The Hutchinsonian defence of an old testament trinitarian Christianity: the controversy over elahim, 1735-1773

Abstract

The importance of Hebraic studies as part of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment debate can hardly be overestimated. The question of the authority of the Books of Scripture forced intellectuals in England to revisit the language of the Old Testament text. The agenda of the Hutchinsonians here was to highlight the Old Testament’s Trinitarian elements, as they saw them. The controversy over the etymology of the word Elahim illustrated that the Hutchinsonians were the young Turks of orthodoxy in the fight between fideism and rationalism. It also demonstrated the problem the Hutchinsonians represented for those who would otherwise be their Trinitarian allies. r 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.