History of NT Research

I've just finished reading William Baird, History of NT Research: Volume One: From Deism to Tubingen, and it's been a great read. Here's a few highlights.

Philip Jakob Spener: "a young man who fervently loves God, although adorned with limited gifts, will be more useful to the church of God with his meager talent and academic achievement than a vain and worldly fool with double doctor's degrees who is very clever but has not been taught by God".

J.A. Bengel: "The expositor who nullifies the historical ground-work of Scripture for the sake of finding only spiritual truths everywhere, brings death on all correct interpretation".

Jean-Alphonse Turretin advocated the unity of Lutherans, Calvinists, and Anglicans. On Rom. 1.17, Turrentin thought that "righteousness" referred to God's justification of his people, although in 3.26 he thinks it refers to both God's act of justifying and to God's fidelity.

G.E. Lessing coined the term "bibliolatry" (Bibliolatrie). Though Samuel Coleridge may have first found the term in the writings of John Byrom who died in 1763.

J.P. Gabler: "The true exegete combines both: exegesis is his point of departure; exposition is his goal".

Baird's comment on Schleiermacher: "one is tempted to say he would have been a great biblical scholar if he had not been preoccupied with theology".

August Neander: the writer of a life of Jesus must begin with the basic premise "that Jesus Christ is the Son of God in a sense which cannot be predicted of any human beings, - the perfect image of the person of God in the form of that humanity that was estranged from him".

Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer: "So long as God will maintain for me in my old age the necessary measure of strength, I shall continue my quiet participation, as unimportant as it is, in the service of biblical exegesis".