Cotton Mather and Biblia Americana - America's First Bible Commentary

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scholars in the field, the essays in this collection offer original in-depth studies of Mather and his hitherto unpublished scriptural interpretations in the historical context of the Early Enlightenment, and the rise of Pietism.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.

Born 1954; 1987 PhD in English and American Studies from The Pennsylvania State University; Professor of Early American Literature and Culture at Georgia State University (Atlanta). Born 1975; 2005 PhD in American Studies from the University of Tübingen; since 2011 Professor for the History of Christianity in the USA at the University of Heidelberg.