I suppose one of the reasons that MM clicked with me is that at the time I read it, I was just becoming aware that there had been well over a hundred years of biblical studies carried out - known as the Higher Criticism - and the first advances in this research are alluded to in the novel (George Eliot of course was the first to translate David Friedrich Strauss into English).
Casaubon represents the old, totally faith-based attitude to research, and is completely unaware of what has been happening on the continent, particularly in Germany, where biblical studies have taken a more objective direction. Whereas Will Ladislaw, though perhaps not the polymath and Romantic hero that George Eliot might have wanted him to seem, is fully aware of the research being done.
Things haven't moved on that much in these matters over the last 150 years or so, at least in England. There are those whose attitude is entirely faith-based, and the reading they do tends to be directed to reinforcing their faith, and there are only a small number who are interested in more objective biblical studies, most of the unbelieving camp being only interested in sustaining a hard atheism, in which "science" is the guiding light. There are also those who think the Bible text alone and in itself will deliver all that needs to be understood about it - and there are even atheists here (well, at least one) who take this approach. SSh! You know who...
