Hugh Broughton (1549–1612) was a peripatetic, pestilent, polemicist-cum-philologist whose scholarly and ecclesial identities have defied facile categorisation. As Kirsten Macfarlane – the author of this first modern attempt at an intellectual biography of this polyglot whose learning was outmatched by his ego and an inexorable penchant for alienating even his allies and friends – puts it, Broughton was nearly impossible to ‘position within the interlocking categories of confessional identity, scholarly prowess, and moral probity that mattered most to his contemporaries’ (p. 1). Every so often a book emerges that sheds light not only on a figure whose complexity of allegiances and commitments have eluded cogent analysis previously, but also advances the fields upon which the author seeks to offer scholarly interventions which, in this case, include early modern religious history – with particular attention to England and Puritan studies – and intellectual history – with special focus on the history of scholarship: two discursive presences in our interpretation of the pre-modern past that have not always overlapped in terms of resources and analytical trajectories. Macfarlane's book accomplishes that rare feat.

Divided into two parts, ‘Chronology and its Consequences’ and ‘Controversy and its Consequences’, Macfarlane offers a page-turner of a narrative of an ‘Angry Puritan’, who is often known for his unsurpassable linguistic skills as a Christian Hebraist, and who was curiously left out of the translation committee for the new version of the Bible, authorised by James i (the reason for which Macfarlane offers convincingly). In doing so she manages to present a new historiographical topography by challenging the hegemony of ‘monolithic categories and disciplinary entrenchments of modern scholarship’ (p. 4). By following the intellectual habitus and by assiduously re-instantiating the controversial contexts of Broughton, whose interest in sacred chronology, inter-faith overtures and philological and text-critical endeavours were in no way intended as a mere harbinger of the secular modernity, or of the type of scholarship that excludes, ipso facto, the possibility of rigorous intellectual contribution from a reformed biblicist such as Broughton, Macfarlane offers a trenchant critique of the prevalent assumption among scholars today that ‘biblical philology was inherently radical and had an inevitably corrosive effect on biblical authority’ (p. 16). In fact she spends three chapters – chapters i, iv and vi – on Broughton's work on chronology, Christian Hebraism and New Testament criticism in order to demonstrate that there was nothing inherently delusional or misguided about his conviction that the ultimate upshot of scholarship was in service and defence of the Church and of what Macfarlane calls ‘reformed scripturalism’ (p. 17), precisely because he rightly saw tools of philology and historical-critical method exactly as such: tools without any ideological or theological vector attached. Among the most surprising argumentative thrusts of Macfarlane's account of Broughton is precisely this. She eschews a teleological, inevitabilist paradigm of drawing a neat and straight cause-and-effect line between secular modernity and the modus vivendi of early modern critical scholarship. Instead, she argues that ‘we need not just to draw a messier line from Broughton's time to our personal modernity, but to understand how multiple trajectories make complex, overlapping and often diffuse and unclear patterns from multiple points in the early modern period to multiple points today’ (p. 19). I will return to this meta-theme.

Chapters i to iii offer compelling narratives of the singular significance of chronology as an interpretive tool to better situate Broughton's scholarly controversies. Broughton's A concent of Scripture (1589) became an ill-fated book, hurling him into a theological imbroglio over the precise dating of the seventy weeks as described in Daniel ix.24–7. The unfortunate and formidable pugilist for Broughton was none other than John Rainolds, the recently appointed lecturer in controversial theology at Oxford. Macfarlane proffers a compelling argument that it was divergence of scholarly methods between Rainolds and Broughton rather than confessional collision that drove an unfortunate wedge between the two. By dismissing the ‘reliability of classical sources’ and reducing the length of the Persian period, Broughton sought to uphold his exegesis of Daniel, whereas for Rainolds it was his commitment to the utility of extra-biblical sources and his repudiation of the canonical status of 2 Maccabees – a view maintained by Robert Bellarmine in his lectures in Rome, published as Disputationes de controversiis Christianae fidei (1586–93) – that led him to oppose Broughton. Most threatening for Rainolds was Broughton's ‘ignorance of this scholarly-confessional connectivity that made him such a danger to the Protestant cause’ (p. 53).

