Scripture And Scholarship in Early Modern England

139 Pages·2006·7.97 MB·English

by  Ariel Hessayon

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.
To explore this discourse, scholars have been
drawn together from across the 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.
SCRIPTURE AND SCHOLARSHIP IN
EARLY MODERN ENGLAND
Scripture and Scholarship in
Early Modem England
To my grand parents,
Sarah & Leonard Hessayon
and in memory of
Manfred & Karla Selby
Edited by
ARIEL HESSAYON
Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK
NICHOLAS KEENE
Royal Holloway, University of London, UK
ASHGATE
© Ariel Hessayon and Nicholas Keene 2006
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system
Contents
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
Ariel Hessayon and Nicholas Keene have asserted their moral right under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.
Published by Notes on Contributors viii
Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company Acknowledgements xi
Gower House Suite 420
Croft Road 101 Cherry Street Introduction 1
Aldershot Burlington, VT 05401-4405 Ariel Hessayon and Nicholas Keene
Hampshire GU11 3HR USA
England
Og King of Bashan, Enoch and the Books of Enoch: Extra-
Canonical Texts and Interpretations of Genesis 6:1-4
Ashgate website: http://www.ashgate.com
Ariel Hessayon
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Scripture and scholarship in early modern england The Genesis Narrative in the Circle of Robert Hooke and
1. Bible - Criticism, interpretation, etc. - England - History - 17th century 2. Biblical Francis Lodwick 41
scholars - England - History - 17th century 3. England - Intellectual life - 17th century William Poole
4. England - Religion - 17th century
1. Hessayon, Ariel 11. Keene, Nicholas
Moral Tales at the Hearth: Jephthah’s Daughter in the
220.6’7'0942'09032
Seventeenth Century 58
Nicholas Cranfield
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Scripture and scholarship in early modern England / edited by Ariel Hessayon and Nicholas
Keene. English Scholarship and the Greek Text of the Old Testament,
p. cm. 1620-1720: The Impact of Codex Alexandrinus 74
ISBN 0-7546-3893-6 (alk. paper) Scott Mandelbrote
1. Bible—Criticism, interpretation, etc. -History. 2. England—Church history. 1. Hessayon,
Ariel. 11. Keene, Nicholas.
‘A Two-Edged Sword’: Biblical Criticism and the New Testament
Canon in Early Modem England 94
BS500.S37 2006
Nicholas Keene
220'.0942—dc22
2005021015
‘To us there is but one God, the Father’: Antitrinitarian Textual
lSBN-13: 978-0-7546-3893-3 Criticism in Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-Century England 116
lSBN-10: 0-7546-3893-6 Stephen D. Snobelen
Friendly Criticism: Richard Simon, John Locke, Isaac Newton
and the Johannine Comma 137
Rob Iliffe
Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall.
vi Scripture and Scholarship in Early Modern England
8 Thomas Beverley and the ‘Late Great Revolution’: English
Apocalyptic Expectation in the Late Seventeenth Century 158
Warren Johnston
Notes on Contributors
9 The Ghost in the Marble: Jeremy Taylor’s Liberty of Prophesying
(1647) and Its Readers 176
Nicholas McDowell
10 Iconisms, Enthusiasm and Origen: Henry More Reads the Bible 192
ArielHessayon is Lecturer in Early Modem History at Goldsmiths College, University
Sarah Hutton
of London. He is the author of several articles on seventeenth-century prophets and
mystics, as well as ‘Gold Tried in the Fire The Prophet TheaurauJohn Tany and the
11 ‘Directions for the Profitable Reading of the Holy Scriptures’:
English Revolution (Ashgate, 2007). His next book will be called ‘Beastly fury and
Biblical Criticism, Clerical Learning and Lay Readers,
extreme violence A cultural history of football (Hambledon & London).
c. 1650-1720 208
Justin Champion
William Poole is Fellow and Tutor in English at New College, Oxford. His research
12 ‘I resolved to give an account of most of the persons mentioned interests are in Milton Studies, seventeenth-century scientific writing, heterodoxy
in the Bible’: Pierre Bayle and the Prophet David in English and heresy, and manuscript culture. He has written a monograph, Milton and the
Biblical Culture 231 Idea of the Fall (Cambridge University Press, 2005), edited Francis Lodwick’s A
Alex Barber
Country Not Named (Tempe, 2005), and published many articles on early modem
literature and intellectual history. He also co-directs the AHRB-fiinded project
Afterword: The Word Became Flawed 248
‘Language-planning and free-thinking in late seventeenth-century England’, hosted
John Morrill
by CRASSH in the University of Cambridge (2004-07).
