Abstract The tension in the sixteenth century between Christian institutions, viewed as corrupt, and the Scriptures, taken to be the unsullied source of spiritual renewal, gives rise to an energetic biblical erudition intended to transmit this clarity--an effort that ironically ends up obscuring that supposedly limpid source. Spinoza subjects the Book to norms of reason that distinguish sharply between the intended meaning (sensus) and truth (veritas). The truth of the text, for Erasmus, is either above it (in a philosophy of the revelation) or below (in lexical, historical and grammatical knowledge). In the seventeenth century, the logic of Port-Royal sunders the text into pre-existent concepts or ideas, and signifiants, or phonetic signs that are meaningless in themselves. The distinction between metaphor (and musicality) and strict meaning (stripped of rhetoric and affect) makes translation a battlefield between beauty and truth. The remainder of the chapter gives a detailed account and assessment of the two major seventeenth-century biblical translators: Sacy, whose focus is the intended meaning of the Author (the spirit of God); and Simon, who treats the text as an object. The text itself must first be "established," and then its obscurities elucidated by compared versions and an abundant critical apparatus.