tractatus Theologico-politicus," published in 1670, made the first really formidable onslaught upon the inspired inerrancy of the Pentateuch. It called attention to scores of transparent imbecilities... including a dozen or more palpable geographical and historical impossibilities... The answer of constituted authorities was to suppress the "Tractatus," but enough copies got out... and ever since then the Old Testament has been under searching and devastating examination. The first conspicuous contributor... was a French priest, Richard Simon, but since then the Germans have had more to do with it than any other people, and so it is common for American Christians to think of the so-called Higher Criticism as a German invention."