The Origins of the Bible and Early Modern Political Thought

In this book, Travis DeCook explores the theological and political innovations found in early modern accounts of the Bible's origins. In the charged climate produced by the Reformation and humanist historicism, writers grappled with the tension between the Bible's divine and human aspects, and they produced innovative narratives regarding the agencies and processes through which the Bible came into existence and was transmitted. DeCook investigates how these accounts of Scripture's production were taken up beyond the expected boundaries of biblical study, and were redeployed as the theological basis for wide-reaching arguments about the proper ordering of human life. DeCook provides a new, critical perspective on ideas regarding secularity, secularization, and modernity, challenging the dominant narratives regarding the Bible's role in these processes. He shows how these engagements with the Bible's origins prompt a rethinking of formulations of secularity and secularization in our own time.

• Explores sixteenth and seventeenth century engagement with the paradox of the Bible as both divinely given and shaped by human and historical processes
• Examines the theological, cultural and political implications of innovative accounts of the Bible's origins produced during this time
• Provides a new, critical perspective on ideas of secularity, secularization, and modernity, and considers how engagements with the Bible's origins prompt a rethinking of these concepts