Cotton Mather and Biblia Americana - America's First Bible Commentary

This volume serves as a companion piece to the ongoing edition of Cotton Mather's Biblia Americana (1693-1728), the first comprehensive Bible commentary composed in British North America. Written by some of the most prominent scholars in the field, the essays in this collection offer original in-depth studies of Mather and his hitherto unpublished scriptural interpretations in the historical context of the Early Enlightenment, and the rise of Pietism. Transcending the pejorative image of the Puritan witch-doctor, Mather emerges from these essays as an erudite scholar and cosmopolitan theologian who was fully immersed in the rising developments of biblical exegesis around the turn of the eighteenth century. In facing the challenge of historical criticism or in examining the meaning of race and gender in the Bible, Mather wrestled with religious questions that are still relevant today.Harry Stout: Preface - Jan Stievermann: Introduction - William van Arragon: The Glorious Translation of an American Elijah: Mourning Cotton Mather in 1728 - E. Brooks Holifield: The Abridging of Cotton Mather - Francis J. Bremer: New England Puritanism and the Ecumenical Background of Mather's Biblia Americana - Oliver Scheiding: The World as Parish: Cotton Mather, August Hermann Francke, and Transatlantic Religious Networks - Adriaan Neele: Peter van Mastricht's Theoretico-Practica as an Interpretive Framework for Cotton Mather's Work - Winton U. Solberg: Cotton Mather, Biblia Americana, and the Enlightenment - Michael Dopffel: Between Biblical Literalism and Scientific Inquiry: Cotton Mather's Commentary on Jeremiah 7:8 - Paul Wise: Empiricism and the Invisible World in Cotton Mather's Biblia Americana - Rick Kennedy: Historians as Flower Pickers and Honey Bees: Cotton Mather and the Commonplace-Book Tradition of History - Kenneth P. Minkema: Flee from Idols: Cotton Mather and the Historical Books - Reiner Smolinski: Eager Imitators of the Egyptian Inventions: Cotton Mather's Engagement with John Spencer and the Debate about the Pagan Origin of the Mosaic Laws, Rites, and Customs - Harry Clark Maddux: Euhemerism and Ancient Theology in Cotton Mather's Biblia Americana - Stephen J. Stein: Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards on the Epistle of James: A Comparative Study - Paul S. Peterson: The Perfection of Beauty: Cotton Mather's Christological Interpretation of the Shechinah Glory in Biblia Americana and its Theological Contexts - Michael P. Clark: The Eschatology of Signs in Cotton Mather's Biblia Americana, and Jonathan Edward's Case for the Legibility of God's Providence - David Komline: The Controversy of the Present Time: Arianism, William Whiston, and the Development of Mather's Late Eschatology - Helen K. Gelinas: Regaining Paradise: Cotton Mather's Biblia Americana and the Daughters of Eve - Robert E. Brown: Hair Down to There: Nature, Culture, and Gender in Cotton Mather's Social Theology - Jan Stievermann: The Genealogy of Races and the Problem of Slavery in Cotton Mather's Biblia Americana