The Emancipation of Biblical Philology in the Dutch Republic, 1590–1670
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THE EMANCIPATION OF BIBLICAL PHILOLOGY IN THE DUTCH REPUBLIC, 1590–1670 The Emancipation of Biblical Philology in the Dutch Republic, 1590–1670 DIRK VAN MIERT 1 1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Dirk van Miert 2018 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2018 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. 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For Sarah and Myriam Acknowledgements This book was written in the context of a research project on ‘Biblical Criticism in the Seventeenth Century’ (project no. 360-25-090), financed by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), led by Piet Steenbakkers (Utrecht University) and Henk Nellen (Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands—Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences). Apart from the continuous support and critical input of these two people, I am heavily indebted to Jetze Touber, who as a fourth researcher on this project has written a monograph on biblical philology in the Dutch Republic after Spinoza. All three have read this entire monograph in various stages of (non-)comple- tion, and I have benefitted immensely from their comments, in particular from Jetze’s, and from the many discussions the four of us have conducted over the years. I am also grateful to Huygens ING and its executive board for having me hosted for the more than three years it took to conduct my research in what proved to be the most stimulating environment I could ever have wished for. I owe special thanks to all members of the research group History of Science, and notably to Charles van den Heuvel and Eric Jorink. I am indebted to numerous colleagues who have read drafts and provided comments and critique so solid that it often left me doubting the wisdom of having signed up for this research. I single out Jan Bloemendal, Theodor Dunkelgrün, Paul Gillaerts, Henk Jan de Jonge, Anthony Ossa-Richardson, and a number of anonymous referees who commented on parts (originally) of chapters 3 and 6, which were submitted to journals in revised form as inde- pendent articles. The responses of audiences at various conferences, symposia, and workshops in Amsterdam, Oxford, Leuven, Innsbruck, and Utrecht have, in subtle ways, fed into this book. I owe a very special thanks to James Gibbons, a very acute and knowledgeable editor who polished up my English almost beyond recognition and put his finger on a number of important inconsistencies. I also thank Mark Rogers for scrutinizing the text. Most of all, I am grateful for the unabated support of Geer, who kept me going every time I lost confidence. This book is dedicated to our daughters, Sarah and Myriam. In the years that they were born, during the protracted final stages of editing this book, I realized how foolish it is to compare the writing and publishing of libri with the carrying and delivery of liberi. Contents List of Illustrations xi Preface xiii Introduction: Biblical Philology in the Sixteenth Century 1 Classical Philology and Biblical Philology 1 Biblical Philology before and during the Reformation 3 Biblical Philology in the ‘Golden Age’ 11 Tolerance and the Institutions of Control: The Hand that Feeds 14 The Erosion of the Authority of Tradition 14 England, Switzerland, France, and Germany 16 Central Question and Sub-Questions 21 1. Joseph Scaliger: The Power of Philology (1590–1609) 22 1.1. Scaliger, Philologist 22 1.2. Scaliger’s Biblical Philological Annotations as Printed Posthumously in his Letters 26 1.3. Scaliger’s Biblical Philology in his Unpublished Letters to De Thou and to Seguin 29 1.4. Scaliger’s Biblical Philology in the Scaligerana 36 1.5. Scaliger’s Biblical Philology in the Margins of his Books 47 1.6. The Limits of Freedom 49 2. Biblical Philology: Nothing Radical (1609–1619) 53 2.1. The Limits of Philology 53 2.2. The Controversy Starts 54 2.3. Jacobus Arminius 55 2.4. Franciscus Gomarus: The Biblical Philologist 63 2.5. Johannes Drusius 69 2.6. Hugo Grotius’s