Selden and Milton on the Bible

Abstract

The Bible provides the scope for Selden and Milton to display their brilliance: one as a great scholar boldly following his vision of the truth wherever it leads, the other as a creative genius finally overcoming his strong precursor, the King James Bible, to become the supreme poet of the hexaëmeron. Selden focuses his biblical Hebraic and post-biblical rabbinic scholarship on New Testament passages, offering immensely learned and sometimes startlingly original readings of the Apostolic Decree (Acts 15:20, 29; and 21:25) and four events in the life of Jesus: his rebuke of the Jews regarding korban (Mark 7:9–12); his pronouncement that “the truth shall make you free” (John 8:31–2; his driving the money-changers from the temple (John 2:13–17); and his trial (Matt. 26:63–6). If God is Milton’s father, and his scriptural word is the strongest of all precursor texts, then the King James Bible is the most intimidating version of that text. Milton’s marginal Hebrew substitutions for the KJB Psalm translations (1648) reveal anxiety and defensiveness. But the creation account in book 7 of Paradise Lost compresses the verses of Genesis 1, reducing them to their constituent elements and then outdoing them with the energy and magnificence of his interlinear poetic commentary. The poet’s anxiety-free transcendence of the KJB in book 7 can be seen as part of a general sense of joyous creativity.