John Spencer (theologian)

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John Spencer

John Spencer (* 1630 ; † 1693 ) was an English clergyman and scholar, Masters of Corpus Christi College , Cambridge.

After studying at Cambridge, Spencer first worked as a university preacher, and from 1667 until his death as a master's at Corpus Christi College. As a learned theologian and Hebraist , he became known through his work De legibus Hebraeorum , a pioneering work in comparative religious studies , which was also published in Tübingen in 1732. In it, he developed the thesis that Judaism was not the first religion in the earliest human history . He based his theses on Maimonides and used all the theological, scientific and other literature known in his time, from ancient authors to the Middle Ages, as well as the Bible itself, in order to gain knowledge about ancient Egypt and its significance for Judaism. For the first time he used the methods of the Enlightenment. Through his rediscovery of the role of Egypt for the biblical tradition, he also became a pioneer in Egyptology and triggered a second wave of enthusiasm for Egypt after the first rediscovery of Egypt in Europe at the end of the 15th century by Marsilio Ficino's Corpus Hermeticum .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ John Spencer: De legibus Hebraeorum ritualibus et earum rationibus. Tuebingen 1732.
  2. ↑ Margaret T. Hodgen: Early Anthropologie in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Philadelphia 1971, p. 330. ISBN 0-8122-1014-X

literature

  • Jan Assmann : Moses as Go-Between, John Spencer's Theory of Religious Translation. In: Andreas Höfele: Renaissance go-betweens, cultural exchange in early modern Europe. de Gruyter, Berlin 2005 (English). ISBN 3-11-018215-7
  • Jan Asmann: Moses the Egyptian. Hanser, Munich 1998, Fischer, Frankfurt 2000, 2005. ISBN 3-596-14371-3
personal data
SURNAME Spencer, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English clergyman and scholar
DATE OF BIRTH 1630
DATE OF DEATH 1693