“Christian Charity”, A Sacred American Text Fact, Truth, Method
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Abstract
The ideological status of “A Modell of Christian Charity” as a foundational American document began in 1838 when its existence was first made public. For the subsequent 150 years its character and in particular its authorship was a settled matter. But some 25 years ago Hugh Dawson began to raise questions about the work when he undertook an examination of the original document, a focus that previous scholars had neglected. It turns out that more searching documentary inquiries expose a whole set of anomalous features of the MS itself as well as its historical transmission. Because the status of this famous work is now quite unsettled, its case highlights why archival and philological method are the source and end and test of interpretation.
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