Unrealized Ambitions: The New Testament

Abstract

Towards the end of his life, Broughton sought funding for a monograph on the New Testament that, he felt sure, would counter-balance all his past failings. It would convert both Jews and Catholics; it would prove his beliefs about scriptural incorruption; and, most of all, it would demonstrate the need for a new English Bible. This project never materialized, and its drafts are scattered across Europe and North America. Using these sources, this chapter reconstructs Broughton’s ambitious New Testament studies and brings the book’s arguments to culmination. Firstly, it examines the relationship between Broughton’s scholarly practices and theological beliefs. Broughton’s New Testament scholarship demonstrates his involvement in one of the most exciting areas of biblical criticism in his lifetime: the study of the New Testament’s Jewish contexts. It argues that Broughton’s desire to prove his beliefs about the Bible pushed him further than his more liberal colleagues into this area, and enabled his most innovative insights into the historical and linguistic contexts of the New Testament. Secondly, this chapter shows how Broughton attempted to make this highly complex, elite scholarship accessible to the unlearned believer in his New Testament translations. Finally, by examining the political, confessional, and personal obstacles that thwarted Broughton’s plans to publish this work, this chapter concludes the complicated picture of his scholarly life offered by the book so far.