The Significance of Historical Judaism and the Career of Humphrey Prideaux

Abstract This chapter considers what can be learned from the career, writings, and library of Humphrey Prideaux (1648–1724), dean of Norwich, and disappointed candidate for the Oxford chair of Hebrew. Prideaux was the author of one of the most successful accounts of biblical history published in the eighteenth century, but his intellectual formation and activity remain understudied. Examination of Prideaux’s library of Hebraica and associated books, which were given to Clare College, Cambridge after his death, allows one to explore patterns of study dating back to Christ Church in the heyday of Edward Pococke’s teaching, and unearths relationships that play into later Oxford attempts to edit the Mishnah. At the same time, it reveals the importance of the study of Maimonides and of the Talmud for the forging of Prideaux’s own career as a Hebraist and addresses the significance of changes of style in the presentation of Hebraic learning.