The Bible named gods whose worship it explained only briefly. John Selden (1584–1654) wanted to know who they had been and what could be recovered from the scattered ancient references. His De Diis Syris, a study of Syrian deities published in 1617, brought different testimonies into comparison. Familiarity with a biblical name did not relieve him of the work of reconstructing the history behind it. He approached the sources with the habits of a jurist, asking who made a statement and what entitled it to belief.
Selden’s study of Jewish learning also addressed obligations beyond any single community. The commandments given specifically to Israel could not explain every duty owed by every nation. In De Jure Naturali (1640), he examined the precepts associated in Jewish tradition with Noah and his descendants. These belonged to a period before the divisions among peoples, and therefore offered an account of duties that extended beyond the law of one nation. Sacred history entered a practical argument about what bound human beings to one another.
His two inquiries gave the biblical past different kinds of work to do. The study of Syrian gods recovered particular traditions; the study of law asked what remained common across religious difference. Both required him to learn from sources outside a narrowly Christian account. Selden’s historical discrimination did not take him away from questions of religious authority. It helped him address those questions in books intended to establish what a reader could reasonably claim about ancient worship and universal obligation.