Origins of the Bible and Early Modern Political Thought - Revelation and the Boundaries of Scripture

This book explores the cultural functions played in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by accounts of the Bible's origins. It investigates how these accounts were taken up beyond the expected boundaries of biblical study, and deployed as the theological basis for arguments about the proper ordering of human life.

List of contents

Introduction: Eternal Word, Historical Artifact - Biblical Transcendence and Immanence in the Wake of Humanism and Reformation; 1. The Primordial Bible: William Tyndale's Social Vision and the Limits of Disenchantment; 2. The extrinsic Bible: scriptural revelation, secularity, and social organization in Francis Bacon's New Atlantis; 3. Scripture atomized: sovereignty, secularization, and the metaphysics of the Bible in Hobbe's Leviathan; 4. The trial of Scripture: John Milton, individual freedom, and the providential immanence of the Bible's textual history; 5. The religion of the state: Spinoza's reimagining of the Bibles origins and the interiorization of religion; Conclusion: the Bible and time.

About the author

Travis DeCook is the co-editor of Shakespeare, the Bible, and the Form of the Book (2011), and of Taking Exception to the Law (2015). He has published articles in journals such as Literature and Theology, Religion and Literature, and Studies in Philology.

Summary

This book explores the cultural functions played in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by accounts of the Bible's origins. It investigates how these accounts were taken up beyond the expected boundaries of biblical study, and deployed as the theological basis for arguments about the proper ordering of human life.

Product details

• Authors: Travis Decook, Travis (Carleton University Decook, DeCook Travis
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 28.02.2021
• EAN: 9781108830812
• ISBN: 978-1-108-83081-2
• No. of pages: 325
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Modern era up to 1918; Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Religion: general, reference works; Europe, European History, RELIGION / History, RELIGION / Religion, Politics & State, PHILOSOPHY / History & Surveys / Medieval, LITERARY CRITICISM / European / General, LITERARY CRITICISM / European / Italian, HISTORY / Europe / Italy, Italy, c 1500 onwards to present day, History of Religion, Religion & politics, British & Irish history, United Kingdom, Great Britain, Literature: history & criticism, Religion and Politics, Literature: history and criticism, Modern Period, C 1500 Onwards, Western philosophy: Medieval & Renaissance, c 500 to c 1600, Medieval Western philosophy