Book contents
- Rethinking the Secular Origins of the Novel
- Rethinking the Secular Origins of the Novel
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Appendixes
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Rethinking the Secular at the Origins of the English Novel
- Part II Versions of Biblical Authority
- Chapter 3 Sanctifying Commodity: The English Bible Trade around the Atlantic, 1660–1799
- Chapter 4 Prop of the State: Biblical Criticism and the Forensic Authority of the Bible
- Chapter 5 Object of Intimacy: Devotional Uses of the Eighteenth-Century Bible
- Part III Uses of Scripture for Fiction
- Appendices
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Chapter 4 - Prop of the State: Biblical Criticism and the Forensic Authority of the Bible
from Part II - Versions of Biblical Authority
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 March 2021
Book contents
- Rethinking the Secular Origins of the Novel
- Rethinking the Secular Origins of the Novel
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Appendixes
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Rethinking the Secular at the Origins of the English Novel
- Part II Versions of Biblical Authority
- Chapter 3 Sanctifying Commodity: The English Bible Trade around the Atlantic, 1660–1799
- Chapter 4 Prop of the State: Biblical Criticism and the Forensic Authority of the Bible
- Chapter 5 Object of Intimacy: Devotional Uses of the Eighteenth-Century Bible
- Part III Uses of Scripture for Fiction
- Appendices
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
Chapter 4 looks at ways the Bible functioned as an instrument of legal power around the turn of the eighteenth century in county assizes, in reports by the ordinary of Newgate, and in the majority of printed sermons from the period. I then discuss the different responses to that legal power in writing about the Bible by John Locke, Anthony Collins, and Matthew Henry. This chapter argues that it is not the aesthetic, narrative dimensions of the Bible that have been eclipsed in the modern age, as Hans Frei contends, so much as the scope of its legal and political address.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Rethinking the Secular Origins of the NovelThe Bible in English Fiction 1678–1767, pp. 94 - 124Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021