Transcultural Approaches to the Bible: Exegesis and Historical Writing across Medieval Worlds ed. by Matthias M. Tischler and Patrick S. Marschner

Abstract

Reviewed by: Transcultural Approaches to the Bible: Exegesis and Historical Writing across Medieval Worlds ed. by Matthias M. Tischler and Patrick S. Marschner Thomas A. Fudge Tischler, Matthias M., and Patrick S. Marschner, eds, Transcultural Approaches to the Bible: Exegesis and Historical Writing across Medieval Worlds (Transcultural Medieval Studies, 1), Turnhout, Brepols, 2021; pp. viii, 253; 19 colour illustrations; R.R.P. €80.00; ISBN 9782503592855. Few would question the assertion that the Bible ranks amongst the most important volumes in Western civilization. What has not been examined as thoroughly is the way in which Scripture has been utilized in creating and manipulating human memory, especially across transcultural medieval worlds. Naturally this is a large task that cannot be accomplished in a single thin volume. But this collection takes an initial step in that important direction. With a specific focus on the Iberian context, Latin Europe, the Near East, and the Baltic world, we are introduced to a series of vignettes drawing attention to the nature of Biblical interpretation and historical writing across these medieval worlds. Unsurprisingly, we learn the ways and means in which the Bible provides theological justification for crusading, explains how and why crusaders are God’s special people, provides an explanation for understanding the post-biblical nature of providential history, and how marginal glosses explain and correct the vagaries of Scripture, while at the same time elaborating how different cultures and events represent extensions of biblical narratives and truths. All of this is approachable and explicable by seeing beyond simplistic Sunday school notions of Scripture as a single text, reflecting a linear and unified programmatic agenda, possessing a priori metahistorical authority adopting modern assumptions like inspiration, verbal dictation, and theological politics creating the ‘word of God’. What is essential is understanding a complicated transmission process, a virtual lacuna surrounding canonization, and claims about authority that are often little more than the habit of repeated reading. As this volume makes clear, none of these components ever existed in an untouchable sacrosanctity. Cultures past and present, of course, have preferred to see the Bible as an instrument of unassailable power and authority. Many writings outside the biblical canon retained authority for communities of faith throughout the ages and informed efforts to frame concepts of salvation-history in the post-biblical world of the Middle Ages. Scripture was used, sometimes misused, occasionally abused, in a quest to explain history by adapting Iberian motifs, for example, to biblical narratives wherein typological connections between medieval and the Hebrew Bible worlds suggest prophecy, fulfilment, and justification for events, ideas, and practices. In this way, knowledge of the Bible plays a major part in interpreting contemporary affairs, thus enhancing the role Scripture plays in historical writing. Untangling these two discrete texts is difficult. [End Page 271] Knowledge of the Bible occurred aurally, optically, and dramaturgically, rather than through reading. Crusade narratives, for example, are peppered with Scriptural citations and allusions. The crusades become salvific, the Bible indispensable for crusaders, and we find arresting accounts of armies chanting hymns or psalms as the military machine advances in the name of God. Crusade texts are one example of how and why the Bible was quoted to provide credibility or justification. This volume underscores the role of historians toiling in the dimness of the medieval world, labouring to see mundane human efforts in the beam of divine light, interpreting human affairs with reference to the work of God, and setting forth these typologies in clearly enunciated exegesis. In consequence, contemporaries and posterity understand medieval matters in terms of the eternal now. Several chapters underscore the work of many medieval writers in identifying and applying the most appropriate biblical text for any number of respective contexts. Biblical manuscripts are utilized, by means of exegetical gymnastics if necessary, to illuminate divine approbation in the varied cultures of a world centuries removed from the sacred text. The more successful of such efforts resulted in medieval chronicles that are truly sustained dialogues with the Scriptures. Of particular interest is the dispute about clerical sexuality by means of an innovative use of Ezekiel 23, wherein we find absorbing elaboration of ‘condemned sisters, effeminate brothers, and damned heretics’ by Lydia M. Walker...