Abstract

The present article wishes to give a survey of the debate that took place in Rome at the end of the 1950’s and the beginning of the 1960’s. Against the background of the preparations for the Second Vatican Council, a fierce dispute arose between staff members of the Pontifical Lateran University on the one hand, and those belonging to the Pontifical Biblical Institute on the other. The issue at stake was whether or not critical historical readings of the Sacred Scriptures could be accepted, combined with, or integrated in a theological approach of these same scriptures. The crisis thus took up questions that were already addressed in the modernist controversy, thereby adapting an old struggle to a new context. It is therefore referred to as the ‘neo-modernist crisis’