The Works of Jonathan Edwards: Volume 7: The Life of David Brainerd - Hardcover

Edwards, Jonathan; Pettit, Norman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300030045 ISBN 13: 9780300030044

Publisher: Yale University Press, 1985

Synopsis

Edwards’ Life of David Brainerd is a rare, almost forgotten document depicting life in pre-Revolutionary America during the period when religious enthusiasm swept the colonial frontier. From 1743 to 1747 Brainerd had been a missionary to the Indians. Riding alone, thousands of miles on horseback, he kept a journal of daily events that he continued until the week before he died, at the age of twenty-nine, in Edwards’ house.
Published in 1749, the Life of Brainerd became a spiritual classic in its own time. As the first popular biography to be published in America, it went through numerous editions and has been reprinted more frequently than has any other of Edwards’ works. But what has not until now been known is that Edwards made drastic alterations in the original text. He shaped the narrative events to fit his own needs, presenting Brainerd as an example of a man who by example and deed opposed the rationalist, Arminian stance. Because the Yale edition is the first to print that portion of Brainerd’s manuscript that survives, set in parallel columns with Edwards’ text, these alterations can readily be discerned.
This edition of The Life of David Brainerd, the first complete, fully annotated edition ever to be compiled, includes related correspondence as well as an endpaper map of Brainerd’s travels. The editor’s introduction describes the place of Brainerd’s diary in Edwards’ life and thought, and provides ample historical background.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Jonathan Edwards (1703-58), theologian and religious leader of eighteenth century New England, left his impression on theological thinking not only in this country but throughout the entire Protestant world. There has been no collected edition of Edwards' works since that of Dwight completed in 1830, and as recently as a generation ago scholars were likely to describe Edwards as an anachronism and to classify him as a preacher of gore and hell-fire. In our time, many have begun to perceive the majesty and force of Jonathan Edwards' personality, and new investigation has revealed in his thinking a prophetic challenging of assumptions American has long entertained but has only lately been obliged to reexamine.

Edition details

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 1985
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0300030045
• ISBN 13: 9780300030044
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 620