A01=Graham Hammill
agency
Author_Graham Hammill
Category=DSB
Category=JPA
Category=QRAM2
choice
christianity
christopher marlowe
citizen
citizenry
citizenship
common good
community
divine authority
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
free will
government
harrington
imagination
israel
jewish state
law
literature
machiavelli
marvell
michael drayton
milton
moses
multitude
nonfiction
obedience
plague
poetry
political science
politics
populace
race
religion
secularism
sovereignty
spinoza
spirituality
theology
tolerance
Product details
- ISBN 9780226315423
- Weight: 624g
- Dimensions: 17 x 24mm
- Publication Date: 24 May 2012
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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It is a common belief that scripture has no place in modern, secular politics. Graham Hammill challenges this notion in "The Mosaic Constitution", arguing that Moses' constitution of Israel, which created people bound by the rule of law, was central to early modern writings about government and state. Hammill shows how political writers from Machiavelli to Spinoza drew on Mosaic narrative to imagine constitutional forms of government. At the same time, literary writers like Christopher Marlowe, Michael Drayton, and John Milton turned to Hebrew scripture to probe such fundamental divisions as those between populace and multitude, citizenship and race, and obedience and individual choice. As these writers used biblical narrative to fuse politics with the creative resources of language, Mosaic narrative also gave them a means for exploring divine authority as a product of literary imagination. The first book to place Hebrew scripture at the cutting edge of seventeenth-century literary and political innovation, "The Mosaic Constitution" offers a fresh perspective on political theology and the relations between literary representation and the founding of political communities.
Graham Hammill is associate professor of English at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. He is the author of Sexuality and Form and coeditor of Political Theology and Early Modernity, both published by the University of Chicago Press.
