A History of Biblical Interpretation. Volume 2: The Medieval through the Reformation Periods. Edited by ALAN J. HAUSER and DUANE F. WATSON.

Abstract

This is the ambitious second volume of a series. It seeks to set the biblical interpretation of the period it covers in ‘the complex matrix of social, political, intellectual, artistic, and religious factors that arise in each new age’. After an attempt, in an introductory chapter contributed by the editors, to set the exegetical context and provide an overview, the core first chapters on ‘interpretation’ cover ‘Early Medieval Exegesis: Gregory I to the Twelfth Century’ (Mary A. Mayeski), ‘Jewish Midrashic Interpretation in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages’ (Carol Bakhos), ‘Medieval Jewish Biblical Exegesis’ (Robert A. Harris), and ‘Eastern Orthodox Biblical Interpretation’ (Paul M. Blowers). The approach tends to be summary and one misses examples in which the commentators considered are seen in active engagement with the text, and a sense of the collective exegetical endeavour. The book construes ‘interpretation’ broadly, including, for example, chapters on the transmission and establishment of the text by Russell Fuller (‘The Text of the Tanak’) and J. Keith Elliott (‘The Text of the New Testament’). Discussions of questions of translation occur in individual chapters, with threads brought together in an analysis of ‘Scriptures in the Vernacular up to 1800’ by Lynne Long. This results in some overlap and repetition, for instance between her essay and the chapter on ‘Biblical Interpretation in Medieval England and the English Reformation’ (Lee W. Gibbs). This last has been set much too lengthy a time-frame, with the result that a certain superficiality is inevitable, for example on Wyclif.