Part II: The rise and fall of the Bible

Religion

Volumn 28, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 15-27

  Preus, J Samuel ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0042233044     PISSN: 0048721X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1006/reli.1997.0116     Document Type: Article

References (53)

1. See Augustine On Christian Doctrine, and Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, Q. 1, arts. 9-10. I have treated these matters in my From Shadow to Promise: Old Testament Interpretation from Augustine to the Young Luther, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press 1969.
2. See Augustine On Christian Doctrine, and Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, Q. 1, arts. 9-10. I have treated these matters in my From Shadow to Promise: Old Testament Interpretation from Augustine to the Young Luther, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press 1969.
3. See Augustine On Christian Doctrine, and Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, Q. 1, arts. 9-10. I have treated these matters in my From Shadow to Promise: Old Testament Interpretation from Augustine to the Young Luther, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press 1969.
4. Christian D. Ginsburg (ed.), The Massoreth Ha-Massoreth of Elias Levita, in Ginsburg (ed.), Jacob Ben Hayyim Ibn Adonijah's Introduction to the Rabbinic Bible, New York, KTAV 1968.
5. It is worth noting that there was no thought here of division between so called 'textual' and 'historical' criticism. This was not an inquiry that could be conducted merely philologically. The texts' own history opened up the entire realm of the history of Israel, which was now seen for the first time to involve a centuries-long, piecemeal production of its own national literature.
6. Louis Cappel, Critica Sacra, sive de variis quae in sacris Veteris Testamenti libris occurrunt lectionibus libri sex, Paris, Sebastian & Gabriel Cramoisy 1650, Book VI, chap. 3, par. 8, p. 390.
7. Ibid., chap. 1, par. 3, p. 385. As Jerome had shrewdly observed long ago in response to attacks on his Vulgate, the makers of the Septuagint were translators, not prophets. Better, then, to rely on divine providence and give thanks that this ancient text has come down to us in several versions, and in pretty good shape. Nothing relevant to salvation is any more obscure than it was before.
8. Ibid., chap. 3, para. 8, pp. 390f. Assessing the available versions of the Old Testament, Cappel tried to reduce the debate from a dogmatic to an historical question - and thus earned the respect of his Catholic counterpart, Richard Simon. He pointed out that the oldest translation, the Septuagint, although widely varying from the best available Hebrew texts, was after all the sole witness to the oldest Hebrew text of which there is any historical evidence at all (the Septuagint is 350+ years older than the New Testament). Moreover, both Christians and Jews had relied on the Septuagint for centuries, with no apparent detriment to their faith. Therefore, Cappel and Simon agree, let all Septuagint-bashing cease! Likewise with the Latin Vulgate: Jerome had learned his Hebrew from Jewish scholars and used the best Hebrew texts available to him - texts no doubt better than ours. And it would be childish to argue that Latin Christendom was deprived of Scripture for a thousand years.
9. Among many, Edward Stillingfleet, who lists as one of the 'popular pretenses' of contemporary 'atheism' the 'irreconcilableness of the account of times in Scripture with that of the learned and ancient Heathen nations' (Origines Sacrae: or a Rational Account of the grounds of Natural and Revealed Religion Oxford, Clarendon Press 1817 [1662], vol. 1, p. xiv).
10. I am dependent here on Anthony T. Grafton, 'Joseph Scaliger and Historical Chronology: the Rise and Fall of a Discipline', History and Theory 14 (1975), pp. 156-85. Scaliger published his findings in 1593 in De emendatione temporum, an expanded version of an introduction he had written for an edition of the Hebrew Bible. Scaliger contends with orthodox and patristic denigration of pagan sources: 'We care nothing about those who have contempt for the profane histories: let them snooze on. No truth is profane. All truth is sacred, even from the mouth of a profane man' (Grafton, p. 169 n. 48, [my translation]. Any chronology of the world must take account of all the evidence the world provides. Biblical chronology is worthless if disconnected from the context of comparative history (Ibid., p. 168 n 45). Moreover, the work of the early Christian Fathers, to whom Scaliger's opponents would appeal, was entirely unreliable, and even the biblical chronology itself is not so clear as vulgar opinion supposed (the best example of 'vulgar opinion' being Ussher's fairy tale).
