Books by Reiner Smolinski
A Cotton Mather Reader, 2022
With its magisterial grasp of previous Mather scholarship and its mastery of Mather's published a... more With its magisterial grasp of previous Mather scholarship and its mastery of Mather's published and unpublished writings (a huge feat in itself), this reader marks the culmination of Mather's intellectual and academic rehabilitation."-Mark Noll, University of Notre Dame "A Cotton Mather Reader is a remarkable achievement. In 300 pages, the editors capture this most prolific author whole, offering a complete and rounded portrait of a man too-often depicted as twodimensional, the caricatured 'witch hunter' of Salem. Instead, we see Mather as the sophisticated intellectual, preacher, public figure, and family man that he was, engaged in every aspect of a complex and changing colonial world-politics, economics, race relations, medicine, science, international relations, and biblical interpretation. Mather's life embodied the contradictions and tensions of the society he lived in and helped to shape, as any reader of this marvelous collection will see.
Biblia Americana, vol. 2, 2019
Published in English. The rst American commentary on all books of the Old and New Testaments, Cot... more Published in English. The rst American commentary on all books of the Old and New Testaments, Cotton Mather's Biblia Americana (1693-1728) is a unique record of how European Enlightenment criticism (Newtonianism, Cartesianism, philosophical materialism, Spinozism, cultural historicism) of the Bible impacted Reformed theology and biblical hermeneutics in colonial New England before the American Revolution. Biblia Americana contains more than 3,000,000 words and represents Mather's collective thoughts on all manner of issues, from the Mosaic creation account to the Second Coming and Judgment Day. In Volume 2 (Exodus-Deuteronomy), Mather harmonizes miracles with natural philosophy, Israelite uniqueness with cultural archaeology, and textual variants and authenticity with up-to-date philological criticism. Particularly noteworthy is his comparative approach to Israelite rituals and iconography with those of their Egyptian and Canaanite neighbors, and the transmission of religious ideas from Egypt to Greece and Rome. He was fully vested in virtually every theological and scienti c debate of his age, perhaps the last American of his generation to possess such all-encompassing knowledge. This never-before-published document demonstrates that Mather fully participated in the European debate as he disseminated his new ideas from his Boston pulpit and in his numerous publications. Cotton Mather (1663-1728) The leading New England theologian of his period, Mather was both a defender of Reformed orthodoxy and an intellectual innovator, who propagated the Pietist renewal of Protestantism and embraced ideas of the Early Enlightenment. Best known for his Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), he published more than 400 works in various elds including church history, natural theology, and medicine.
Published in English. The rst American commentary on all books of the Old and New Testaments, Cot... more Published in English. The rst American commentary on all books of the Old and New Testaments, Cotton Mather's Biblia Americana (1693-1728) is a unique record of how European Enlightenment criticism (Newtonianism, Cartesianism, philosophical materialism, Spinozism, cultural historicism) of the Bible impacted Reformed theology and biblical hermeneutics in colonial New England before the American Revolution. Biblia Americana contains more than 3,000,000 words and represents Mather's collective thoughts on all manner of issues, from the Mosaic creation account to the Second Coming and Judgment Day. In Volume 2 (Exodus-Deuteronomy), Mather harmonizes miracles with natural philosophy, Israelite uniqueness with cultural archaeology, and textual variants and authenticity with up-to-date philological criticism. Particularly noteworthy is his comparative approach to Israelite rituals and iconography with those of their Egyptian and Canaanite neighbors, and the transmission of religious ideas from Egypt to Greece and Rome. He was fully vested in virtually every theological and scienti c debate of his age, perhaps the last American of his generation to possess such all-encompassing knowledge. This never-before-published document demonstrates that Mather fully participated in the European debate as he disseminated his new ideas from his Boston pulpit and in his numerous publications. Cotton Mather (1663-1728) The leading New England theologian of his period, Mather was both a defender of Reformed orthodoxy and an intellectual innovator, who propagated the Pietist renewal of Protestantism and embraced ideas of the Early Enlightenment. Best known for his Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), he published more than 400 works in various elds including church history, natural theology, and medicine.
Biblia Americana, Vol. 2 , 2019
Layout of Biblia Americana (vol. 2): Exodus--Deuteronomy (Dec. 2019)
Massachusetts Historical Review, 2016
Cotton Mather's Commentary on Genesis, Introduction
Cotton Mather's Commentary on Genesis, Bibliography
Cotton Mather's Commentary on Genesis
Cotton Mather's Commentary on Genesis
Cotton Mather's Commentary on Genesis
Cotton Mather's Commentary on Genesis
Cotton Mather's Commentary on Genesis, ch. 2
Cotton Mather's Commentary on Genesis, chapter 1
Rationale for editing and publishing America's first Bible commentary, Cotton Mather's BIBLIA AME... more Rationale for editing and publishing America's first Bible commentary, Cotton Mather's BIBLIA AMERICANA (1693-1728).
