ABSTRACT
As I have shown in the previous chapters, an increasingly globalized world revealed some problems intrinsic to a monotheistic and Eurocentric culture in the early modern period, problems that would not be visible within a nationalist, Orientalist, or colonial framework. Whereas the global flow of gold and silver challenged a national or Eurocentric economic pattern, the geographical expansion of the world to the Far East raised doubts about the alleged universality of the Christian religion. The challenge appears the more striking when a rapidly expanding world disclosed a different set of historical data that directly called into question the biblical conception of the beginning of the world, a cornerstone assumption of Western civilization. This chapter explores how Donne negotiates the anxiety and threat mounted by Chinese chronology to the biblical system of time in his divine treatise Essayes in Divinity (1614). Donne's prudent and deliberate exegesis of scriptural chronology in face of powerful rival claimants to antiquity provides a prime example of a liberal cosmopolitan's response to cultural conflicts.
