The Authority of the Old Testament in Enlightenment Britain

我的项目考察了旧约对政治，神学和英国的文化在漫长的十八世纪的影响。它旨在通过研究《圣经》的接受史，对宗教在启蒙时期的作用和地位进行学术重新评估——这是18世纪生活中一个相对未被充分探索的方面。以旧约中的摩西和大卫为例，我研究了这些人物在布道、评论、小册子、政治著作和艺术作品中被解读、教导和引用的方式，以便了解旧约在18世纪生活各个领域的权威程度和性质。我将调查启蒙运动的知识背景是否以及如何改变了整个社会接受旧约的方式，以及它在多大程度上仍然是18世纪重要的文化资源。因此，我的项目不仅要研究启蒙社会中宗教、文化和政治之间的交集，还要对近代早期英国接受《圣经》的历史做出贡献。

My project examines the influence of the Old Testament on the politics, theology and culture of Britain in the long eighteenth century. It intends to contribute to a scholarly reassessment of the role and place of religion in the enlightenment period by studying the reception history of the Bible - a relatively under-explored aspect of eighteenth-century life. Taking the Old Testament figures of Moses and David as my case studies, I study the ways that these characters were read, taught and invoked in sermons, commentaries, tracts, political writings and artistic works, in order to understand the extent and nature of the Old Testament's authority in various spheres of eighteenth-century life. I am going to investigate whether and how the enlightenment intellectual context changed the way the Old Testament was received across society, and to what extent it remained a significant cultural resource in the eighteenth century. My project therefore seeks to produce not only a study into the intersection between religion, culture and politics in enlightenment society, but also a contribution to the history of the reception of the Bible in early modern Britain.