For and Against the Bible: A Translation of Sylvain Marechal’s Pour et Contre la Bible (1801)

In this first translation of Sylvain Marechal’s Bible commentary, Sheila Delany offers an important document in the history of modern European secularization and rationalist Bible criticism. Editor of one of France’s best-known radical journals, Revolutions de Paris, and author in many genres-drama, poetry, journalism, treatise-Marechal (1750-1803) embraced the revolutionary egalitarian ideas of Francois-Noel Gracchus Babeuf. As an atheist, he witnessed with dismay the advent of Napoleon and the post-revolutionary return of Catholic fervor. For and Against the Bible was his protest, his reminder of what the nation had endured and of what, at the opening of the nineteenth century, it might still accomplish. Delany’s introduction and annotated English translation will be of importance to all interested in Jewish or Christian Bible studies, history of Bible criticism, eighteenth century European rationalism, French atheism, modern European secularism.