11. I borrow the phrase from Paolo Rossi, The Dark Abyss of Time: the History of the Earth and the History of Nations from Hooke to Vico, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane, Chicago, University of Chicago Press 1984 (1979). Rossi provides detailed interpretation of the struggles with chronology in the seventeenth century, including the beginnings of a scientific geology.
12. Quoted by Grafton, p. 171.
13. Ibid., p. 172.
14. Ibid., p. 173 n 67.
15. Ibid., p. 174.
16. See Rossi; also Don Cameron Allen, The Legend of Noah, Urbana, University of Illinois 1963.
17. See Allen, pp. 78-83.
18. One could perhaps call this a retreat into hermeneutics.
19. Above all see Richard H. Popkin, Isaac LaPeyrère: his Life, Work and Influence, Leiden, Brill 1987.
20. Ibid., pp. 23 (Marrano), 45 (Hobbes), 84 (Amsterdam). Spinoza's small library included a copy of LaPeyrère's Preadamites.
21. He published this as a two-part work. In their English translations, Men Before Adam, or a Discourse upon the Twelfth, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth verses of the Fifth Chapter of the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Romans. . ., London, 1656; Theological System upon the Presupposition, that Men were Before Adam, London, 1655.
22. He published this as a two-part work. In their English translations, Men Before Adam, or a Discourse upon the Twelfth, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth verses of the Fifth Chapter of the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Romans. . ., London, 1656; Theological System upon the Presupposition, that Men were Before Adam, London, 1655.
23. LaPeyrère's Adam begins as a child, has to learn everything by experience, takes a long time to name the animals right, and makes a dictionary of them. The pre-Adamites, existing in a 'state of nature', bear some striking resemblance to Hobbes's description. One wonders whether they conversed about it in Paris. LaPeyrère posits the presence of sin and death in the world - 'natural' sin and death - before Adam. After Adam, sin and death continue, just as before, but now they are imputed to all persons (including pre-Adamites), in order to prepare the way for redemption, in which the righteousness of God will be universally imputed to all through the Messiah, the second Adam.
24. Systems, p. 163.
25. Preadamites, p. 42; System, pp. 13, 109, 111, 122.
26. Preadamites, p. 42; System, pp. 13, 109, 111, 122.
27. System p. 89.
28. Ibid., p. 164.
29. Anthropologists credit LaPeyrère with the first challenge to monogenesis in favour of polygenesis.
30. System, p. 276 (my italics).
31. Ibid., p. 214: a reference to books of the Wars of the lord, mentioned but not included in the Old Testament.
32. Ibid., p. 208.
33. Ibid., pp. 205f.
34. Ibid., p. 204. LaPeyrère is combining textual and historical criticism here, illustrating the artificiality of that distinction.
35. LaPeyrère's theology finds its biblical springboard in Romans 9-11, Paul's ruminations on the relation between Jews and Gentiles, set in an eschatological framework. In the end, Jews and Gentiles will be joined in 'one election' (ibid., p. 54).
36. Popkin, 'Spinoza and Samuel Fisher', Philosophia Philosophical Quarterly of Israel 15 (1985), p. 219.
37. Samuel Fisher, Rusticus ad Academicos in Exercitationibus, Expostulatoriis, Apologeticis Quatuor. The Rustick's Alarm to the Robbies: or, the Country Correcting the University . . . London, Robert Wilson 1660. Since the work is in four parts with separate page numbering, I cite by part and page (e.g., IV, p. 54).
38. John Owen, Of the Divine Original, Authority, Self-evidencing Light, and Power of the Scriptures . . ., Oxford, Henry Hall 1659.
39. Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution, Baltimore, Penguin 1975, p. 215.
40. Fisher, IV, p. 58.
41. Ibid., p. 139.
42. Ibid., p. 152.
43. Ibid., Pref., p. 43 (my numbering). This quotation sounds suspiciously like some passages in Jean Bodin, Colloquium Heptaplomeres (1593), an unpublished work that circulated widely. Cf. J. Samuel Preus, Explaining Religion: Criticism and Theory from Bodin to Freud, New Haven, Yale University Press 1987, p. 12.
44. Ibid., Pref., p. 43 (my numbering). This quotation sounds suspiciously like some passages in Jean Bodin, Colloquium Heptaplomeres (1593), an unpublished work that circulated widely. Cf. J. Samuel Preus, Explaining Religion: Criticism and Theory from Bodin to Freud, New Haven, Yale University Press 1987, p. 12.
45. Ibid., Pref., p. 43 (my numbering). This quotation sounds suspiciously like some passages in Jean Bodin, Colloquium Heptaplomeres (1593), an unpublished work that circulated widely. Cf. J. Samuel Preus, Explaining Religion: Criticism and Theory from Bodin to Freud, New Haven, Yale University Press 1987, p. 12.
46. Fisher, IV, p. 178 (my italics).
47. Ibid., p. 47.
48. Ibid., p. 76.
49. Ibid., p. 13.
50. Ibid., p. 15.
51. The same idea is the centrepiece of the Catholic Richard Simon's apologia for unrestrained historical criticism of Scripture.
52. Fisher, IV, p. 44.
53. Ibid., I, p. 10. How much this sounds like Kant's sapere aude!m his slogan for the Enlightenment.