Maharal against Azaria de Rossi:The other side of skepticism.

 https://www.academia.edu/2229809/Maharal_against_Azaria_de_Rossi_The_other_side_of_skepticism_In_Rabbinic_Theology_and_Jewish_Intellectual_History_The_Great_Rabbi_Loew_of_Prague_ed_Meir_Seidel_Oxford_Routledge_2012_65_76

Not until the Renaissance, however, did the subject of Judaism’s critical attitude to its own traditions lead to an open dispute, when the Mantuan scholar Azariah de’ Rossi, also influenced by the thinking of Christian contemporaries, dismissed the Aggadot as unreliable, considering them an invention, whose significance was primarily ethical. Azariah was of the opinion that the Aggadot could not be considered history and ought not to be taken literally since they consisted of “fabricated conjectures.” His opinion, however, was reached on a basis of a comparison between pagan, Christian and Jewish sources.