This book provides a new account of a distinctive, important, but forgotten moment in early modern religious and intellectual history. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Christian scholars were investing heavily in techniques for studying the Bible that would now be recognised as the foundations of modern biblical criticism. According to previous studies, this process of transformation was caused by academic elites whose work, whether religious or secular in its motivations, paved the way for the Bible to be seen as a human document rather than a divine message. At the time, however, such methods were not simply an academic concern, and they pointed in many directions other than that of secular modernity. Biblical Scholarship in an Age of Controversy establishes previously unknown religious and cultural contexts for the practice of biblical criticism in the early modern period, and reveals the diversity of its effects. The central figure in this story is the itinerant and bitterly divisive English scholar Hugh Broughton (1549-1612), whose prolific writings in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and English offer a new and surprising image of Protestant intellectual culture. In this image, scholarly advances were not impeded but inspired by strict scripturalism; criticism was driven by missionary ideals, even as actual proselytization was sidelined; and learned neo-Latin texts were repackaged to appeal to ordinary believers. Seen through the eyes of Broughton and his neglected colleagues and followers, the complex and unexpected contributions of reformed Protestant intellectuals and laypeople to longer-term religious and cultural change finally become visible.

About the Author
Kirsten Macfarlane is Associate Professor of Early Modern Christianities at the University of Oxford and an Official Fellow and Tutor at Keble College. Before this, she was a Title A Research Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge University, and completed her BA (2012), MSt (2014) and DPhil (2017) at Lincoln College, University of Oxford. She has held visiting fellowships at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Houghton Library, Harvard, and the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Reviews
This is a remarkably erudite study which engages Greek, Hebrew, Latin, English, Dutch, French, and German primary and secondary sources, whilst nevertheless succeeding in remaining highly accessible. It is essential reading to students of early modern biblical studies, but will also prove to be of interest to modern biblical interpreters and pastors. * Matthew N. Payne, Global Anglican *
This monograph is both the first substantial study of Hugh Broughton, a major English biblical scholar and controversialist at the turn of the seventeenth century, and a distinctive contribution to the history of early modern erudition. * Rezensiert fur, H Soz Kult von *



Book Information
ISBN 9780192898821
Author Kirsten Macfarlane
Format Hardback
Page Count 288
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 584g
Dimensions(mm) 241mm * 166mm * 23mm