These volumes describe how the development of the different styles of interpretation found in reading scripture and nature have transformed ideas of both the written word and the created world.

The four companion volumes of Nature and Scripture in the Abrahamic Religions contribute to a contextual evaluation of the mutual influences between scriptural exegesis and hermeneutics on the one hand and practices or techniques of interpretation in natural philosophy and the natural sciences on the other. We seek to raise the low profile this theme has had both in the history of science and in the history of biblical interpretation. Furthermore, questions about the interpretation of scripture continue to be provoked by current theological reflection on scientific theories. We also seek to provide a historical context for renewed reflection on the role of the hermeneutics of scripture in the development of theological doctrines that interact with the natural sciences. Contributors are J. Matthew Ashley, Robert E. Brown, Elizabeth Chmielewski, Edward B. Davis, Henri Wijnandus de Knijff, Marwa Elshakry, Richard England, Menachem Fisch, George Harinck, Bernhard Kleeberg, Scott Mandelbrote, G. Blair Nelson, Alexei V. Nesteruk, Jitse M. van der Meer, Rob P. W. Visser, and William Yarchin.

In one volume, these essentially unabridged selections from the works of the proslavery apologists are now conveniently accessible to scholars and students of the antebellum South. The Ideology of Slavery includes excerpts by Thomas R. Dew, founder of a new phase of proslavery militancy; William Harper and James Henry Hammond, representatives of the proslavery mainstream; Thornton Stringfellow, the most prominent biblical defender of the peculiar institution; Henry Hughes and Josiah Nott, who brought would-be scientism to the argument; and George Fitzhugh, the most extreme of proslavery writers. The works in this collection portray the development, mature essence, and ultimate fragmentation of the proslavery argument during the era of its greatest importance in the American South. Drew Faust provides a short introduction to each selection, giving information about the author and an account of the origin and publication of the document itself. Faust's introduction to the anthology traces the early historical treatment of proslavery thought and examines the recent resurgence of interest in the ideology of the Old South as a crucial component of powerful relations within that society. She notes the intensification of the proslavery argument between 1830 and 1860, when southern proslavery thought became more systematic and self-conscious, taking on the characteristics of a formal ideology with its resulting social movement. From this intensification came the pragmatic tone and inductive mode that the editor sees as a characteristic of southern proslavery writings from the 1830s onward. The selections, introductory comments, and bibliography of secondary works on the proslavery argument will be of value to readers interested in the history of slavery and of nineteenth-centruy American thought.

A new wave of research in black classicism has emerged in the 21st century that explores the role played by the classics in the larger cultural traditions of black America, Africa and the Caribbean. Addressing a gap in this scholarship, Margaret Malamud investigates why and how advocates for abolition and black civil rights (both black and white) deployed their knowledge of classical literature and history in their struggle for black liberty and equality in the United States. African Americans boldly staked their own claims to the classical world: they deployed texts, ideas and images of ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt in order to establish their authority in debates about slavery, race, politics and education. A central argument of this book is that knowledge and deployment of Classics was a powerful weapon and tool for resistance-as improbable as that might seem now-when wielded by black and white activists committed to the abolition of slavery and the end of the social and economic oppression of free blacks. The book significantly expands our understanding of both black history and classical reception in the United States.