A01=John Jeffries Martin
abrahmic faiths
apocalyptic belief
Author_John Jeffries Martin
Category=NHDL
Category=PDX
Category=QRAC
Category=QRAM3
catholic
christianity
columbus
early modern
end of the world
enlightenment
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_science
francis bacon
history of religion and science
islam
judaism
messianic
millenarian
protestant
scientific thought
secular reasoning
Product details
- ISBN 9780300247329
- Dimensions: 156 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 14 Jun 2022
- Publisher: Yale University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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An award-winning historian’s revisionary account of the early modern world, showing how apocalyptic ideas stimulated political, religious, and intellectual transformations
“A masterful synthesis of the prognostications of faith, knowledge, and politics on a global stage. Martin’s book illuminates one of the enduring themes that shaped the medieval and early modern world.”—Paula E. Findlen, Stanford University
In this revelatory immersion into the apocalyptic, messianic, and millenarian ideas and movements that created the modern world, John Jeffries Martin performs a kind of empathic time travel, entering into the psyche, spirituality, and temporalities of a cast of historical actors in profound moments of discovery. He argues that religious faith—Christian, Jewish, and Muslim—did not oppose but rather fostered the making of a modern scientific spirit, buoyed along by a providential view of history and nature, and a deep conviction in the coming End of the World.
Through thoughtful attention to the primary sources, Martin re‑reads the Renaissance, excavating a religious foundation at the core of even the most radical empirical thinking. Familiar icons like Ibn Khaldūn, Columbus, Isaac Luria, and Francis Bacon emerge startlingly fresh and newly gleaned, agents of a history formerly untold and of a modern world made in the image of its imminent end.
“A masterful synthesis of the prognostications of faith, knowledge, and politics on a global stage. Martin’s book illuminates one of the enduring themes that shaped the medieval and early modern world.”—Paula E. Findlen, Stanford University
In this revelatory immersion into the apocalyptic, messianic, and millenarian ideas and movements that created the modern world, John Jeffries Martin performs a kind of empathic time travel, entering into the psyche, spirituality, and temporalities of a cast of historical actors in profound moments of discovery. He argues that religious faith—Christian, Jewish, and Muslim—did not oppose but rather fostered the making of a modern scientific spirit, buoyed along by a providential view of history and nature, and a deep conviction in the coming End of the World.
Through thoughtful attention to the primary sources, Martin re‑reads the Renaissance, excavating a religious foundation at the core of even the most radical empirical thinking. Familiar icons like Ibn Khaldūn, Columbus, Isaac Luria, and Francis Bacon emerge startlingly fresh and newly gleaned, agents of a history formerly untold and of a modern world made in the image of its imminent end.
John Jeffries Martin is professor and former chair of the Department of History at Duke University. His books include Venice’s Hidden Enemies and Myths of Renaissance Individualism. He lives in Hillsborough, NC.
