Scriptural Authority and Biblical Criticism in the Dutch Golden Age

Scriptural Authority and Biblical Criticism in the Dutch Golden Age PDF Author: Henk Nellen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192529811
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 466

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Book Description
Scriptural Authority and Biblical Criticism in the Dutch Golden Age explores the hypothesis that in the long seventeenth century humanist-inspired biblical criticism contributed significantly to the decline of ecclesiastical truth claims. Historiography pictures this era as one in which the dominant position of religion and church began to show signs of erosion under the influence of vehement debates on the sacrosanct status of the Bible. Until quite recently, this gradual but decisive shift has been attributed to the rise of the sciences, in particular astronomy and physics. This authoritative volume looks at biblical criticism as an innovative force and as the outcome of developments in philology that had started much earlier than scientific experimentalism or the New Philosophy. Scholars began to situate the Bible in its historical context. The contributors show that even in the hands of pious, orthodox scholars philological research not only failed to solve all the textual problems that had surfaced, but even brought to light countless new incongruities. This supplied those who sought to play down the authority of the Bible with ammunition. The conviction that God's Word had been preserved as a pure and sacred source gave way to an awareness of a complicated transmission in a plurality of divergent, ambiguous, historically determined, and heavily corrupted texts. This shift took place primarily in the Dutch Protestant world of the seventeenth century.

Scriptural Authority and Biblical Criticism in the Dutch Golden Age

Scriptural Authority and Biblical Criticism in the Dutch Golden Age PDF Author: Henk Nellen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192529811
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 466

Get Book Here

Book Description
Scriptural Authority and Biblical Criticism in the Dutch Golden Age explores the hypothesis that in the long seventeenth century humanist-inspired biblical criticism contributed significantly to the decline of ecclesiastical truth claims. Historiography pictures this era as one in which the dominant position of religion and church began to show signs of erosion under the influence of vehement debates on the sacrosanct status of the Bible. Until quite recently, this gradual but decisive shift has been attributed to the rise of the sciences, in particular astronomy and physics. This authoritative volume looks at biblical criticism as an innovative force and as the outcome of developments in philology that had started much earlier than scientific experimentalism or the New Philosophy. Scholars began to situate the Bible in its historical context. The contributors show that even in the hands of pious, orthodox scholars philological research not only failed to solve all the textual problems that had surfaced, but even brought to light countless new incongruities. This supplied those who sought to play down the authority of the Bible with ammunition. The conviction that God's Word had been preserved as a pure and sacred source gave way to an awareness of a complicated transmission in a plurality of divergent, ambiguous, historically determined, and heavily corrupted texts. This shift took place primarily in the Dutch Protestant world of the seventeenth century.

Scriptural Authority and Biblical Criticism in the Dutch Golden Age

Scriptural Authority and Biblical Criticism in the Dutch Golden Age PDF Author: Dirk van Miert
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780191844379
Category : BIBLES
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
A collection of original essays on biblical criticism and the process of secularization in the Netherlands during the long seventeenth century, as advances in the field of philology drew into question the authority of Scripture

Scriptural Authority and Biblical Criticism in the Dutch Golden Age

Scriptural Authority and Biblical Criticism in the Dutch Golden Age PDF Author: Dirk van Miert
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198806833
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 466

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Book Description
A collection of original essays on biblical criticism and the process of secularization in the Netherlands during the long seventeenth century, as advances in the field of philology drew into question the authority of Scripture.

The Mishnaic Moment

The Mishnaic Moment PDF Author: Piet van Boxel
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192654314
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
This collection of essays treats a topic that has scarcely been approached in the literature on Hebrew and Hebraism in the early modern period. In the seventeenth century, Christians, especially Protestants, studied the Mishnah alongside a host of Jewish commentaries in order to reconstruct Jewish culture, history, and ritual, shedding new light on the world of the Old and New Testaments. Their work was also inextricably dependent upon the vigorous Mishnaic studies of early modern Jewish communities. Both traditions, in a sense, culminated in the monumental production in six volumes of an edition and Latin translation of the Mishnah published by Guilielmus Surenhusius in Amsterdam between 1698 and 1703. Surenhusius gathered up more than a century's worth of Mishnaic studies by scholars from England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden, as well as the commentaries of Maimonides and Obadiah of Bertinoro (c. 1455-c.1515), but this edition was also born out of the unique milieu of Amsterdam at the end of the seventeenth century, a place which offered possibilities for cross-cultural interactions between Jews and Christians. With Surenhusius's great volumes as an end point, the essays presented here discuss for the first time the multiple ways in which the canonical text of Jewish law, the Mishnah (c.200 CE), was studied by a variety of scholars, both Jewish and Christian, in early modern Europe. They tell the story of how the Mishnah generated an encounter between different cultures, faiths, and confessions that would prove to be enduringly influential for centuries to come.

