First Words, Last Words - New Theories for Reading Old Texts in Sixteenth-Century India

First Words, Last Words explores the nature of theoretical innovation in scholastic traditions by focusing on a specific controversy regarding scriptural interpretation in sixteenth-century India. The controversy concerns the role of sequence-what comes first and what comes later-in determining our interpretation of a scriptural passage. Bronner and McCrea trace both the issue of sequence and the question of innovation through an in-depth study of this debate and through a comparative survey of similar problems in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, revealing that the disputants in this controversy often pretended to uphold traditional views, when they were in fact radically innovative.