Biblical Criticism in Early Modern Europe


Book Description

This book explores the explosive social and political implications of Erasmus' philological work on the Greek New Testament. When Erasmus (1516) failed to find Greek manuscript evidence for the 'Johannine comma', long considered the clearest biblical evidence for the Trinity, he unwittingly opened a vicious debate over the nature of the bible, its relationship with doctrine, and the role of the state in regulating private belief.










An Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures


Book Description

A painstaking compiler of catalogues and indexes, the biblical scholar and bibliographer Thomas Hartwell Horne (1780-1862) first published his most famous work in 1818, having begun his research for it many years earlier in 1801. Reissued here in five parts is the expanded four-volume tenth edition of 1856, which includes revisions by the scholars Samuel Davidson (c.1806-98) and Samuel Prideaux Tregelles (1813-75). This monumental and influential work of nineteenth-century biblical scholarship remains a valuable resource for modern researchers, reflecting the methods and perspectives of its era. Volume 4, rewritten by Tregelles for this edition, addresses textual criticism of the New Testament. Drawing strongly on his previous scholarship, Tregelles covers the history of the text, distinguished readings and important manuscripts, and he provides an introduction to each book of the New Testament.













Anonyms


Book Description




The House of Forgery in Eighteenth-Century Britain


Book Description

Published in 1999, this work offers a balanced interdisciplinary account of literary and criminal forgery as they were practised, constructed and theorized in the 18th century as a corollary of the new documents of the financial revolution: banknotes, bills of exchange and promissory notes. The book surveys the crime and its mythology, placing well-known cases such as that of Dr. William Dodd within the pattern of 400 prosecutions from the period 1715-1780. In parallel, accounts of some major instances of literary forgery are rooted in a more pervasive culture in which "forgery" was discovered in many developing areas of literary practice: scholarly editing, historiography and antiquarianism. One surprising aspect of this study is the extent to which literary figures were involved in matters of criminal as well as literary forgery. It is suggested that the two kinds of forgery have unexpected connections with each other through the economy of literature which, following the development of copyright, regarded the signature of authorship as the legal site of literary authenticity, and through the economic and legal culture of forgery prosecutions, in which bogus "writing" came to signify a whole range of problems of personal and literary character. The study is based on a very large body of diverse material, from major texts such as "The Dunciad" and "Lives of the English Poets" to hundreds of minor poems, controversial pamphlets, criminal biographies, newspapers, legal records and manuscripts.




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