No other American Puritan has fueled both the popular and academic imagination as has Cotton Math... more No other American Puritan has fueled both the popular and academic imagination as has Cotton Mather (1663-1728). The leading colonial American's theologian and historian of his generation in New England, Mather was also one of its most powerful voices advocating millennialism. His lifelong preoccupation with this subject culminated in his definitive treatise, "Triparadisus" (1726/7), left unpublished at his death. In it, Mather justified his ideological revisionism, his response to the philological, historical, and scientific challenges of the Bible as text by English and continental deists, and his hermeneutical break from the conservative exegesis of his father, Increase Mather and Joseph Mede. In "Triparadisus," Mather's hermeneutics undergoes a radical shift from a futurist interpretation of the prophecies to a preterite position on the National Conversion of the Jews, as he joins the quasi-allegorical camp of Grotius, Hammond, John Lightfoot, and Richard Baxter. This study also challenges a number of longstanding paradigms in the scholarship on American Puritanism. Smolinski specifically calls into question the consensus among intellectual historians who have traced the Puritan origin of the American self to the Errand into the Wilderness and the idea of God's elect. He also challenges the commonplace argument that New England represented the culmination of prophetic history in an American New Jerusalem for the Mathers and their contemporaries.
As an important link between Mather's premillennialism in the late seventeenth century and Jonathan Edwards's prostmillennialism in the Great Awakening, "Triparadisus" provides important biographical insight into Mather's last years, when, liberated from his father's interpretation, he put forward his own.
Papers by Reiner Smolinski
The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats, 2002
Theologische RealenzyklopaW die, XXXI : SeelenwanderungkSprache\Sprachwissenschaft\ Sprachphiloso... more Theologische RealenzyklopaW die, XXXI : SeelenwanderungkSprache\Sprachwissenschaft\ Sprachphilosophie. Edited by Gerhard Mu$ ller and Claus-Jurgen Thornton. Pp. vijj ills. Berlin-New York : Walter de Gruyter, . DM . ; JEH () ; DOI : .\S This volume begins with two sad obituaries ; of Joachim Mehlhausen who for fifteen years cared for the articles on modern church history, and of Carl Heinrich Ratschow who persuaded the publishing house that another theological encyclopaedia was needed and laid down the principles that themes must be selective and that the chief weight must be historical. We owe gratitude to both. The letters in this volume mean many articles beginning with Social or Sozial and make a more dominantly modern volume than most ; Socialism and Christian Socialism, Social Democracy, Sociology, Social Ethics and more, a wide range in these subjects ; with excellent articles on slavery and Christian attitudes to it, sexuality, simony and the religion of gypsies and their fate in Christian cultures (not easily found, it is under Sinti und Roma, the Byzantine word Zigeuner is regarded as pejorative). Of states, Spain (moderate and wise upon the civil war and its aftermath), Slovakia and Siebenbu$ rgen. The histories of Sunday, and Sunday Schools, are well done. Of individuals, Popes Silvester and Sixtus and Sixtus ; two Lord Shaftesburys ; Archbishop So$ derblom ; Robertson Smith ; in the Reformation Spalatin and Servetus and Sozzini and Selnecker, in Pietism Spener, in Orthodoxy Serafim of Sarov ; in the Fathers Severus of Antioch and the Sibylline books. As always some of the best articles are on pastoral care ; here that on Seelsorge and an unusual one illustrated briefly on Sepulkralkunst. A surprise is a long essay on Shakespeare. Simultaneum gives a unique account of the way churches were shared between denominations in a way that cannot be described as ecumenical. S C, O C C Les Reliques. Objets, cultes, symboles. Actes du colloque international de I'UniversiteT du Littoral-CoV te d'Opale (Boulogne-sur-Mer).-septembre. Edited by Edina Bozo! ky and Anne-Marie Helve! tius. (Hagiologia. E; tudes sur la Saintete! en Occident-Studies on Western Sainthood, .) Pp. incl. ills and colour plates. Turnhout : Brepols, . B.Fr. ,. JEH () ; DOI : .\S U S A J M. H. S Augustine in iconography. History and legend. Edited by Joseph C. Schnaubelt and Frederick Van Fleteren, artistic editor George Radan. (Augustinian Historical Institute, .) Pp. xxij incl. numerous ills. New York : Peter Lang, . £. JEH () ; DOI : .\S For this its fourth volume, Collectanea Augustiniana, a series of studies designed to form a complementary corpus to the mainstream of scholarship on St Augustine, takes up the analysis of his iconography. Covering more than archaeological and artistic topics, both historical and legendary, its range makes it a welcome addition to the study of religious iconography in general and of the visual representation of Augustine in particular. The organisation of the material is tripartite. And the first principal part is preceded by a lengthy editorial introduction in the form of a kind of Quellenforschung, which provides a programmatic statement, and describes and interprets the significant literary sources underlying the representations. Part offers several independent studies considering the artistic setting of Augustine's biography. It covers the relevant archaeological excavations, including an analysis of the ruins of the baptistry of Milan and a critical study of the Basilica pacis at Hippo. The probable historical journey of Augustine's remains to Italy, and the history and influence of Augustinian monasticism there, also emerge clearly in this section. Part examines the Augustinian cycles, including the Augustine screen in Carlisle Cathedral, and part concentrates on Augustine's portrait, and its elaboration, from the earliest recorded in a twelfth-century manuscript in the Laurentian Library to that of the fifteenth-century Certosa of Pavia, and the celebrated sixteenth-century portrait ' St Augustine in his Study ' by Carpaccio. The value of the uniformly interesting essays in these two parts is to bring out the influence of Augustine's thinking and exegesis on general artistic problems : the widespread and pervading cultural influence of the De civitate dei is here clearly demonstrated. The editors round off their volume with a brief retrospective. In this unusual work, therefore, they offer church historians an account in one volume of the evolution of the artistic persona, as opposed to the historical person, of St Augustine, and of the perennial cultural influence of his thought. So although it is not a complete treatment of Augustinian iconography, which at present is impossible, nevertheless this collection of studies is remarkable from many points of view and it extends most usefully the solid catalogue raisonneT established earlier by P. Courcelle and J. Courcelle. U N M C-M Imaging the early medieval Bible. Edited by John Williams. (The Penn State Series in the History of the Book.) Pp. viij incl. figsj colour plates. University Park, P : The Pennsylvania State University Press, . $. JEH () ; DOI : .