| Popis: |
This book offers a new vision of early modern biblical scholarship through a close study of Hugh Broughton (1549–1612), the colourful English Hebraist who cuts a strange figure in the history of the period. Best known today as the puritan who criticized the King James Bible (1611), Broughton was both despised and admired by his contemporaries for his abrasive personality, controversial pamphlets, and profound knowledge of Hebrew, Greek, and rabbinic literature. Modern historians have found it equally difficult to reconcile the contradictions of Broughton’s life and legacy, scarcely moving past the stereotype of him as an angry, eccentric puritan. By providing the first monograph-length account of Broughton, this book explains how the same person could be both one of the most conservative and backward-looking scholars of his generation, and also one of the most innovative and influential. In doing so, it advances a new understanding of the relationship between elite intellectual culture, lay religion, biblical criticism, confessional identity, and broader processes of secularization in the period from the late Reformation to the early Enlightenment. |