Index 253
Nicholas Cranfield studied Art History at the University of Florence and Modem
History and Theology in Britain, and was a Fellow of Selwyn College in Cambridge.
His doctoral research centred on the variety of theological opinions of episcopacy
current in early seventeenth-century England (1603-45). He continues to write on
seventeenth-century culture, the spread of Anglicanism, into both America and the
Pacific (in the nineteenth century) and is an arts correspondent for the Church Times.
He is currently working on a project to understand the effect of twentieth-century
Christian art on liturgical space. He is a member of the Diocesan Advisory Committee
for the Care of Churches (Southwark) and a Director of The South London Church
Fund & Diocesan Board of Finance.
Scott Mandelbrote is an Official Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge and a Fellow of
All Souls College, Oxford. He is also an Isaac Newton Tmst Lecturer in the History
Faculty, Cambridge University. His publications include The Garden, the Ark, the
Tower, the Temple (Oxford, 1998), written with Jim Bennett, and Footprints of the
Lion: Isaac Newton at Work (Cambridge, 2001). He is one of the editorial directors
of the Newton Project.
Nicholas Keene is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Royal Holloway, University
of London, having completed his doctoral thesis there on scriptural emdition and
print culture in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England. He is
Vlll Scripture and Scholarship in Early Modern England Notes on Contributors IX
currently preparing an edition of the correspondence of the French biblical critic Alex Barber is currently a research student at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Richard Simon. His thesis is on the religious and political context of print culture in late seventeenth
and early-eighteenth century England. His other interests centre on Pierre Bayle and
Stephen D. Snobelen is an Assistant Professor at King’s College, Halifax, Nova Scotia the English republic of letters.
and Adjunct Professor at Dalhousie University, Halifax. He has published on Newton’s
theology and prophecy, Newton’s General Scholium to the Principia, the Newtonians John Morrill is Professor of British and Irish History at the University of Cambridge
William Whiston and Samuel Clarke, the popularization of science, John Locke’s and Deputy Director of its Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and
religious views, nineteenth-centuiy prophetic interpretation and nineteenth-centuiy Humanities. He has written extensively about early modem political, social and
pre-Adamism. He is on the editorial board of the Newton Project. religious history, including six essays on Oliver Cromwell (as well as a 30,000 word
life in the New Dictionary of National Biography).
Rob Iliffe has published a number of articles on early modem history and the history
of science, and is completing a book on the significance of Isaac Newton’s religious
views for his scientific work (forthcoming, Yale University Press). He is the editor of
the journal History of Science and an editorial director of the Newton Project.
Warren Johnston is a sessional lecturer at the University of Saskatchewan and at
St Peter’s College in Muenster, Saskatchewan. His research centres on political and
religious thought in later seventeenth-century England. His articles on Anglican and
on nonconformist apocalyptic interpretation have recently appeared in the Journal of
Ecclesiastical History and the Canadian Journal of History. His article ‘Revelation
and the Revolution of 1688-89’ appeared in 2005 in The Historical Journal. He is
currently preparing a book on apocalyptic thought in Restoration England.
Nicholas McDowell is Lecturer in Renaissance Literature and Culture at the
University of Exeter. He is the author of The English Radical Imagination: Culture,
Religion and Revolution, 1630-60 (Oxford University Press, 2003), and the editor,
with Nigel Smith, of Seventeenth-Century Radicals (Broadview Press, forthcoming).
Currently he is completing a monograph on literary patronage and political allegiance
in the English Civil War and editing The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates and
Eikonoklastes for the Oxford Complete Works of John Milton.
