Jewish Allegory in Eighteenth-Century Christian Imagination

<p>Rebecca K. Esterson explores how Christian methods of biblical interpretation shifted during the eighteenth century producing a rhetorical rejection of allegory while embracing literalism. Under the influence of Enlightenment concepts of human reason and advances in the experimental sciences Christian interpreters began casting Jewish biblical interpretation as allegorical while presenting Christian interpretation as literal. This shift in self-understanding allowed Christians to portray their own interpretations as scientifically philosophically and historically superior resulting in a new way of othering the Jewish people. This study of biblical exegesis theology philosophy and the arts in English Swedish and German contexts is an essential resource for scholars interested in biblical reception history and the history of Jewish-Christian relations.</p>