Killeen describes his book as an exercise in ‘intellectual geology’ (p. 17) and recognises that for many readers today his subject is ‘a largely unnoticed fossil of seventeenth-century ideas on statehood’ (p. 242). The Bible as a text – particularly some of the books in the Old Testament – is far less familiar today than it was in the seventeenth century, and the discourse of biblical commentary of the time now often verges on the impenetrable. Old Testament kings – Ahab, David, Hezekiah, Jehu, Jeroboam, Rehoboam, Saul, Solomon and others – occupy pride of place in Killeen’s pages; Hezekiah indeed gets two chapters to himself. But, since they are far from being names on everyone’s lips today (as Killeen admits, Rehoboam and Jeroboam are known now only as sizes of champagne bottles!), a chronology of such biblical characters is necessarily provided in an appendix (pp. 244–7). It was once so very different, as Killeen insists throughout his densely argued and at times severely scholarly book. Men and women in the seventeenth century had a deeply ingrained familiarity with the Bible: its subject matter, applications and parallels were readily understood; emphatically they did not represent heavily concealed or coded messages used chiefly to bypass the censor. As the historian Patrick Collinson once observed, these people had

中文翻译：

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凯文·基林 (Kevin Killeen)，《现代早期英格兰的政治圣经》KilleenKevin，《早期现代英格兰的政治圣经》（剑桥大学出版社，2017 年），第 xi + 310 页，75.00 英镑

基林将他的书描述为“智力地质学”（第 17 页）的练习，并承认对于今天的许多读者来说，他的主题是“一个基本上未被注意到的 17 世纪国家观念的化石”（第 242 页）。圣经作为文本——尤其是旧约中的一些书卷——在今天远不如 17 世纪那么为人熟悉，而且当时的圣经注释话语现在往往接近于难以理解的程度。旧约中的君王——亚哈、大卫、希西家、耶户、耶罗波安、罗波安、扫罗、所罗门和其他人——在基林的书页中占有一席之地；希西家确实得到了两章。但是，因为它们远不是今天每个人的名字（正如基林承认的那样，罗波安和耶罗波安现在只知道香槟瓶的大小！），这些圣经人物的年表必须在附录中提供（第 244-7 页）。它曾经非常不同，正如基林在他的密集争论和有时严厉的学术著作中坚持的那样。十七世纪的男人和女人对圣经有着根深蒂固的熟悉：它的主题、应用和相似之处很容易理解；强调它们并不代表主要用于绕过审查员的严重隐藏或编码的信息。正如历史学家帕特里克·科林森 (Patrick Collinson) 曾经观察到的那样，这些人 强调它们并不代表主要用于绕过审查员的严重隐藏或编码的信息。正如历史学家帕特里克·科林森 (Patrick Collinson) 曾经观察到的那样，这些人 强调它们并不代表主要用于绕过审查员的严重隐藏或编码的信息。正如历史学家帕特里克·科林森 (Patrick Collinson) 曾经观察到的那样，这些人