(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18世纪早期和中期英属北美的各种新教注释者和团体进行的圣经翻译进行比较，并排研究。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詹姆斯国王版本（KJV）和路德圣经？这些修订后的译本在哪些方面反映了特定的神学（尤其是千禧年派和费城派的推测），并在启蒙运动和新教福音派觉醒的思想交叉潮流中支持了不同的身份形成？该项目具有跨学科的研究设计，将传统教会历史/圣经解释历史的兴趣和方法与“生活宗教”-范式和早期美国文化和文学研究的历史相结合。第一个子项目涉及新英格兰神学家科顿·马瑟（Cotton Mather, 1663-1728）撰写的《美国书目》（Biblia Americana）圣经注释手稿。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书籍的评论中。在整个过程中，马瑟关心的是在数百个地方修改钦定本。他试图纠正语言学上的错误，但也在历史和科学知识的光照下解释圣经的字面真理，同时，通过不同形式的非字面解释来阐明其更高的精神意义。第二个子项目将马瑟的《圣经》的各个方面与德国虔诚派团体带到宾夕法尼亚州或起源于宾夕法尼亚州的《圣经》和基于《圣经》的宗教习俗的修订进行了比较。它将特别关注施瓦绍弟兄、埃弗拉塔社区和摩拉维亚人，他们都从事“异端”圣经的重新翻译，尤其是《雅歌》和《启示录》。该项目将调查这些翻译如何体现在实践中，并支持独立社区和身份的构成，以及在新世界不同的教会和传教项目。通过仔细研究这些圣经的重新翻译，并将它们与马瑟的圣经进行比较，这个项目将使人们了解德国虔诚派对18世纪中期席卷大西洋世界的宗教觉醒的独特反应。总之，这两个项目将详细而广泛地描述新英格兰清教主义和（激进的）虔诚主义作为圣经运动之间的联系。

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.