Throughout the early modern period, political theorists in France and England drew on the works of Plutarch to offer advice to kings and princes. Elizabeth I herself translated Plutarch in her later years, while Jacques Amyot's famous translations of Plutarch's The Parallel Lives led to the wide distribution of his work and served as a key resource for Shakespeare in the writing of his Roman plays, through Sir Thomas North's English translations. Rebecca Kingston's new study explores how Plutarch was translated into French and English during the Renaissance and how his works were invoked in political argument from the early modern period into the 18th century, contributing to a tradition she calls 'public humanism'. This book then traces the shifting uses of Plutarch in the Enlightenment, leading to the decline of this tradition of 'public humanism'. Throughout, the importance of Plutarch's work is highlighted as a key cultural reference and for its insight into important aspects of public service.

Explores the reception of Plutarch in early modern French and English political thought, with a focus on the theme of public service.

This pioneering study by leading scholars in the field surveys a century of scholarship and seeks to untangle the complexities of religious interactions and conflict in the first century CE. Over the last hundred years there has been a great deal of interest in the nature of religious diversity in the Graeco-Roman world. A wide variety of scholars have attempted to untangle the complexities of religious interaction and conflict that characterized it in every phase. Students of this period now have a convenient and authoritative introduction to recent work in this vast field of scholarship. The volume comprises Philip Esler on Palestinian Judaism in the First Century, John Barclay on Diaspora Judaism, Charlotte hmpel on the Essenes, Donald Hagner on 'Historical Jesus' studies, James Dunn on Paul, Thomas O'Loughlin on The Early Church, Graham Anderson on Greek religione, Robin Mc.L.Wilson on Gnosticism and John Court on Mithraism.

Between Magic and Religion represents a radical rethinking of traditional distinctions involving the term "religion" in the ancient Greek world and beyond, through late antiquity to the seventeenth century. The title indicates the fluidity of such concepts as religion and magic, highlighting the wide variety of meanings evoked by these shifting terms from ancient to modern times. The contributors put these meanings to the test, applying a wide range of methods in exploring the many varieties of available historical, archaeological, iconographical, and literary evidence. No reader will ever think of magic and religion the same way after reading through the findings presented in this book. Both terms emerge in a new light, with broader applications and deeper meanings.

A world list of books in the English language.

Throughout seventeenth and eighteenth century England and New England the historical, doctrinal and prophetical parts of the Bible functioned as the paradigm (Thomas S. Kuhn) of a sophisticated tradition. Through an imaginative and skilful use of this paradigm the New England theologian Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) gave coherence to his critical studies of the Great Awakening, showed the limitations of other contemporary historiographical models and formulated his major program of a historical metaphysics as a resolution of the perennial problem of the one and the many in the thought of the West. By contrast, the Earl of Shaftesbury's (1671-1713) reduction of the paradigm diminished his view of history, impoverished his understanding of tradition and limited his view of nature.