Scripture and Scholarship in Early Modern England

Front Cover
Ariel Hessayon, Nicholas Keene
Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2006 - History - 255 pages
The Bible is the single most influential text in Western culture, yet the history of biblical scholarship in early modern England has yet to be written. There have been many publications in the last quarter of a century on heterodoxy, particularly concentrating on the emergence of new sects in the mid-seventeenth century and the perceived onslaught on the clerical establishment by freethinkers and deists in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. However, the study of orthodoxy has languished far behind. This volume of complementary essays will be the first to embrace orthodox and heterodox treatments of scripture, and in the process question, challenge and redefine what historians mean when they use these terms. The collection will dispel the myth that a critical engagement with sacred texts was the preserve of radical figures: anti-scripturists, Quakers, Deists and freethinkers. For, while the work of these people was significant it formed only part of a far broader debate incorporating figures from across the theological spectrum engaging in a shared discourse. fields of history, theology and literary criticism. Areas of investigation include the inspiration, textual integrity and historicity of scriptural texts, the relative authority of canon and apocrypha, prophecy, the comparative merits of texts in different ancient languages, developing tools of critical scholarship, utopian and moral interpretations of scripture and how scholars read the Bible. Through a study of the interrelated themes of orthodoxy and heterodoxy, print culture and the public sphere, and the theory and practice of textual interpretation, our understanding of the histories of religion, theology, scholarship and reading in seventeenth-century England will be enhanced.

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Contents

Notes on Contributors
9
Extra
11
The Genesis Narrative in the Circle of Robert Hooke
41
Jephthahs Daughter in
57
English Scholarship and the Greek Text of the Old Testament
74
Biblical Criticism and the New Testament
94
Antitrinitarian Textual
116
Richard Simon John Locke Isaac Newton
137
English
158
1647 and Its Readers
176
11
199
12
214
Pierre Bayle and the Prophet David in English
231
The Word Became Flawed
248
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