Bøger af William Coats

The Christian Scriptures are in large part eschatological. That is, they are dominated in the synoptic gospels by the expectation of a coming kingdom in which God will visit the earth in judgment and in the Epistles by the hope of Jesus¿ return. This hope found its way into Christian history in twinned fashion, namely the return of Jesus and the projection of the original features of the kingdom onto the after life - heaven and hell. The Scriptural accounts of eschatology shaped how salvation would be understood. This volume argues, first, that the delay in God¿s appearance caused Jesus to abandon the Kingdom ideology and, second, that, while the construct continued in the scriptures, John in his writings jettisoned it entirely and reconfigured the gospel message. This reconfiguration enabled not only a more radical understanding of salvation but opened a path to a more radical political engagement for Christians.

The publications of the Hakluyt Society (founded in 1846) made available edited (and sometimes translated) early accounts of exploration. The first series, which ran from 1847 to 1899, consists of 100 books containing published or previously unpublished works by authors from Christopher Columbus to Sir Francis Drake, and covering voyages to the New World, to China and Japan, to Russia and to Africa and India. This volume, published in 1852, was edited by John Barrow, son of the distinguished promoter of Arctic exploration Sir John Barrow. It contains two accounts of exploration around Hudson's Bay - the narrative of Captain William Coats who made several voyages in the region in the 1720s and 30s, and the ship's log and other documents of Captain Middleton of H.M.S. Furnace who in 1741-2 attempted to discover the much sought-after North-West Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific.