Eduard Reuss on the Bible

Eduard Reuss (1804-1891) is "recognized as the founder of the Strasbourg school" and "was a mediator between German and French scholarship" (Baird, History of NT Research, 2:93). Reuss had something interesting to say with regard to the Bible:

The books of "the" Bible can lose their external value; the ideas belong to humanity, and where they are recognized as true, they are of divine origin, even if they had never been written. The old literal orthodoxy is irretrievably vanquished; only imbeciles need it." (quoted in Baird 2:93).

Jim West, with his low view of inerrancy, would likely find the last sentence of Reuss' quote to be quite true!