\S Until recently the study of the patchy and varied surviving evidence for early medieval biblical illustration has focused on its origins and precursors. The illuminator's docility to artistic models, and the continuity and constancy of
This carefully researched monograph examines Franciscan-Chiriguano interactions in southeastern B... more This carefully researched monograph examines Franciscan-Chiriguano interactions in southeastern Bolivia from the nineteenth to twentieth centuries. Langer writes, "Although missions were not tied as closely to the state as during the colonial period, they were key to the penetration of national societies into the regions and indigenous lands that the nascent republics claimed as their jurisdictions." This is important. For the most part, scholars have neglected to study the Catholic missions of the emerging nation-states of the republican era, focusing instead on the colonial period. As such, Latin Americanists have an incomplete picture of the development of the frontier in South America. The author is particularly interested in the missionary efforts of the Italian Franciscans in the region. This further complicates some common assumptions held by many concerning the spread of Catholicism in Latin America. Even though the Franciscans and their missions are the focus of the book, specialists of colonial Spanish America with an interest in Catholic mission history will find it useful. The monograph consists of an introduction and nine chapters. It can be used in upperdivision undergraduate courses and graduate seminars. College and university libraries looking to add to its Latin America and Indigenous Studies collections should purchase a copy.
The Journal of American History, Dec 1, 2010
McGilchrist's The Master and His Emissary is a thought-provoking book that deserves a wide reader... more McGilchrist's The Master and His Emissary is a thought-provoking book that deserves a wide readership, even though most historians will ªnd its account of Western history unsatisfying. McGilchrist argues that the driving force in cultural history lies not in institutions or ideas but in the human brain-speciªcally in the struggle for supremacy between the right and left hemispheres, which have fundamentally different ways of apprehending and engaging the world. McGilchrist believes that the division of brains into specialized hemispheres became widespread among vertebrates because evolution favored species that could bring two "types of attention. .. to bear on the world." Successful individuals had "to focus attention narrowly and with precision" in order to "manipulate" the world to meet their needs for food and shelter, but they also had to be open to broader impressions of others and of the world at large: "I have a need to take account of myself as a member of my social group, to see potential allies, and beyond that to see potential mates and potential enemies. Here I may feel myself to be part of something much bigger than myself, and even existing in and through that 'something' that is bigger than myself.. .. This requires less of a willfully directed, narrowly focused attention, and more of an open, receptive, widely diffused alertness to whatever exists, with allegiances outside of the self (25). The two approaches to the world can interfere with each another. The former requires a "necessary detachment" that allows us to control and manipulate our natural and social environment, whereas the latter requires that we maintain "the broadest experience of the world as it comes to us" (22). The neural networks that facilitate these ways of paying attention to the world are located in different parts of the brain to minimize the degree to which they interfere with each other-the "attentive" network mainly in the left hemisphere and the "receptive" network in the right. Ideally, in McGilchrist's opinion, the hemispheres should work together in creative tension to facilitate survival and cultural progress, but their relationship is "inherently unstable." The left side of the brain has a tendency to try to dominate the right side. McGilchrist believes, like Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, and Martin Heidegger, that there has been since ancient times "a gradual encroachment over time of rationality on the natural territory of intuition or instinct," which in his opinion has had baleful consequences for Western civilization (244). That encroachment has reshaped the human brain, enhancing its (lefthemisphere) capacity for information gathering, manipulation, and exploitation at the expense of its (right-hemisphere) capacity for wisdom, empathy, and altruism.
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Books by Reiner Smolinski
As an important link between Mather's premillennialism in the late seventeenth century and Jonathan Edwards's prostmillennialism in the Great Awakening, "Triparadisus" provides important biographical insight into Mather's last years, when, liberated from his father's interpretation, he put forward his own.
Papers by Reiner Smolinski
As an important link between Mather's premillennialism in the late seventeenth century and Jonathan Edwards's prostmillennialism in the Great Awakening, "Triparadisus" provides important biographical insight into Mather's last years, when, liberated from his father's interpretation, he put forward his own.