The reception of Maimonides in 17th Century England

Thesis

This thesis argues that Maimonides’s reception was critical to the development of the historical- contextual scholarship of the New Testament and a new ‘anthropological’ approach to the Old Testament. It traces the reception of the writings of Moses Maimonides in seventeenth century England through the writings of several key scholars, chief amongst them Henry Ainsworth, John Selden, John Lightfoot, Edward Pococke and John Spencer It argues that Maimonides was particularly significant for this period because he gave Christians access both to the contents of the Law and to its pre-history. These were subjects of significant contemporary confessional concern through the rise of Laudianism and its contestation, the vicissitudes of the Civil War and inter-regnum periods and then the Restoration of the monarchy and the national Church in 1660 on explicitly anti-Puritan grounds. Maimonides is shown to have been significant both for New Testament scholarship prior to and during the Civil War and inter-regnum period and for Old Testament scholarship in the post-Restoration era. His reception is argued to have proceeded in three stages – firstly through a limited readership in Latin, and to a lesser extent in Hebrew in the sixteenth century, followed by an ‘Hebraic’ reception in the first half of the seventeenth century which continued to develop and evolve alongside a ‘multilingual’ Judeo-Arabic reception which emerges thanks to advances in Oriental scholarship in the 1650s. Maimonides’s particular appeal to these scholars is found to be twofold. Firstly, his legal digest, the Mishneh Torah is shown to have been particularly popular on account of the infrequency of its references to the much- maligned Talmud. Secondly Maimonides’s philosophical classic, the Moreh Nebukhim is shown to have offered an account of the historical context within which was understood to justify its non- observance by Christians.

Authors: Hayton, A

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-5jb8m212w
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: Early Modern England; Maimonides
• Subjects: Theology; History