By 1900 the higher critical method of studying the New Testament, once fiercely resisted, had become an acceptable activity for the staff of the ancient universities and representatives of the churches in Britain. Making use of the heuristic and analytical tools furnished by Randall Collins's The Sociology of Philosophies, this paper seeks to explain the role of the ‘Cambridge Triumvirate’ of Lightfoot, Westcott and Hort, conceived as a distinct group operating at the centre of a wider intellectual network, to this change. It argues that social process as much as individual and collective achievement furnishes an historical explanation of their contribution to the acceptance of New Testament higher criticism in Britain.
