Complex sentence: Astruc's work was taken up by a succession of German scholars, the intellectual climate in Germany then being more conducive to scholarly freedom, and in their hands formed the foundation of modern critical exegesis of the Old and New Testaments.
Split into simpler sentences: Astruc's work was taken up by a succession of German scholars, the intellectual climate in Germany then being more conducive to scholarly freedom. Those hands formed the foundation of modern critical exegesis of the Old and New Testaments.