Sarah Hutton's, research interests include early modem intellectual history.
Neoplatonism, and women in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. She has edited
and co-edited volumes on Platonism and the English imagination, mysticism and
mechanism, women in medicine and science, two treatises of Ralph Cudworth, the
correspondence of Anne Conway and friends, and the life of Henry More.
Justin Champion has published widely on early modem political and religious
ideas, attacks on the Church of England in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth
centuries, and the life and thought of John Toland - including a critical edition of
Toland’s Nazarenus (1718). His ongoing project is the history of the cultural crisis
in the early eighteenth century. His next book will be a history of biblical criticism
between 1580 and 1750 called Prophecying the Word.
Acknowledgements
The idea for this collection grew out of some conversations Nick and I had a few
years ago. Since then we have run up a number of debts. First and foremost, we
would like to thank our contributors for delivering their articles - most of them fairly
promptly! We would also like to thank the staff of the various libraries and institutions
that provided assistance to all those who have contributed to this volume, notably the
British Library, Cambridge University Library and the Bodleian Library.
This publication has been made possible by a grant from the Scouloudi Foundation
in association with the Institute of Historical Research. Both editors, myself formerly
and Nick currently, have enjoyed the generous support of the Leverhulme Trust. Our
special thanks also go to Mr Farhad Hakimzadeh, Chair of the Academic Committee
of the Iran Heritage Foundation, for his generous permission to reproduce images
from a Polyglot Bible in his possession. In addition, a big thank you goes to Heidi
May at Ashgate for having faith (and patience) in the project, and to Frances Smith
for the invaluable help she has given to the project. For my part, that leaves Lorenza,
who has been very understanding.
Dr Ariel Hessayon
Dr Nicholas Keene
February 2005
Introduction
Ariel Hessayon and Nicholas Keene
The story of the English Bible has often been told, but the story of the Bible in
England is still incomplete.' It has been estimated that 465 editions and 101 variant
editions of the Bible in English were published between 1525 and 1700, and that
during the same period 217 editions and 26 variant editions of the New Testament in
English were issued. By 1700 perhaps as many as 1,290,000 copies of the Bible in
English and 545,000 copies of the New Testament in English had been printed. Even
allowing for wear and tear, these figures suggest that many households possessed
either an English Bible or New Testament. The Geneva version of the English
Bible, produced by English exiles in the heartland of Calvinism, with its helpful if
sometimes provocative marginalia, was eventually supplanted by the King James
Bible or so-called Authorized Version of 1611, derived largely from the translation
of William Tyndale (d.1536).'^ The continued value of the Bible as a commodity
is evident in the number of testators who were at pains to specify it among the
possessions bequeathed to their heirs.^
I
It is a commonplace that the Bible was the most read and commented upon book in
this era (in which period of English history has it not been?), and that its influence
suffused all aspects of life from individual salvation to familial relationships to
political government. The vernacular Bible became the symbol of English Protestant
identity and independence in the second half of the sixteenth century, as well as
the ultimate battleground for the contestation of competing ideologies to prescribe
' D. Daniell, The Bible in English (New Haven, 2003) is thorough. For a classic account,
see F. F. Bruce, History of the Bible in English (New York, 1978).
^ C.J. Sommerville, ‘On the distribution of religious and occult literature in seventeenth-
century England’ The Library, 5th series, 29 (1974), 222-3; B.J. McMullin, ‘The Bible trade’,
in J. Barnard and D. F. Mckenzie (eds). The Cambridge History of the Book in England
Volume IV1557-1695 (Cambridge, 2002), 455-73.
' PRO Prob 11/191 fol. 73v; PRO Prob 11/198 fol. 34r; PRO Prob 11/205 fol. 407v; PRO
Prob 11/217 fol. 251r; PRO Prob 11/223 fol. 270r; PRO Prob 11/234 fol. 124r; PRO Prob
11/297 fol. 208r; see also, PRO Prob 11/205 fol. 407v.
