Benjamin C. Ray is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, USA. He is the Director of the award-winning Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and associate editor of Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt.
Satan and Salem offers a synthetic overview of the witch hunts that
builds on previous scholarship while also presenting new insights
into the importance of Samuel Parris and the Salem Village church.
Ray's most significant argument is that the primary division in
Salem wasnot geographic or economic but religious.... [Ray's]
insights about religion are invaluable.-- "William & Mary
Quarterly"
Satan Salem emerges from the editorial project of the Salem Witch
Trials Documentary Archiveand the new print edition Records of the
Salem Witch-Hunt.... Ray elegantly retraces the course of events,
correcting emphasis and details along the way and generally
updating it from the vantage point of current research onearly
modern witchcraft.-- "American Studies"
[A] clearly written and compact recounting of the major events of
the Salem witch crisis. Its focus on the participants' fear that
their religion was under attack by Satan adds an important
dimension to the on-going scholarly debates about this seminal
event in seventeenthcentury New England.-- "Nova Religio"
At least once a generation a scholar promises to give the final
word on the origins and course of the 1692 Salem witchcraft
outbreak. Ben Ray's Satan and Salem is a book that finally delivers
on that ambitious claim. By combining shrewd analysis of newly
transcribed and discovered documents, a corrected timeline of
events, and a truly broad consideration of the religious, social,
and political context for the outbreak, Ray makes us sympathetic to
not only the tragedy of Salem but the complex world that produced
it.--Gretchen A. Adams, Texas Tech University, author of The
Specter of Salem: Remembering the Witch Trials in
Nineteenth-Century America
Benjamin C. Ray brings a high measure of authority to his analysis
of the Salem witch trials in Satan and Salem.... Ray's book is not
a conventional narrative of the events in Salem and surrounding
communities. Instead, it is a thematically united collection of
essays that explore key aspects of the crisis that began in Salem
and the subsequent judicial processes.... Ray's Satan and Salem is
essential reading for anyone interested in the Salem witch
trials.-- "Journal of American Culture"
Benjamin Ray is one of the leading scholars of Salem witchcraft.
His knowledge of the field is deep and extensive, and he has combed
the archives in pursuit of new information about the outbreak.
Satan and Salem is a leading work in the field that will appeal to
both professional historians and those interested in the occult and
religion.--Richard B. Latner, Professor Emeritus, Tulane
University
Measurably deepens our understanding of the underlying dynamics,
especially the parts played by important participants.--John Demos
"New York Review of Books"
Ray's analysis of the voluminous historical documents produced
during the Salem witch trials and in their aftermath is second to
none. The book is also intensely readable, as Ray's economical and
compelling prose brings the reader through the key factors in the
trials from the fate of seventeenth-century covenant theology to
the effects of the loss of the colonial charter to the genre of
confession and the status of spectral evidence. I can think of very
few scholars who have such extensive knowledge of the Salem
documents or who have assimilated them so thoroughly....
[E]ssential reading for any serious student of Salem.-- "American
Historical Review"
The unmistakable achievement of this book is Benjamin Ray's close
reading of court records, which has enabled him to correct a host
of assertions made by others and to offer, in their place, a
persuasive reinterpretation of whys and whens.--David D. Hall,
Harvard University
Thoroughly researched, the book helpfully directs the reader to the
original court records and associated primary source documents
throughout via endnotes, which will prove immensely useful to any
scholar.... The book is written in such a way that it will likely
appeal to the lay reader with a passing interest in the Salem witch
trials, as well as to students and scholars involved in research.--
"Reading Religion"
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