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The history of early modern biblical scholarship has often been told as a teleological narrative in which a succession of radical thinkers dethroned the authority of the sacred word. This book tells a very different story. Drawing on a mass of archival sources, Timothy Twining reconstructs the religious, cultural, and institutional contexts in which the text of the Old Testament was considered and contested throughout post-Reformation Europe. In so doing, this book brings to light a vast array of figures from across the confessional spectrum who invested immense energy in studying the Bible. Their efforts, it shows, were not disinterested, but responded to pressing contemporary concerns. The Limits of Erudition employs a novel conceptual framework to resurrect a world where learning mattered to inquisitors and archbishops as much as to antiquaries, and in which the pursuit of erudition was too important to be left to scholars.
List of contents
Introduction; 1. Biblical criticism in Catholic Europe, c. 1590–1630: a tale of Three Polyglot Bibles; 2. After Tiberias: Louis Cappel, Jean Morin, and the Limits of Criticism; 3. Biblical criticism and mutual censorship in the confessional republic of letters; 4. From manuscript to print: the European controversy concerning the critica sacra; 5. A Protestant Polyglot Bible: Brian Walton and the confessional politics of Scripture; 6. The ends of Biblical scholarship, c. 1657–1670; 7. Richard Simon and the limits of Erudition; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.
About the author
Timothy Twining is a Senior Postdoctoral Fellow at KU Leuven. His research focuses on early modern religion, culture, and intellectual history. Twining has previously contributed articles to journals including the Journal of Ecclesiastical History and the Journal of the History of Ideas.
Summary
This panoramic account of post-Reformation biblical scholarship presents a major new history of how the Old Testament was considered and contested across Europe. Drawing upon a mass of archival research, Timothy Twining vividly recreates the practice of early modern scholarship and reestablishes the importance of Catholic intellectual culture.
