Renaissance England's Chief Rabbi: John Selden by Jason P. Rosenblatt

Abstract

i86 Reviews a case in point. Itmight make more sense in the context of an introductory course which would pick up on such examples. While I am cavilling, there is a problem for any introduction ofwhat is included and what gets covered too quickly. On inclusiveness, Hattaway is hard to fault.He ranges beyond the strictly literary to travelwriting, sermons, and history.The voices of themajor canonical writers don't drown out lesser, though often just as illuminat ing, authors. There is particularly deft use ofMary Wroth and Samuel Daniel, for example. The speed of coverage (especially with the long quotations) is sometimes less defensible. The page on themasque, forexample, mentions Jonson against Inigo Jones, quotes Chapman, but ignores The Tempest and Milton. The description of the genre is accurate enough, but does not lead anywhere. Contrast thatwith the six pages on City Comedy and the court, where there is aworked-out thesis and a critical perspective even though thecitations are necessarily limited.Quotations from sections like thiswill launch a thousand essay questions. Influential books on theperiod, such as E. M. W. Tillyard's Elizabethan World Pic ture(London: Chatto & Windus, I943 etc.) or (though hardly introductory) Stephen Greenblatt's Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More toShakespeare (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, I980), achieved their status by having a uni fying thesis.You could thinkwith them and argue with them.Hattaway's book isn't thatkind of operation. It doesn't have thatdominating idea. In the latterhalf, though, itdoes begin to develop some interesting angles. In particular, the chapter on 'Fic tivePersons and Places' opens up some interesting possibilities, particularly on the interplay between 'character' and allegory; and the account of the fool puts more lumbering accounts to shame. So put thison your reading-lists. Encourage your stu dents to persevere through the later chapters. They will still need Isabel Rivers's Classical and Christian Ideas inEnglish Renaissance Poetry: A Students' Guide, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, I994) for reference, and some narrative history. But this book will set them up nicely. KEELE UNIVERSITY ROGER POOLEY Renaissance England's Chief Rabbi: John Selden. By JASON P. ROSENBLATT. Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress. 2006. ix+3I4pp. ?63. ISBN 978-0-I9-928613-3. John Selden isbest known forhis competence in an impressive range of ancient and modern languages and for thebreadth of his learning in such fields as the history of tithes and titles of honour, the English constitution, and common law.He devoted much of his formidable energy, however, to studying theTalmud and bringing rab binic commentary tobear on a variety ofmatters thatwere exercising his compatriots during theupheavals of the mid-seventeenth century. In his examination of the impact ofHebraic scholarship on earlymodern writers, Jason P.Rosenblatt makes twomain claims about theman he regards as 'themost learned rabbinic scholar in thecountry' (p. 4) between theexpulsion of the Jews in 1290 and thevisit ofRabbi Menasseh ben Israel in I655, theyear afterSelden's death. Firstly, his publications were plundered (oftenwithout acknowledgement) by such writers asMilton, Marvell, Stubbe, and Culverwel as if theywere 'a primary rather than secondary source of rabbinic scho larship' (p. 5); and secondly, inmarked contrast to the Judaeophobia that coloured thework of JohnLightfoot, 'theother great contemporary English Talmudic scholar' (p. i6o), he 'transmitted an uncommonly generous view of Judaism' (p. 9). The 'calm tolerance' (p. 73) of his letter toBen Jonson on the fraught issue of cross-dressing on the English stage-written in i6I6 and usefully reprinted in an appendix-is an early instance of the salutary effectofSelden's 'comparatisthistorico philological method', which 'aims foran aesthetic ofutmost inclusiveness' (p. 7 ).The MLR, 103. 1, 2008 I87 same inclusiveness-'uniting Christians and Jews in away that law and gospel could not' (p. 15 I)-is a feature ofDe jure naturali et gentium juxta disciplinam Ebraeorum (I640), described byRosenblatt as 'theperiod's central textof rabbinic thoughtme diated by a Christian humanist' (p. 147). In thiswork, Selden followsHugo Grotius in identifyingnatural lawwith the seven precepts given to the children ofNoah. Ac cording to rabbinic tradition, thisNoachide code is 'auniversal, perpetually binding law issuing from thewill ofGod' (p. I47) and is to be distinguished from the later Mosaic Decalogue thatwas prescribed specifically for the...