Jonathan Edwards’ French Connection

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert E. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Traditional Belief ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Jewish Scholar

Robert E. Brown focuses on Jonthan Edwards’ engagement with the emerging criticism of the early modern period, when the question of who authored the Pentateuch occupied many a biblical interpreter. Influenced by the more rationalistic approach of the Jewish scholar Abraham ibn Ezra (1089–1164), several writers—including Thomas Hobbes, Isaac La Peyrère, Benedict Spinoza, Richard Simon, and Jean Le Clerc—argued against the traditional belief that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible. One leading responder to this view was Louis Ellie Du Pin, a French Catholic ecumenist, and Edwards, interestingly enough, drew substantially on Du Pin in his own discussion of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. Brown uses this episode to show that Edwards was a creative consumer of European ideas, which illustrates that early modern biblical interpretation was more complex and layered than often recognized.

Jonathan Edwards and Scripture

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
New England ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Biblical Exegesis ◽  
Western History ◽  
The Bible ◽  
New Research

Jonathan Edwards and Scripture provides a fresh look at the important, burgeoning field of Edwards and the Bible. For too long, Edwards scholars have published new research on Edwards without paying due attention to the work he took most seriously: biblical exegesis. Edwards is recognized as an innovative theologian who wielded tremendous influence on revivalism, evangelicalism, and New England theology, but what is often missed is how much time he devoted to studying and understanding the Bible. He kept voluminous notebooks on Christian Scripture and had plans for major treatises on the Bible before he died. Edwards scholars need to take stock of the place of the Bible in his thought to do justice to his theology and legacy. In fact, more and more experts are recognizing how important this aspect of his life is, and this book brings together the insights of leading Edwards scholars on this topic. This volume seeks to increase our understanding of Edwards’ engagement with Scripture by setting it in the context of seventeenth-century Protestant exegesis and eighteenth-century colonial interpretation. It provides case studies of Edwards’ exegesis in varying genres of the Bible and probes his use of Scripture to develop theology. It also sets his biblical interpretation in perspective by comparing it with that of other exegetes. This book advances our understanding of the nature and significance of Edwards’ work with Scripture and opens new lines of inquiry for students of early modern Western history.

The place of Edward Gresham's Astrostereon (1603) in the discussion on cosmology and the Bible in the early modern period

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
BARBARA BIENIAS
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Philipp Melanchthon ◽  
Hebrew Version ◽  
Theological Debate

Abstract This article situates Edward Gresham's Astrostereon, or A Discourse of the Falling of the Planet (1603), a little-known English astronomical treatise, in the context of the cosmo-theological debate on the reconciliation of heliocentrism with the Bible, triggered by the publication of Nicholas Copernicus's De revolutionibus orbium coelestium in 1543. Covering the period from the appearance of the ‘First Account’ of Copernican views presented in Georg Joachim Rheticus's Narratio Prima (1540) to the composition of Astrostereon in 1603, this paper places Edward Gresham's commentary and exegesis against the background of the views expressed by his countrymen and the thinkers associated with the Wittenberg University – such as Philipp Melanchthon, Caspar Peucer, and Christoph Rothmann. Comparing the ways in which they employed certain biblical passages – either in favour of or against the Earth's mobility – the paper emphasizes Gresham's ingenious reading of the Hebrew version of the problematic excerpts, and his expansion of the accommodation principle.

Mundane Humility

2018 ◽  
pp. 47-70
Author(s):  
Kent Dunnington
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Liberal State ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Modern Development

Christian humility was repurposed in the early modern period to suit the goals of the emerging liberal state. After sketching how Thomas Hobbes achieved this repurposing, this chapter shows how David Hume’s critique of Christian humility and Immanuel Kant’s attempt to rescue Christian humility from Hume’s critique created a new kind of “mundane” humility newly committed to the need for a counterbalancing proper pride alongside anything that could be called virtuous humility. After showing how this concern for proper pride was a modern development, the chapter then shows how it drives most contemporary theorizing about humility, including the dominant low concern account of humility. Given that early Christian sayings about humility show no regard for the proper prides, an account of Christian humility will need to confront the claim that the virtue of humility requires counterbalancing by pride.

The Tell-Tale Iconic Book

2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 117-141
Author(s):  
M. Patrick Graham
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Digital Image ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Social Standing ◽  
Image Archive ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Biblical Figures

This study draws on the corpus of images from sixteenth-century publications available in the Digital Image Archive to explore how books are used in printed images related to biblical interpretation. The investigation finds that images of books are used to indicate: (1) authorship of biblical works; (2) defend the orthodoxy of later writers; (3) to affirm the learning, piety, and social standing of certain writers, saints, and other figures from antiquity; (4) to contend that the message and ministries of certain biblical figures were based on Scripture; and (5) to link antiquity with the Early Modern period.

Rhetorical stylistics

2005 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 215-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeanne Fahnestock
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Language Arts ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Rhetorical Tradition ◽  
Figures Of Speech ◽  
Language Choices ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Modern Period

This article explores the nature of the stylistics embodied in the classical and early modern rhetorical tradition and argues that rhetorical stylistics differs in its assumptions and purposes from contemporary literary stylistics. Three areas of difference are discussed. First, rhetoric was a productive not an analytical art, and its criteria for language choices were radically functional and audience-based. Rhetoricians like Quintilian, for example, favored choices for ease of comprehension. Second, rhetorical stylistics, while recognizing genre differences, did not distinguish a separate domain of the literary. The system of rhetorical pedagogy incorporated ‘fictional’ genres and considered texts of every variety as potential ‘donors’ of examples of effective language use. Early modern rhetoricians considered all texts secular by default in comparison to the unique category of language in the Bible. Third, the language arts from antiquity through the early modern period were taught in three overlapping disciplines: grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic. In the last of these arts, the least understood today, stylistic advice played a surprisingly formative role in the construction of arguments. Figures of speech understood in this last context encode specific lines of arguments. A reassessment of the rhetorical tradition on the part of contemporary proponents of stylistics requires an appreciation of these differences.

Translation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Willie
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Source Text ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Humanist Education ◽  
Intellectual Networks ◽  
Biblical Translation ◽  
The Relationship

Transnational exchange and intellectual networks in the early modern period relied upon translation—mainly into Latin—as a way to communicate across Europe. Translation was integral to humanist education where creative engagement with the source text was admired. Yet the exegetical and socio-political considerations that underpinned biblical translation meant that the rights and wrongs of translating the Bible into the vernacular in England was hotly debated. Whereas scriptural translation drew attention to the need to translate word for word to prevent heresy and to maintain accuracy in the presentation of the Word, psalm translation and translating from other vernacular languages posed different challenges for the translator; these challenges perhaps become most apparent when translating across confessional divides. This chapter considers the relationship between translation and religion in early modern English literature and the wider European perspectives that informed the ways in which narrative was recreated in English imaginative writing.

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