Dr Timothy Twining
The intellectual, cultural, and religious history of early modern Europe from the Reformation to the eighteenth century, especially including: the history of biblical scholarship, theological controversy, and confessional identity; the relationship between Jewish and Christian scholars and traditions of learning; the material, confessional, and intellectual history of the 'Republic of Letters'; and the history of censorship. Two current book projects are a history of post-Reformation Old Testament scholarship, and a study of the intellectual world of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Rome.
I currently teach a range of subjects within the Historical Tripos, including papers on early modern history, the history of political thought, and historical argument and practice (HAP). I also teach the Part 1 Themes and Sources Paper 'Sacred Histories' (Option VIII).
Contact
Tags & Themes
Gonville & Caius College, Trinity Street, Cambridge CB2 1TA
Key Publications
'Richard Simon and the Remaking of Seventeenth-Century Biblical Criticism', Erudition and the Republic of Letters 3 (2018), 421-487.
'The Early Modern Debate over the Age of the Hebrew Vowel Points: Biblical Criticism and Hebrew Scholarship in the Confessional Republic of Letters', Journal of the History of Ideas 81 (2020), 337-358.
'Publishing a prohibited criticism: Richard Simon, Pierre Bayle, and erudition in late seventeenth-century intellectual culture', forthcoming (Brill, 2020).
Monograph: The Limits of Erudition: Criticism, Censorship, and the Old Testament in Post-Reformation Europe (in preparation).