2 Scripture and Scholarship in Early Modern England Introduction 3
and regulate the operation of the sacred in the lives of the nation/ The work of and biblical interpretation during the Reformation has received fulsome discussion.'*^
Christopher Hill has been particularly illuminating in highlighting the centrality of There have been a number of useful intellectual biographies on leading late sixteenth
the (vernacular) Bible to the religious, social, political, economic and cultural lives and early seventeenth century European figures prominent in developing critical
of English men and women/ The story of the Bible in England, however, remains approaches to scripture, most notably Anthony Grafton’s study of Joseph Scaliger,"
incomplete. There is a dearth of studies concerning the scholarly criticism of the but corresponding studies of English biblical scholars like Archbishop Ussher and
Bible between the late sixteenth and early eighteenth centuries. There are a number the polymath John Selden are missing.'’ Thereafter historians seem unsure of the
of works demonstrating the developing critical attention to the Bible through to broader significance of scholarly treatments of the Bible and have apparently left
the late Middle Ages in Europe,^ complemented by a substantial body of literature many unwieldy tomes to gather dust on the shelves.
focused on John Wycliffe and the Lollards.’ The significance of new strategies of
treating the Bible has been explored in the Renaissance,* * many centred on Erasmus,*^
11
^ R.H. Worth Jr, Church, Monarch and Bible in Sixteenth Century England Carolina, Contributors to this volume, whose interests lie in the fields of early modem history,
2000); 1. Green, Print and Protestantism in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2000). The best theology, and literature, have approached the subject of biblical scholarship from
study of the King James Bible is D. Daiches, The King James Version of the Bible: An Account a wide variety of different perspectives, but they share certain assumptions. They
of the Development and Sources of the English Bible of 1611 with special reference to the believe that English scriptural emdition can only be understood in a European
Hebrew Tradition (Chicago, 1941). Modem studies include A. McGrath, In the Beginning:
context. English biblical scholars in this era belonged to a self-conscious European
The Story of the King James Bible and how it changed a Nation, a Language and a Culture
intellectual community exchanging ideas and developing strategies for excavating
(London, 2001), and A. Nicolson, Power and Glory: Jacobean England and the Making of the
the sacred text. Anglophone historiography has traditionally failed to sufficiently
King James Bible (London, 2003).
appreciate this cosmopolitan intellectual culture and much remains to be done on
C. Hill, The English Bible and the Seventeenth Century Revolution (London, 1993).
the cross-fertilisation of ideas relating to the Bible across geographical, cultural and
® The principal work is B. Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (rev. 3'^'*
ed., Oxford, 1983). Also invaluable is Henri de Lubac, Exegese medievale: Les quatre sens linguistic boundaries. The contributors also believe that, contrary to the impression
de I’ecriture (4 vols, Paris 1959-64). See also R. Gameson (ed.). The Early Medieval Bible sometimes conveyed in studies of radical thought, be it in the mid-seventeenth
(Cambridge, 1994); K. Walsh and D. Wood (eds), The Bible in the Medieval World: Essays century or the turn of the eighteenth, biblical criticism was not the exclusive
in Memory of Beryl Smalley (Oxford, 1985); D.W. Lourdaux and D. Verhelst (eds). The Bible preserve of ‘free-thinkers’ operating outside the parameters of the ecclesiastical
and Medieval Cw/twre (Louvain, 1979). establishment. It was a shared dialogue, and the various interlocutors drew upon
Particularly useful is K. Ghosh, The Wycliffite Heresy: Authority and the Interpretation the same resources of biblical, patristic and historical material to constmct their
of Texts (Cambridge, 2002). Other key works include A. Kenny (ed.), Wyclif in his times
(Oxford, 1986); D.C. Wood The evangelical doctor, John Wycliffe and the Lollards (Welwyn,
1984); C.V. Bostick, The Antichrist and the Lollards, apocalypticism in late medieval and Jesuits: Essays on the Outreach of Humanism (New York, 1994). See also B. Hall, Humanists
Reformation England (Leiden, 1998); A. Hudson, Lollards and their Books (London, 1985) and Protestants (Edinburgh, 1990) and T.J. Wengert, Humanfreedom, Christian righteousness,
and idem. The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford, 1988); Philip Melanchthon’s exegetical dispute with Erasmus of Rotterdam (Oxford, 1998).
