Two law books of the early Middle Ages stand out for their heavy reliance on the Old Testament, which was rarely quoted in legal texts of the period. The Irish Hibernensis and King Alfred’s Domboc drew not only on the Old Testament itself, but also on adapted biblical verses. An investigation into the literary roots of these legal compilations uncovers parabiblical material which formed part of a literate discourse that spanned Ireland, Wessex and Reims, raising questions about the extent to which contemporary scholars regarded the Bible as a fixed and immutable text.

This article delves into the often-overlooked scholar Robert Greene, a Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge, who authored works in both religion and natural philosophy. Greene made significant contributions to the debate on the interplay between reason and faith, with his primary target being John Locke, whose epistemology and views on the relationship between reason and faith he considered detrimental to religion. This article examines Greene’s criticism of Locke’s views on the relationship between reason and faith within its institutional context, shedding new light on Locke’s early reception at the University of Cambridge.

This article argues that allegorical exegesis is important for understanding the writings of William of Malmesbury, both in his exegesis and beyond. In the mid-1130s, William penned a commentary on Lamentations in part to explain the causes and aftermath of the Norman Conquest. His allegorical exegesis decried exploitation and mismanagement of ecclesiastical lands by episcopal appointees from the continent, including his own bishop, Roger of Salisbury. In William’s sometimes veiled yet unmistakable critiques, Roger appears as an invading tyrant whose tenure as abbot of Malmesbury amounts to a period of Babylonian captivity for the monks of that house.

The past decade and a half has brought a blossoming of studies on the Shepherd of Hermas, an influential Christian apocalyptic text from the second century ce. Most have been produced by specialists in Western Europe and North America publishing in German, French, Italian and English, but others writing in historically overlooked locales and languages are also contributing. Both groups reflect an increasing diversity of perspectives and approaches, which stands in tension with the sort of scholarship on the Shepherd that has typically appeared in the modern period. Despite the resurgence, precious few book-length projects have tackled research questions beyond those bounded by historical-criticism until Experiencing the Shepherd of Hermas (Berlin 2022) was edited by Angela Kim Harkins and Harry O. Maier, who rank among the most path-breaking scholars presently exploring this text. Their edited volume is a wide-ranging, invigorating contribution to knowledge that should fuel innovative work on the Shepherd and, by extension, early Christian literature in the future.