Johann Gottfried Eichhorn, a professor of Bible studies at Jena and Göttingen in Germany, was tremendously important as an instigator of the New England Transcendentalists. An influential scholar, he aroused controversy when he became one of the first to analyze the Bible scientifically and to question its authorship. Young Americans who had the precious opportunity to study at Göttingen—such as
George Bancroft,
George Ticknor, and
Edward Everett—found themselves on the cusp of the Higher Criticism movement and, in some cases, returned to New England to find that they could no longer pursue a career in the ministry in good conscience. For Transcendentalists like
Frederic Henry Hedge,
Theodore Parker,
Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Amos Bronson Alcott, and
James Freeman Clarke, the Higher Criticism of Eichhorn validated the right of an individual to question established church dogma, regrounded religious authority within one’s own consciousness and intuition, and—by blurring the distinction between sacred and secular literature—even affirmed the power of a transcendentalist to offer his own scripture-like pronouncement.