M. Aston, Lollards and reformers, images and literacy in late medieval religion (London, '** See particularly O. O’Sullivan (ed.). The Bible as Book: The Reformation (London,
1984); M. Deanesly, The Lollard Bible and other medieval biblical versions (Cambridge, 2000); W.P. Stephens (ed.). The Bible, the Reformation and the Church: Essays in honour
of James Atkinson (Sheffield, 1995); D.C. Steinmetz, The Bible in the Sixteenth Century
1920).
(Durham, NC, 1990). A useful collection of essays can be found in R.A. Muller and
* The best account of Renaissance Protestant biblical erudition is Fran9ois LaPlanche,
J.L. Thompson (eds). Biblical Interpretation in the Era of the Reformation (Michigan, 1996).
L’ecriture, le sacre et Thistoire: Erudits et politiques protestants devant la Bible en France
au XVIIe siecle (Amsterdam, 1986). See also Don Cameron Allen, The Legend of Noah: See also Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics. Volume 1 .Prolegomena to Theology
Renaissance Rationalism in Art, Science, and Letters (Illinois, 1949); idem, Mysteriously (Grand Rapids, 1985) and Post-Reformation Dogmatics. Volume 2: Holy Scripture: The
Meant: The Rediscovery of Pagan Symbolism and Allegorical Interpretation in the Renaissance Cognitive Foundation of Theology (Grand Rapids, 1993).
" A. Grafton, Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship (2 vols,
(Baltimore, 1970). Other useful works include G.R. Evans, The Language and Logic of the
Oxford 1983-93). See also C.S.M. Rademaker, The Life and Work of Gerardus Joannes
Bible: The Road to Reformation (Cambridge, 1985), J.H. Bentley, Humanists and Holy Writ:
Vossius (1577-1649) (Netherlands, 1981), and N. Wickenden, G J. Vossius and the Humanist
New Testament Scholarship in the Renaissance (Princeton, 1983). See also D.K. Shuger, The
Renaissance Bible: Scholarship, Sacrifice, and Subjectivity {B^rVeXty,, 1994). Concept of History (Netherlands, 1993).
'■ R. Buick Knox, James Ussher Archbishop of Armagh (Cardiff, 1967) contains little
’ Of particular value in the historiography on Erasmus is E. Rummel, Erasmus 'Annotations
information on Ussher’s biblical scholarship. The wait with regards to Selden may soon be
on the New Testament: From Philologist to Theologian, Erasmus Studies 8 (Toronto, 1986);
over with a forthcoming monograph by G.J. Toomer.
J.C. Olin, Six Essays on Erasmus (New York, 1979) and idem, Erasmus, Utopia and the
4 Scripture and Scholarship in Early Modern England
arguments, however differently they interpreted and deployed that intellectual
resource to contest the status, authority and role of the Bible. An over-reliance
on the binary categorisation of ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘heterodoxy’, always historically
contingent and shifting categories, has perhaps obscured some of the subtleties and
nuances of this shared conversation.'^ Nor was discussion of aspects of biblical
scholarship the preserve of university-educated intellectuals locked away in ivory
towers far from the uncomprehending masses. Over the course of the early modem
period, as various essays here demonstrate, the arguments and the information upon
which they were based were communicated to a far broader audience than ever
before, to the delight of some observers and the consternation of others. By the end
of the seventeenth century, the convention that abstmse matters relating to scripture
should be locked away in Latinate discourse was observed as much in its breach as
its observance. As it became increasingly difficult for the religious establishment
to control the dissemination and interpretation of aspects of biblical learning, the
contestation for the authority to interpret scripture became a battleground critical to
the status of the Bible in England. By the mid-eighteenth century no aspect of the
history, constmction or transmission of scripture had gone unchallenged, but the
Bible remained the most read and commented upon book.
See J.G.A. Pocock, ‘Within the margins: the definitions of orthodoxy’, in R.D. Lund
(ed.). The Margins of Orthodoxy: Heterodox Writing and Cultural Response, 1660-1750
(Cambridge, 1995), 33-53.