The contribution of Jewish Literature to 'Sacred History' in Late 17th-century Cambridge

因此，这个项目与新兴的关于早期现代‘基督教希伯来主义’主题的学术相结合，这一主题已经被肯尼斯·奥斯汀的《犹太人与宗教改革》赋予了新的动力。奥斯汀认为，犹太人和基督徒之间的适当关系是宗教改革时代破裂的根本。我想写下这个故事的下一章，特别关注17世纪末的英国学者如何在犹太学者的指导下寻求理解异教。这似乎是一个肥沃而又未被开发的希伯来学术领域，人们普遍认为这一时期已经进入了末期的衰落，雅各布·阿博拉菲亚、埃里克·纳尔逊、安东尼·格拉夫顿和蒂莫西·图温以及萨克利夫的工作就是明证。虽然这些学者指出犹太学术在这一时期被边缘化是正确的，但我认为这种学术并没有消亡，而是成为涵盖更多语言和文化的更广泛、多声门对话的一部分，因为这些成为圣经年表和语言学的一部分。在这样做的过程中，我将追随Zur Shalev和Jonathan Sheehan以及Levitin的脚步，他们假设在这一时期出现了一段独特的“偶像崇拜历史”，这继续形成了启蒙运动“宗教史”的基础。我希望将Castell的工作置于更广泛的东方主义背景下，在任命第一位希伯来语地区教授一百多年后，他的椅子被赋予了阿拉伯语。我的论点是，早期现代希伯来主义的发现需要对古代近东语言进行更广泛的研究，这构成了“神圣历史”的基础。学者们倾向于认为，基督教希伯来主义是天主教、路德和加尔文主义的倡导者在彼此之间的辩论中利用的工具。虽然这是许多希伯来主义者的情况，但这并不是故事的结束。通过多声门学术，关于希伯来语圣经、它的地位和它的元音点的历史性的教派间的争论变得复杂和扩大。要研究多种语言的《圣经》，就必须认识到它的多重含义。这些可能会被发现，作为恢复“原始”文本或认可特定神学立场的追求的一部分。虽然有丰富的学术文献关于犹太文本的用法来支持基督教忏悔主张，但对犹太学术如何为基督徒的信仰提供信息，并在某些情况下，将那些带到‘正统’的界限和进入‘宗教史’的方式的认识，是较新的。需要并排阅读多个版本的圣经是基于一个重要的假设，这一假设触及了希伯来学者对旧约历史特殊性的洞察力的核心。对圣经采取多种语言的方法假设了不同的历史背景，一个多文化的年表，这不能通过一本单一的‘圣书’来理解。这种认识并不意味着把《圣经》变成古代历史的片断，而是要用历史-语言学的方法来揭示它的意义。正是这种探索形成了“神圣历史”的基础，并演变成了“宗教史”。这一启蒙时代的学科，并不像前面所说的那样，代表着与宗教改革时期圣经学术的决裂，而是它的发展。

This project thus engages with the burgeoning scholarship on the subject of early modern 'Christian Hebraism', which has been given new impetus by Kenneth Austin's The Jews and the Reformation. Austin argues that the proper relationship between Jews and Christians is fundamental to the ruptures of the Reformation-era. I would like to write the next chapter of this story, with a particular focus on the ways in which late seventeenth-century English scholars were guided by Jewish scholarship in their quest to understand 'paganism'. This appears a fertile and yet, under-explored area of Hebraic scholarship, which is widely understood to have gone into terminal decline in this period, as is evidenced by the work of Jacob Abolafia, Eric Nelson, Anthony Grafton and Timothy Twinning as well as that of Sutcliffe. Whilst these scholars are correct to point out the marginalisation of specifically Jewish scholarship in this period, I would posit that such scholarship does not die out, but rather becomes part of a broader, polyglottal conversation encompassing more languages and cultures, as these become part of biblical chronology and philology. In doing so, I will be following in the footsteps of Zur Shalev and Jonathan Sheehan, as well as Levitin, who have posited that a distinct 'history of idolatry' emerges in this period, which goes on to form the basis of Enlightenment 'histories of religion'.I wish to situate the work of Castell within a broader orientalist context, which saw his chair in Arabic endowed over one-hundred years after the appointment of the first Regius Professor of Hebrew. It is my contention that the findings of early modern Hebraism necessitated the broader study of ancient Near-Eastern languages, which forms the basis of 'sacred history'. Scholars have tended to assume that 'Christian Hebraism' was instrumentalised by advocates of Catholicism, Lutheranism and Calvinism in their debates with one another. Whilst this was the case for many Hebraists, it is not the end of the story. Through polyglottal scholarship, inter-denominational debates about the Hebrew Bible, its' status and the historicity of its' vowel points, are complicated and expanded. The study of the Bible in multiple languages entails a recognition of its' multiple meanings. These might be uncovered as part of a quest to recover the 'original' text or to endorse a particular theological position. Whilst there is a rich scholarly literature on the usages of Jewish texts to buttress Christian confessional claims, recognition of the ways in which Jewish scholarship informed the beliefs of Christians, and in some cases, took those to the bounds of 'orthodoxy' and into the 'history of religion', is more recent. The need to read multiple versions of the Bible side-by-side is based on an important assumption, which gets to the heart of the insights derived from Hebraic scholarship as to the historical specificity of the Old Testament. A multi-lingual approach to the Scriptures assumes a diverse historical context, a multi-cultural chronology, which cannot be made sense of through a single 'holy book'. This recognition does not entail turning the Bible into mere fragment of ancient history but rather using historical-philological methodology to uncover its' meanings. It is this quest which formed the basis of 'sacred history', which evolved into the 'history of religion'. This Enlightenment-era discipline, does not, as previously argued, represent a break with Reformation-era biblical scholarship, but is rather a development of it.