Cotton Mather - Biblia Americana

An Authoritative Edition of
Cotton Mather's "Biblia Americana" Holograph Manuscript
(1693-1728)
Massachusetts Historical Society

General Editor: Reiner Smolinski

We are happy to announce the launch of the print edition of Biblia Americana co-published by Baker Academic and Mohr Siebeck.

Scheduled to appear in 10 volumes, this scholarly edition of Cotton Mather’s Biblia Americana (1693-1728) makes available for the first time the oldest comprehensive commentary on the Bible composed in British North America. Combining encyclopaedic discussions of biblical scholarship with scientific speculations and pietistic concerns, Biblia represents one of the most significant untapped sources in American religious and intellectual history. Mather’s commentary not only reflects the growing influence of Enlightenment thought (Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, and Newton) and the rise of the transatlantic evangelical awakening; it also marks the beginnings of historical criticism of the Bible as text in New England.
Volume 1 (Genesis) is particularly valuable because Mather addresses some of the most hotly debated questions of his age: Are the six days of God’s creation to be taken literally? Can the geological record of the earth’s age be reconciled with biblical chronology? Were there men before Adam? How many animals fit into Noah’s Ark? Was Noah’s Flood a local or global event? Why are the religions of the ancient Canaanites, Egyptians, and Greeks so similar to the revealed religion of Moses? Did God dictate the Bible to his prophets, and how many (if any) of the books of the Pentateuch did Moses write? Such questions were as relevant during the early Enlightenment as, indeed, they are to many believers today. Edited, introduced, annotated, and indexed by Reiner Smolinski, Mather’s commentary on Genesis is as rich in its critical texture as it is surprisingly modern in its answers to many central concerns of the Christian faith.

In October 2008 the editors of Biblia Americana and leading experts in the fields of early American religious and cultural history gathered in Tuebingen (Germany) to discuss the significance of Cotton Mather's bible commentary. The essays that grew from this conference will be published in summer 2010:

This collection of essays will be published in June 2010 (ap. 720 pages, ap. 125 €).

Mohr Siebeck website

Cotton Mather and Biblia Americana – America's First Bible Commentary
Essays in Reappraisal
Edited by Reiner Smolinski and Jan Stievermann

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

ur editorial project concerns a document of colonial American hermeneutics that has long resisted comprehensive analysis: Cotton Mather's massive commentary "Biblia Americana" (6 ms. vols. in folio, MHS). Encyclopedic in scope, Mather's commentary represents his greatest achievement as an American theologian before Jonathan Edwards and reveals the depth and breadth of his humanistic scholarship. Writing biblical commentaries in English was certainly nothing new at the time: Simon Patrick's Commentary upon the Historical Books of the Bible (1693-1727), Matthew Poole's Annotations upon the Holy Bible (1693) and Matthew Henry's Exposition of the Old and New Testaments (1708-10) are three contemporaneous works in English that still enjoy great popularity today. As his correspondence with Matthew Henry and others demonstrates, Mather realized that he would not be able to compete with his peers in the London publishing market unless his own work employed a different approach to the standard fair of orthodox commentaries.

In fact, even a cursory comparison between Mather's commentary and those of his peers reveals major differences in conceptualization, approach, and presentation of

material. While both Henry and Poole follow the time-honored precedent of (1) Summary of chapter, (2) Reprint of each verse, (3) Analysis, commentary, and cross-references to related biblical passages, Mather's methodology abandons the traditional chapter summaries and reprinting of each verse. Instead, he devises (1) rhetorical questions for each annotation; (2) assumes a skeptical reader who would pounce on apparent contradictions in textual transmission, translation, and interpretation; (3) provides analyses and citations from opposing camps of the hermeneutical debate; (4) aims at reconciling new critical methods and scientific discoveries with conservative receptions of the bible. In these respects, "Biblia Americana" reveals some of the same approaches found in Pierre Bayle's encyclopedic Dictionnaire historique et critique (1695-97, 1702). What makes Mather's approach so rewarding--even to neophytes--is that he supplies his interpretations with a vast array of citations from the Church Fathers, medieval and post-Reformation theologians, from Rabbinic literature, ancient history, classical and modern philosophy, philology, and from the natural sciences of his day. By and large, his annotations turn into independent essays that go far beyond the immediate concerns of the biblical verse under discussion. Indeed, Mather more than lives up to his old adage that to be "entertaining," all useful scholarship should be "stuck with as many Jewels, as the Gown of a Russian Embassador" (Manuductio ad Ministerium [1726], 44).