The Apocryphal Apocalypse The Reception of the Second Book of Esdras (4 Ezra) from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment

by Hamilton, Alastair

• ISBN13: 9780198175216
• ISBN10: 0198175213
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-11-25
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This is the first study of the reception of the apocryphal Second Book of Esdras from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. The author discusses the concepts of biblical apocrypha and canonicity in connection with the increasingly critical attitude to religious authority that developed with the humanists and intensified with the Reformation.

Author Biography

Alastair Hamilton is Professor of the History of the Radical Reformation, University of Amsterdam, and Dr. C. Louise Thijssen-Schoure Professor of the History of Ideas, University of Leiden.

Table of Contents

Frontispiece
Acknowledgements	ix
Abbreviations	xii
Introduction	1	(297)
From the Church Fathers to the Renaissance	13	(17)
Prophecy and Kabbalism	30	(36)
Official Attitudes	66	(28)
Catholic Responses	94	(21)
The Radical Solution: The Anabaptists	115	(28)
A Broad Tradition of Dissent	143	(19)
Rosicrucians, New Prophets and the Thirty Yeas War	162	(33)
Chiliastic Mysticism and Radical Pietism	195	(9)
Of Monsters, Indians and Jews	204	(21)
Controversialists and Scholars	225	(24)
England and the Arabic Version	249	(36)
The Aftermath	285	(13)
Conclusion	298	(40)
Appendix 2 Esdras (from the Authorized Version of the Bible)	303	(35)
Bibliography	338	(27)
General Index	365	(26)
Scriptural Index	391