De imperio and Ordinum pietas 73 2.7. Conclusions 76 3. Mobilizing Biblical Philology: The States’ Translation (1619–1637) 78 3.1. Philology: Handmaiden to Philology 78 3.2. Making the States’ Translation 78 3.3. Revising the Old Testament States’ Translation 86 3.4. Revising the New Testament 93 3.5. The Use of the States’ Translation 100 4. The Biblical Philology of Daniel Heinsius (1619–1640) 103 4.1. Heinsius: Leiden’s Star 103 x Contents 4.2. Heinsius’s Biblical Philology 105 4.3. Heinsius and Selden 125 4.4. Conclusions 129 5. Grotius’s Annotationes on the Bible (1619–1645) 133 5.1. Grotius and the Utility of Philology 133 5.2. Making the Annotationes 133 5.3. Contents of the Annotationes 141 5.4. Reception of the Annotationes 163 5.5. Conclusions 165 6. Claude Saumaise and the ‘Hairy War’ (1640–1650) 170 6.1. The Outbreak of the Hairy War 170 6.2. Historical Contexts 172 6.3. Against Long Hair on Men: Udemans and Borstius 175 6.4. Florentius Schuyl 179 6.5. Non-biblical Assessments 183 6.6. Saumaise Enters the Fray 185 6.7. A Latin Utopian Satire 189 6.8. Conclusions 191 7. Radical Philology: Isaac de La Peyrère (1643–1660) 193 7.1. Isaac de La Peyrère and the Salmasian Network 193 7.2. La Peyrère’s Use of Saumaise and Scaliger 198 7.3. La Peyrère’s Biblical Philology 201 7.4. First Responses to Du Rappel des Iuifs 204 7.5. First Responses to the Praeadamitae 207 7.6. Conclusions 211 8. On the Eve of Spinoza: The Rise of Biblical Philology (1650–1670) 213 8.1. The Status of the Masoretic Text 213 8.2. Textual Criticism and Antiquarianism 214 8.3. Isaac Vossius and Chronology 220 8.4. On the Eve of Spinoza 225 8.5. Conclusions 229 Conclusion: The Emancipation of Biblical Philology (1590–1670) 231 Introduction 231 Philology: A Neutral Instrument or an Intrinsic Force of Change? 231 Socioeconomic Positions 239 Fashioning Biblical Philology 245 Bibliography 253 General Index 281 Index Locorum Biblicorum 294 List of Illustrations Figure 1. The first page of the States’ Translation (1637). Image by courtesy of Leiden University Library (shelf mark 1194 A 5). 91 Figure 2. Godefridus Udemans, engraving by Johannes Saragon, 1635. Eight years before the outbreak of the Hairy War, he still had some hair. Image by courtesy of Leiden University Library (shelf mark PK-P-111.612). 176 Figure 3. Polyander à Kerckhoven at seventy-seven, engraving by Cornelis van Dalen (I), after a painting by David Baudringien, 1645. Image by courtesy of the Rijksmuseum (shelf mark RP-P-BI-6714). 184 Figure 4. The long-haired Florentius Schuyl in 1666; portrait (oil on copper) by Frans van Mieris the Elder. Image by courtesy of Mauritshuis, The Hague (Inventory Number 107). 185 Figure 5. A coin with the head of Moses (Saumaise, Epistola ad Colvium, 79). Image by courtesy of Leiden University Library (shelf mark 603 G 1). 188 Figure 6. A coin, with the head of Moses (Schickardus,Tarich, 34). Image by courtesy of Leiden University Library (shelf mark 388 C 14). 188 Figure 7. El Streto d’Anián (detail of a map in the paratext of the 2nd edition of the States’ Translation (1657)). Image by courtesy of Leiden University Library (shelf mark 1169 A 2). 219 Preface: What This Book is (Not) About Around 1604, the famous French scholar Joseph Scaliger confided something to his boarding students: There are more than fifty additions or changes to the New Testament and to the Gospels. It’s a strange case, I dare not say it. If it were a pagan author, I would speak of it differently.1 This often-quoted passage reveals a great deal about the deconstructive power of philology in general and of biblical philology in particular. This book deals with the emancipation of biblical philology and this development’s conse- quences for the authority of the Bible. I understand ‘(biblical) philology’ to be the study of a (biblical) text by means of textual criticism, linguistic analysis, and historical contextualization. These terms are anachronistic in that the writers and scholars in the period under consideration would not have understood what they were doing in this way, but they are apt terms for what I aim to describe.