ePrints

Edward Pococke (1604-1691), Comparative Arabic-Hebrew Philology, and the Bible

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Simon Mills

Downloads

Full text for this publication is not currently held within this repository. Alternative links are provided below where available.

Abstract

Edward Pococke (1604–91) is best known to historians today as one of seventeenth-century Europe’s preeminent discoverers of Islam. This article explores three less-familiar aspects of his work as a scholar of Arabic: his comparative approach to the ‘Oriental’ languages; his interest in the Arabic translations of the Bible; and his study of Judaeo-Arabic biblical criticism. It argues that foregrounding these concerns – developed throughout the course of his long career as Laudian Professor of Arabic and Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford – enables us to situate Pococke’s work in its more specific theological contexts. In this way, it seeks to look beyond attempts to position Pococke at the origins of a disciplinary history of modern ‘Arabic studies’, and to understand instead how his scholarship was intertwined with early modern theological disputes – most of all, the debate about the status of the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Mills S

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies

Year: 2023

Volume: 53

Issue: 1

Pages: 117-147

Print publication date: 01/01/2023

Acceptance date: 17/07/2022

ISSN (print): 1082-9636

ISSN (electronic): 1527-8263

Publisher: Duke University Press

URL: https://doi.org/10.1215/10829636-10189043

DOI: 10.1215/10829636-10189043

Altmetrics

Share