Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T13:22:08.175Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - Milton and Solomonic Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2009

Douglas Trevor
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of English University of Michigan
Douglas A. Brooks
Affiliation:
Texas A & M University
Get access

Summary

And God gave Solomon wisedome, and understanding, exceeding much, and largenesse of heart, even as the sand that is on the sea shoare.

And Solomons wisedome excelled the wisedome of all the children of the East countrey, and all the wisedome of Egypt.

For hee was wiser then all men; then Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, and Chalcol, and Darda the sonnes of Mahol: and his fame was in all nations round about.

1 Kings 4.29–31

In recent years, scholars with intimate knowledge of Hebraic sources have greatly expanded our understanding of Milton's intellectual debts to non-Christian texts. In Milton's Epics and the Book of Psalms (1989), for example, Mary Ann Radzinowicz examines Milton's lifelong appreciation of Hebraic poetics, focusing on the poet's translations and appropriations of the Psalms. Rather than identify specific intellectual debts of a religious or legalistic nature, Radzinowicz considers instead how a stylistic appreciation of Hebrew Scripture shaped Milton's own prosody. In Torah and Law in Paradise Lost (1994), Jason Rosenblatt complicates the traditional understanding of the poet's Pauline hermeneutics, revealing that Milton's attitude toward Mosaic law was far less cynical and condemnatory than the views of other contemporary English Protestants. Rather than denigrate the Hebraic emphasis on obedience as established through covenant rather than grace, Milton uses the Old Testament's high regard for law – according to Rosenblatt – as a basis both for his scriptural justification of divorce and his empathetic depiction of prelapsarian Edenic happiness.

Type
Chapter
Information
Milton and the Jews , pp. 83 - 104
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×