The gap between two ways of regarding and reading the Bible has been a continuing and increasingly noticeable part of modernity, but ways by which this gap was at least partially bridged continued into the twentieth century. These ways have now lost their academic and cultural standing and use, and the present situation threatens the possibility of this gap ever again being bridged. To trace this history and to clarify the present situation, I shall address three matters. The first is the various ways in which, while in the modern period the gap came into view, it was bridged. These bridges remained, although decreasingly, part of the academic and cultural landscape until quite recently. The second is how and why these projects of bridging the gap and the value of such endeavors faded into obscurity. The third is that a major cultural support for these bridges was the role of texts and textuality in their construction. This role has eroded, and present attitudes toward texts and textuality must be rectified if renewed attempts of this kind are to be warranted and supported. This chapter rests on the conviction that a major characteristic of present academic and general culture is a decline in the standing and role of texts and textuality, that this decline aggravates the increasing separation in late modernity between religious and secular interests and identities, and that addressing the contrary ways of reading and regarding the Bible must take into account the declining role and standing of texts and textuality in late modernity.

The first matter to be clarified is that modernity, while it caused a gap increasingly to appear between the religious standing and role of the Bible and other academic and cultural interests, was also shaped by the assumption that connections between them continued to exist. Traces or effects of these bridges continued as part of modernity until the twentieth century. Now, however, traces of former connections and, even more, the need and desire for them are of little, if any, shared cultural or academic importance. We should look, however briefly, at what those bridges were and how their relevance to modernity faded. There were primarily four kinds of them.