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The first Schweich Lectures were given by Professor S. R. Driver of Oxford University in 1908 and the British Academy celebrated the centenary of the lectures with a single lecture in 2008. This book is an amplified version of that lecture, with each of its three chapters developing a theme relevant to the occasion. The lectures, on aspects of the study of antiquity in its relationship to the Bible, were established by a gift from Constance Schweich (later Mrs Goetze) in memory of her late father, Leopold Schweich. The first chapter of this book brings together biographical information (including some previously unpublished documents) about the Schweichs, who were originally a German Jewish family with close connections to the distinguished chemist and industrialist Ludwig Mond. The donation was the first major benefaction received by the British Academy, which had been founded in 1901 but initially had no government funding. The second chapter uses archival and published sources to reconstruct the circumstances and the history of the lectureship. An Appendix lists the names of all the lecturers, their subjects, and details of the publication of their lectures. The final chapter, ‘Archaeology and the Bible — A Broken Link?’, examines broader questions about ‘biblical archaeology’, which arose in the later twentieth century in the light of developments in archaeological theory and biblical scholarship, and considers whether there is still a future for collaboration between the two disciplines. The book provides a glimpse into Jewish philanthropy in England in the Edwardian era.

The 14th-century English philosopher and theologian John Wyclif (d. 1384) has been described as a forerunner of the Reformation, but is better understood as the last important thinker of Oxford’s “Golden Age” of theology. Rather than describing him in terms of what would occur a century and a half after his death, this book describes Wyclif as coming at the end of a period of great intellectual activity. His logic, epistemology, and metaphysics emerge from academic discourse engendered by Ockham’s conceptualism and sharpened by the semantic analysis of the Mertonian Calculators. The theological innovations for which Wyclif is best known, including a heightened emphasis on Scripture in Christian life, his rejection of transubstantiation, and his program for ecclesiastical reform, are best understood in terms of the philosophical theology that he developed during his years at Oxford. This book attempts such an understanding by correlating the substance of these theological ideas to Wyclif’s philosophical works, showing how they articulate his scriptural hermeneutics and homiletics, his understanding of predestination, and his criticism of the doctrine of transubstantiation.

This wide-ranging and original book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the Church of England in the eighteenth century. It explores the nature of the Restoration ecclesiastical regime, the character of the clerical profession, the quality of the clergy's pastoral work, and the question of Church reform through a detailed study of the diocese of the Archbishops of Canterbury. In so doing the book covers the political, social, economic, cultural, intellectual and pastoral functions of the Church and, by adopting a broad chronological span, it allows the problems and difficulties often ascribed to the eighteenth-century Church to be viewed as emerging from the seventeenth century and as continuing well into the nineteenth century. Moreover, the author argues that some of the traditional periodisations and characterisations of conventional religious history need modification. Much of the evidence presented here indicates that clergy in the one hundred and seventy years after 1660 were preoccupied with difficulties that had concerned their forebears and would concern their successors. In many ways, clergy in the diocese of Canterbury between 1660 and 1828 continued the work of seventeenth-century clergy, particularly in following through, and in some instances instigating, the pastoral and professional aims of the Reformation, as well as participating in processes relating to Church reform, and further anticipating some of the deals of the Evangelical and Oxford Movements. Reluctance to recognise this has led historians to neglect the strengths of the Church between the Restoration and the 1830s, which, it is argued, should not be judged primarily for its failure to attain the ideals of these other movements, but as an institution possessing its own coherent and positive rationale.

In 1801, the United Kingdom was a semi-confessional State, and the national established Churches of England, Ireland and Scotland were vital to the constitution. They expressed the religious conscience of the State and served as guardians of the faith. Through their parish structures, they provided religious and moral instruction, and rituals for common living. This book explores the struggle to strengthen the influence of the national Churches in the first half of the nineteenth century. For many, the national Churches would help form the United Kingdom into a single Protestant nation-state, with shared beliefs, values and a sense of national mission. Between 1801 and 1825, the State invested heavily in the national Churches. But during the 1830s the growth of Catholic nationalism in Ireland and the emergence of liberalism in Britain thwarted the efforts to unify the nation around the established Churches. Within the national Churches themselves, moreover, voices began calling for independence from the State connection — leading to the Oxford Movement in England and the Disruption of the Church of Scotland.

HLA Hart's The Concept of Law is one of the most influential works of philosophy of the 20th century, redefining the field of legal philosophy and introducing generations of students to philosophical reflection on the nature of law. Since its publication in 1961 an industry of academic research and debate has grown up around the book, disputing, refining, and developing Hart's work. Under the sheer volume of competing interpretations of the book the original contexts — cultural and intellectual — that shaped Hart's project can be obscured. This book attempts to sweep aside the volumes of academic criticism and return to ‘Troy I’, revealing the world of post-war Oxford that produced Hart and his famous book. Drawing on personal experience of studying and teaching in Oxford at the time Hart developed The Concept of Law, this book recreates the social and intellectual culture of Oxford philosophy and the law faculty in the 1950s. It traces Hart's early work and influences, within and outside Oxford, showing how Hart developed his picture of philosophy and its potential for enriching the understanding of law. It also lays bare the painful shortcomings of post-war Oxford academia, depicting a world of eccentric dons and intellectual Cyclopses — isolated and closed to broad, interdisciplinary exchange — arguing that Hart did not escape from the limitations of his intellectual world.