Document Type

Review

Date of this Version

1982

Publication Source

Renaissance Quarterly

Volume

35

Issue

2

Start Page

284

Last Page

287

DOI

10.2307/2861048

Abstract

Judaism's influence on Jean Bodin has long been appreciated by students of the French thinker's extraordinary career and multifaceted writing but never full understood. Paul Lawrence Rose examines the matter again, elevating it as a critical linchpin in comprehending Bodin's intellectual universe. For Rose, "Bodin's categories [of thought] and religious vision stemmed …from the Jewish tradition represented by the works of Philo and Maimonides." To demonstrate his thesis, Rose chooses to deemphasize the study of Bodin's thought in relation to that of his contemporaries and proposes instead a methodology based on "(1) the completeness or integrality of Bodin's thought and writings and (2) the integration of Bodin's ideas and personality." By the first method, Rose hopes to decode Bodin's remarkable treatise on comparative religion, The Heptaplomeres, by using Bodin's other writings 'as a control upon the ambiguities of the the Heptaplomeres," establishing the extent of agreement among the various speakers of the treatise, and subsequently Bodin's own views on the subject. By the second method, Rose attempts to reconstruct the details of Bodin's supposed three-staged conversion to a prophetic religion in order to illuminate more clearly the "interplay of religion, politics, and personality" characterizing both Bodin's thought and behavior.

Copyright/Permission Statement

© 1982 University of Chicago Press.

Comments

At the time of this publication, Dr. Ruderman was affiliated with University of Maryland, College Park, but he is now a faculty member of the University of Pennsylvania.

Download

Share

COinS
 

Date Posted: 02 August 2017

This document has been peer reviewed.