Knowledge Theories

I’ve published several studies looking at the history of allegorical interpretation in the early modern era. The overall context of this is the influence of Jewish, Arab and early Christian philosophy on the reading of the Bible in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. But more specifically my work explored how a group of exegetes, notably Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and some of those influencing or influenced by him, developed hermeneutic systems which linked nonliteral reading practices to ideas of cognitive ascent.

My interest in early modern knowledge theories and structures led in part to my more recent Cosmopolemos, which you can read more about here.

Selected publications:

Pico’s Heptaplus and Biblical Hermeneutics, Leiden: Brill, 2006

“From Kabbalah to Psychology: The Allegorizing Isagoge of Paulus Ricius, 1509–41”, Magic, Ritual and Witchcraft 2.2 (2007)

“Eucherius of Lyon, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Sixtus Of Siena: Early Christian Exegesis and Kabbalah in the Bibliotheca Sancta (1566)”, in Giovanni Pico e la cabbalà, ed. F. Lelli, Florence: Olschki, 2014