The Synagogue and the Sabbath

Abstract

While the first half of the book traced the development of the Broughtonians, the second half examines some major questions of divinity with which they were engaged, moving from the realm of book history into the history of theology. It begins with Pynchon and Holyoke’s studies of the ancient Jewish synagogue, which were first published anonymously in London in 1648. At the same time as they delved into the historic practices of the Sanhedrin and synagogue, Pynchon and Holyoke were also inspired to research ancient Jewish precedents for lay participation in biblical scholarship, which they used to justify their own activities as well as to advocate for universal education in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. Next, it demonstrates how such lay participation functioned in practice, by examining how Pynchon deployed all he had learned from his autodidactic travails to produce a sophisticated if idiosyncratic account of the Christian Sabbath.