The Dark Bible

The Dark Bible PDF Author: Alison Knight
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192650130
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
The Dark Bible explores early modern England's interactions with difficult aspects of the Bible. For the early modern reader, although the Bible was understood to be perfect, sufficient, and transcendent (indeed, the Protestant Reformation required it), it was not always experienced as such. While traditional interpretive precepts, such as the claim that all dark passages could be read in the light of clear ones, were frequently recited by early modern commentators, their actual encounters with the darkness of the Bible suggest that writers, commentators, and translators were often deeply uncomfortable with the disjunction between what the Bible should be, and what it actually was. The Dark Bible investigates writers' and translators' attempts to explain, accommodate, circumvent, and repair problematic texts across a range of genres and contexts. It charts early modern English use of biblical scholarship in vernacular culture and investigates how vernacular writing in various genres could give voice to questioning and confused biblical interactions. The Dark Bible demonstrates that early modern writers and critics engaged extensively with the Bible's difficulties, attempting to circumvent and repair problematic texts, and otherwise reconcile the darkness of the Bible with theories of the Bible's perfection and clarity.

Biblical Scholarship in an Age of Controversy

Biblical Scholarship in an Age of Controversy PDF Author: Kirsten Macfarlane
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192898825
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
Explores the role of the English theological scholar Hugh Broughton (1549-1612) in the development of biblical criticism in the early modern period, and illustrates the contribution that laypeople and 'average believers' made to religious and cultural change, shifting critical attention away from the clerical and academic elites.

The Banishment of Beverland

The Banishment of Beverland PDF Author: Karen Eline Hollewand
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004396322
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
In 1679 Hadriaan Beverland (1650-1716) was banished from the province of Holland. Why was this humanist scholar exiled from one of the most tolerant parts of Europe in the seventeenth century? To answer this question, this book places Beverland’s writings on sex, sin, and scholarship in their historical context for the first time. Beverland argued that sexual lust was the original sin and highlighted the importance of sex in human nature, ancient history, and his own society. His audacious works hit a raw nerve: Dutch theologians accused him of atheism, he was abandoned by his humanist colleagues, and he was banished by the University of Leiden. By positioning Beverland’s extraordinary scholarship in the context of the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic, this book examines how his radical studies challenged the intellectual, ecclesiastical, and political elite, providing a fresh perspective upon the Dutch Republic in the last decades of its Golden Age.

Hadriaan Beverland's De Peccato Originali (On Original Sin1679)

Hadriaan Beverland's De Peccato Originali (On Original Sin1679) PDF Author: Hadriaan Beverland (1650-1716)
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004679901
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
In his De peccato originali (1679), Hadriaan Beverland (1650-1716) presented his thesis that sex was the original sin and a vital part of human nature. Building on contemporary insights into the history of the text of the Bible, he criticised the hypocritical attitudes among the religious and social elite of his day concerning the biblical text and sexual morality. The work became notorious in the seventeenth century and led to its author’s banishment. In the eighteenth century, it exerted considerable influence on the way in which many in Europe came to see sexuality. This annotated edition with English translation also includes a comprehensive introduction that includes a contextualization of the De peccato originali and its impact.

Lay Learning and the Bible in the Seventeenth-Century Atlantic World

Lay Learning and the Bible in the Seventeenth-Century Atlantic World PDF Author: Kirsten Macfarlane
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198933118
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
Early modernity has long been seen as a crucial period in the history of biblical scholarship, witnessing rapid advances in studies of Hebrew, Greek, and the ancient Jewish and Christian past. Historians have devoted much attention to how these developments were received by the academic and clerical elite, and yet there is little research on their reception beyond such exclusive circles. Some have even argued that ordinary believers had no interest in the demanding world of elite scholarship. According to current narratives, the Protestant laity were preoccupied by practical piety, scripture-reading, and devotional exercises, all of which were far removed from the dazzling polyglot erudition of the scholar. Lay Learning and the Bible in the Seventeenth-Century Atlantic World offers an alternative account of popular religion in early modernity by reconstructing a striking and unstudied community of seventeenth-century puritan immigrants to North America. Composed of tradespeople without a university education, this community offers unparalleled evidence for lay engagement with even the most abstruse and challenging concerns of contemporaneous biblical scholarship. Drawing on whatever resources they could find, this group taught themselves the languages of biblical criticism; immersed themselves in the most specialized questions of controversial theology; and then promulgated, through their hard-earned learning, an unprecedentedly inclusive vision of education, society, and the church. By recovering their lives and interests, this book presents a new vision of lay puritanism in the Atlantic world, one marked by far greater ambition, critical thought, and intellectual boldness than ever before suspected.

The Cambridge Companion to the Dutch Golden Age

The Cambridge Companion to the Dutch Golden Age PDF Author: Helmer J. Helmers
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316780325
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
During the seventeenth century, the Dutch Republic was transformed into a leading political power in Europe, with global trading interests. It nurtured some of the period's greatest luminaries, including Rembrandt, Vermeer, Descartes and Spinoza. Long celebrated for its religious tolerance, artistic innovation and economic modernity, the United Provinces of the Netherlands also became known for their involvement with slavery and military repression in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. This Companion provides a compelling overview of the best scholarship on this much debated era, written by a wide range of experts in the field. Unique in its balanced treatment of global, political, socio-economic, literary, artistic, religious, and intellectual history, its nineteen chapters offer an indispensable guide for anyone interested in the world of the Dutch Golden Age.