(Re-)Translating Scripture in Early American Protestantism: A Comparative Study of Cotton Mather’s “Biblia Americana” and Radical Pietist Revisionings of the Bible

该项目旨在对英属北美的各种新教释经家和团体在十八世纪早期和中期进行的圣经翻译进行比较和对照研究。我们要问，这些新世界圣经译本为什么、如何以及使用了哪些资源来挑战现有的译本，特别是广泛占主导地位的钦定本（KJV）和路德圣经？这些修订的译本以何种方式反映了特定的神学（特别是千禧年和费城的推测），并支持启蒙运动和新教福音派觉醒的知识交叉潮流中不同的身份形成？该项目有一个跨学科的研究设计，将传统的教会历史/圣经解释史的兴趣和方法与“活宗教”的历史-范式和早期美国文化和文学研究的兴趣和方法结合起来。第一个子项目涉及新英格兰神学家科顿·马瑟（1663-1728）撰写的圣经评论手稿“Biblia Americana”。该项目将研究马瑟从未研究过的重新翻译和解释，这些翻译和解释包含在他对《希伯来书》到《启示录》的圣经注释中。在整个马瑟是有关修订新译本在数以百计的地方。他试图纠正语言学上的错误，但也要根据历史和科学知识阐明圣经的字面真理，同时，通过不同形式的非字面解释阐明其更高的精神意义。第二个子项目比较马瑟的“Biblia”与修订的圣经和基于圣经的宗教实践，德国虔诚主义团体带来或起源于宾夕法尼亚州的方面。它将特别关注施瓦泽瑙教派、埃夫拉塔教派和摩拉维亚人，他们都从事“非正统”的圣经重新翻译，特别是《雅歌》和《启示录》。该项目将调查这些翻译是如何体现在实践中，并支持宪法的独立社区和身份，除了不同的教会和传教项目在新世界。通过仔细研究这些圣经的重新翻译，并将它们与马瑟的进行比较，这个项目将揭示德国虔诚主义者对18世纪中期席卷大西洋世界的宗教觉醒的独特反应。总之，这两个项目将产生一个详细的和广泛的肖像连接新英格兰清教和（激进）虔诚主义圣经运动。

The project aims to conduct comparative, side-by-side studies of scriptural translations that various individual Protestant exegetes and groups from British North America undertook during the early and middle decades of the eighteenth century. We ask why, how, and with the use of which resources did these New World Bible translations challenge existing translations, specifically the widely predominant King James Version (KJV) and Luther Bibles? And in what ways did these revised translations reflect particular theologies (esp. millenarian and Philadelphian speculations) and support diverging identity formations in the intellectual cross-currents of the Enlightenment and the Protestant evangelical awakenings? The project has an interdisciplinary research design that brings together interests and methods of traditional church history/history of biblical interpretation with those of the history of “lived religion”-paradigm and early American cultural and literary studies.The first sub-project deals with the manuscript Bible commentary "Biblia Americana" written by the New England theologian Cotton Mather (1663-1728). The project will examine Mather’s never-before-studied re-translations and interpretations contained in his commentaries on the biblical books of Hebrews through Revelation. Throughout Mather was concerned with amending the KJV in hundreds of places. He sought to correct philological mistakes but also to explicate the literal truth of the Bible in the light of historical and scientific knowledge, while, at the same time, elucidating its higher spiritual senses through different forms of non-literal interpretation. The second sub-project compares aspects of Mather’s "Biblia" with revisionings of the Bible and Scripture-based religious practices that German Pietist groups brought to or originated in Pennsylvania. It will specifically focus on the Schwarzenau Brethren, the Ephrata community, and the Moravians, who all engaged in "heterodox" re-translations of Scripture, especially the Song of Songs and Book of Revelation. The project will investigate how these translations were embodied in practice and supported the constitution of separate communities and identities in addition to divergent ecclesiological and missionary projects in the New World. By scrutinizing these re-translations of the Bible and comparing them to Mather’s, this project will throw into relief the unique response of German Pietists to the religious awakenings that swept the Atlantic world in the middle decades of the eighteenth century. Together, these two projects will produce a detailed and wide-ranging portrait of what connected New England Puritanism and (radical) Pietism as Bible movements.