- Adam Boreel
Adam Boreel (
Middelburg , 1603-Amsterdam 1667) was a Dutch theologian and Hebrew scholar. He was one of the founders of theAmsterdam College ; the Collegiants were also often called Boreelists, and regarded as a small sect. Others involved in the College wereDaniel van Breen ,Michiel Coomans ,Jacob Otto van Halmael and theMennonite Galenus Abrahamsz de Haan .Boreel was ordained into the
Dutch Reformed Church , but broke away. In "Ad legem et testimonium" (1645), he argued thesola scriptura position that no religious authority other than the Bible should be acknowledged. [ [http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/encyc/encyc02/htm/iv.v.ccxxix.htm Bornhaeuser, Karl Bernhard ] ] He was attacked byJohann Hornbeek ("Apologia pro ecclesia Christiana non apostatica" 1647), and bySamuel Maresius [ [http://www.gameo.org/index.asp?content=http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/B67410.html] ] .Boreel's associates included
Peter Serrarius , a fellow millenarian,Baruch Spinoza , who moved with the Collegiants after exclusion from the Amsterdam Jewish community, andHenry Oldenburg , a correspondent. Boreel was close also toJohn Dury . They were a fringe group, but are considered important as representative of the 'Third Force', trying to reconcile religious orthodoxy with scientificscepticism . [Jonathan Israel , "The Dutch Republic" (1995), pp. 587-591.] . In the early 1660s the Collegiants became harder to distinguish from other movements, ofQuaker s,anti-Trinitarian s, andSocinian s [Israel, p. 913.] .Boreel took a close interest in
Judaism , working withMenasseh ben Israel andJudah Leon Templo . Projects were a reconstruction ofSolomon's Temple , and editions of theMishnah . [J. T. Young (1998), "Faith, Alchemy and Natural Philosophy: Johann Moriaen, Reformed Intelligencer, and the Hartlib Circle", p.47.]References
*Ernestine G.E. van der Wall, "'Without Partilitie Towards All Men': John Durie on the Dutch Hebraist Adam Boreel", pp.145-150 in J. van den Berg and E.G.E. van den der Wall, eds., Jewish-Christian Relations in the Seventeenth Century, Leiden: Kluwer, 1988
*Ernestine van der Wall, "The Dutch Hebraist Adam Boreel and the Mishnah Project", LIAS 16. (1989) 239–63, [https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/dspace/bitstream/1887/8260/1/3_908_019.pdf online scan]
*Robert Iliffe, "Jesus Nazarenus Legislator: Adam Boreel's defence of Christianity", in Heterodoxy, Spinozism and Free Thought in Early Eighteenth Century Europe, S. Berti, F. Charles-Daubert and R. Popkin, eds., (Kluwer: Amsterdam) 1996, 375-96Notes
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