This introduction looks at the establishment of philology as a discipline within the developing university system, especially but not only in the nineteenth century, and explores its relation to the discipline of theology, with its equally long history back to antiquity. It argues that the interface between philology and theology is an especially revelatory point from which to observe how academic disciplines have functioned, with regard to institutions, authority, methodology – and also with regard to their own blindnesses and competitive anxieties about other fields. It discusses the historiography of disciplinary formation, and introduces the central questions which link the following chapters.