Torah and law in Paradise lost / Jason P. Rosenblatt.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rosenblatt, Jason Philip, 1941-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Milton, John, 1608-1674. Paradise lost.

Milton, John.

Milton, John, 1608-1674--Knowledge--Judaism.

Milton, John, 1608-1674--Knowledge--Law.

Bible--In literature.

Bible.

Rabbinical literature--History and criticism.

Rabbinical literature.

Jewish law in literature.

Judaism in literature.

Eden in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (287 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, c1994.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

It has been the fate of Milton, the most Hebraic of the great English poets, to have been interpreted in this century largely by those inhospitable to his Hebraism. To remedy this lack of balance, Jason Rosenblatt reveals Milton's epic representations of paradise and the fallen world to be the supreme coordinates of an interpretive struggle, in which Jewish beliefs that the Hebrew Bible was eternally authoritative Torah were set against the Christian view that it was a temporary law superseded by the New Testament. Arguing that the Milton of the 1643-1645 prose tracts saw the Hebrew Bible from the Jewish perspective, Rosenblatt shows that these tracts are the principal doctrinal matrix of the middle books of Paradise Lost, which present the Hebrew Bible and Adam and Eve as self-sufficient entities. Rosenblatt acknowledges that later in Paradise Lost, after the fall, a Pauline hermeneutic reduces the Hebrew Bible to a captive text and Adam and Eve to shadowy types. But Milton's shift to a radically Pauline ethos at that point does not annul the Hebraism of the earlier part of the work. If Milton resembles Paul, it is not least because his thought could attain harmonies only through dialectic. Milton's poetry derives much of its power from deep internal struggles over the value and meaning of law, grace, charity, Christian liberty, and the relationships among natural law, the Mosaic law, and the gospel.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction

Chapter One. Law and Gospel in Paradise Lost

Chapter Two. Milton's Hebraic Monism

Chapter Three. Moses Traditions and the Miltonic Bard

Chapter Four. Angelic Tact: Raphael on Creation

Chapter Five. Book 9: The Unfortunate Redemption

Chapter Six. The Law in Adam's Soliloquy

Chapter Seven. The Price of Grace: Adam, Moses, and the Jews

Notes

Index of Biblical References

General Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

ISBN:

9786612751943

9781400806782

140080678X

9781282751941

1282751948

9781400821303

1400821304

9781400813209

1400813204

OCLC:

700688682