The “Blank Bible”: Parts 1 & 2 (The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 24 | WJE)
Edición digital Logos
Overview
In 1730, Jonathan Edwards acquired a book-like, leather-bound manuscript containing an interleaved printed edition of the King James Version of the Bible. Over the next three decades, Edwards proceeded to write in the manuscript more than 5,000 notes and entries relating to biblical texts (though paradoxically he called the manuscript his “Blank Bible”). Only a fraction of the entries has ever been published. This volume presents a complete edition of the “Blank Bible” accompanied by an informative introduction, multiple appendixes, and an extensive index.
This volume, perhaps the most unusual in Edwards’ œuvre, brings to light more clearly than ever before the full scope of his creative investment in biblical studies.
- Presents the complete edition of Jonathan Edwards’ “Blank Bible,” never before published
- Provides Edwards’ 5,000+ notes on biblical texts, written over 30 years
- Includes an introduction, index, and appendixes
Top Highlights
“good. It is but the occasion of Satan’s having the greater advantage.” (Page 851)
“The saints will rejoice in seeing vengeance executed on their enemies, upon several accounts. 1. Because they will herein see glorious justice executed, which they will have a more lively sense of in the punishment of that wickedness by which they have so extremely suffered.” (Page 1237)
“ close study of a primary sacred text, namely the Bible, as well as commentaries on it and related satellite texts” (Page 4)
“God was as it were in haste to deliver his son from the grave.7” (Page 850)
“It is therefore much more probable it was a shark.” (Page 850)
Jonathan Edwards was born in 1703 in East Windsor, Connecticut to Timothy and Esther Edwards. He began his formal education at Yale College in 1716, where he encountered the Calvinism that had influenced his own Puritan upbringing. In 1727, he was ordained as minister of the church in Northampton, Massachusetts. The First Great Awakening began in Edwards’ church three years later, which prompted Edwards to study conversion and revival within the context of Calvinism. During the revival, Edwards preached his most famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” and penned many of his most popular works, including The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, and The Life of David Brainerd. When the revival subsided, the church of Northampton became increasingly suspect of Edwards’ strict requirements for participation in the sacraments. Edwards left Northampton in 1750 to become a minister at a missions church in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. In 1757, Edwards reluctantly became president of the College of New Jersey (Princeton University), where he hoped to complete two major works—one that expanded his treatise on the history of redemption, and the other on the harmony of the Old and New Testaments. His writing ambitions were interrupted by his death in 1758, when he died of complications stemming from a smallpox inoculation.