Map Showing the Dispersal of the Children of Noah

Map Showing the Dispersal of the Children of Noah

Inserted in: Broughton, Hugh. A Concent of Scripture. [London: G. Simson and W. White?, 1588] [76] p., [5] leaves of plates (some folded): ill., map; 22 cm.

Hebrew scholar and preacher of Puritan doctrine Hugh Broughton (1549-1612) published this work in 1588 to argue certain aspects of biblical chronology. Attacked publicly by scholars at both Cambridge and Oxford, he began weekly lectures in London in his own defense. He left England soon afterwards and traveled continental Europe for most of the rest of his life, disputing with Roman Catholics, Jews, and Protestants who did not share his views. He expected to be appointed by King James in 1604 to the committee he assembled to translate the Bible, but he was not; when their work was done, he bitterly attacked it.

This copy was owned by Edward Augustus Holyoke (1728-1829), son of Edward Holyoke, President of Harvard 1737-1769. He was a physician and a founder of the Massachusetts Medical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He writes on the fly-leaf that he thinks this book belonged to his great-grandfather, Edward Holyoke, who migrated to Lynn, Massachusetts, in 1636/37. The copy has blank pages inserted near the beginning and has been annotated with handwritten notes. The map was probably not part of the book as published, but may have come from a Broughton tract of 1606 published in Amsterdam, which contained the map, uncolored. It appears to be based on a 1597 map by Broughton’s friend Jodocus Hondius, one of the first uses of a Mercator projection.

Additional images:

Marks of Ownership (Detail)
Marks of Ownership (Detail)
Handwritten Notes (1)
Handwritten Notes (1)
Handwritten Notes (2)
Handwritten Notes (2)
Title Page
Title Page

Sources of information:

The Dictionary of National Biography: From the Earliest Times to 1900. Founded in 1882 by George Smith; edited by Sir Leslie Stephen and Sir Sidney Lee. London: Oxford University Press, 1921-22.

Dictionary of American Biography. New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1928-58.

Sibley, John Langdon. Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Cambridge: Charles William Sever, University Bookstore, 1873-