The Centre for Jewish Studies
University of Manchester
Extra-Mural Lectures January-March 2000
For the full list of lectures, click here
Feb 8, Gerald Hammond: "The English People and the Hebrew Bible
in the Early Modern Period"
I shall be exploring the period, roughly 1520-1660, when England made
the transition from a medieval state with many elements still of feudalism
to an embryonic modern state which had even experimented with republicanism.
At the heart of this movement was the Bible in English. Forbidden to be
owned or read in Catholic England, it became the most widely owned and widely
read book in 16th-century England and the key to political debate right
through the first half of the 17th. While the centrality of Scripture was
essential to all of Protestant Europe, distinctive to this country's experience
was an unusual emphasis upon the Hebrew Bible, the 'Old Testament', an apparently
perverse emphasis given the almost complete absence of Jews in the country
throughout the period. The lecture looks at 4 ways in which the Hebrew Bible
acted upon English culture to help influence the emergence of the modern
nation state:
- The translation of the Bible itself, from the 14th
century to 1611.
- The rise of Hebrew studies in the 16th century.
- The Hebrew Bible in high and low culture.
- The movement towards the readmission of the Jews.
Gerald Hammond is John Edward Taylor Professor of English
Literature at the University of Manchester and a Fellow of the British Academy.
His research interests include the influence of Hebrew on the style of English
Bible translations; his major publications include The Making of the
English Bible (1984) e-mail: Gerald.Hammond@man.ac.uk
The Centre for Jewish Studies
The Department of Religions and Theology
University of Manchester
Oxford Road
Manchester M13 9PL
United Kingdom
Tel +44 (0)161 275 3614; Fax +44 (0)161 275 3613
e-mail: Bernard.Jackson@man.ac.uk