In ‘From chronology to translation’ (chapter ii), Macfarlane presents a fascinating – if only slightly sad – account of Broughton's futile campaign to thrust himself forward as a member of the new translation committee for the Bible which was to transcend the infelicities of expressions and ineptitude of translations manifested in all foregoing English translations, notably the Geneva Bible. Broughton viewed ‘translation as the ultimate tool to correct both popular and scholarly misrepresentations about the past’ (p. 83), and combined with this conviction was his seemingly egomaniacal confidence that his philological training and text-critical expertise warranted him to undertake the work even if alone, should King James grant that wish.

Chapter iii offers another way to supplement and augment the current literature on biblical paratexts in early modern England. By offering her own expertise in linguistics – her apparent facility with Hebrew, Greek and Latin – Macfarlane's chapter shows that biblical paratexts were much more than mere ‘material and typographic artefacts’, and demonstrates that there were deep philological coding and theological perspectives that were presented with these pictorial, genealogical accounts. Another key argument for Macfarlane was that Broughton (and his colleague in this enterprise, John Speed) was part of the religious elites that made use of the very best and most advanced scholarly-cum-critical apparatus for wider public dissemination and the corresponding response of and demand from the hoi polloi.

Chapter iv presents an intriguing – yet ultimately unconvincing – narrative of Broughton's attempt to authenticate a letter from a Jewish man, a certain Abraham Reuben, from Constantinople, inviting Broughton to come and elucidate the putative true meaning of Christ and his identity as Israel's messiah. Here, Broughton's connections with, mutual influences upon and eventual fallout from the coterie of Christian Hebraists in Basel and other metropoles in Europe is vividly presented, as well the potential embarrassment of the English ecclesiastical and political establishment if its best Hebraist were to fall into the arms of the Catholics due to its unwillingness to support Broughton.

The thorny issue of the precise nature and extent of Christ's descent to hell was another theological topos which Broughton found irresistible. This is covered in chapter v. Never known for tact and diplomacy, Broughton attacked the episcopal heavy-hitters such as Whitgift, Bancroft, Bilson, inter alia, thereby incurring their wrath and his prevention from any preferment or promotion, as his view was seen – again, unsurprisingly – as too close to Catholicism to be left untouched. Perhaps the best way to encapsulate the tragic denouement of Broughton's career, which, all of his scintillating intellectual brilliance notwithstanding, received far more scathing accusation than approbation, is given here: ‘Broughton's persistent inability to assess both the scope and severity of his work's confessional implications proved to the be death knell of his career.’ It was this confessional blind spot that ‘elevated his work from a mere annoyance to a serious threat, and that turned association with him from undesirable to toxic’ (p. 182).

Then, the inevitable question emerges: what is to be gained by reading about such an intolerable, insecure, cantankerous, intellectually toxic person? Here, Macfarlane's methodological brilliance does raise a more serious question about the overall thrust of her argument. Her thesis is that there are more diverse pathways from what we know so self-evidently as secular modernity and its biblical scholarship. The fact that Macfarlane connects that intuition of Broughton with the populist-turn of his oeuvre is a brilliant interpretive move: ‘Here, the errors and corruptions which Beza, Drusius, Robert Estienne, and others had identified and excised by text-critical means would instead by redeemed from fault by recourse to rabbinic customs, Jewish idioms, phonological mutation, or any of the other brilliant new exegetical tools which critical scholarship had provided.’ The ultimate hope, then, would be to open up a new vista of Scripture unsullied by all the errors and emendations. Instead, a new text emerges, one capable of evoking a deep sense of ‘awe, wonder, and admiration’ for Scripture among ‘ordinary readers’ (p. 217).