The Practice of the Bible in the Middle Ages

The Practice of the Bible in the Middle Ages
Author: Susan Boynton
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 378
Release: 2011
Genre: History
ISBN: 0231148275

In this volume, specialists in literature, theology, liturgy, manuscript studies, and history introduce the medieval culture of the Bible in Western Christianity. Emphasizing the living quality of the text and the unique literary traditions that arose from it, they show the many ways in which the Bible was read, performed, recorded, and interpreted by various groups in medieval Europe. An initial orientation introduces the origins, components, and organization of medieval Bibles. Subsequent chapters address the use of the Bible in teaching and preaching, the production and purpose of Biblical manuscripts in religious life, early vernacular versions of the Bible, its influence on medieval historical accounts, the relationship between the Bible and monasticism, and instances of privileged and practical use, as well as the various forms the text took in different parts of Europe. The dedicated merging of disciplines, both within each chapter and overall in the book, enable readers to encounter the Bible in much the same way as it was once experienced: on multiple levels and registers, through different lenses and screens, and always personally and intimately.

Reading the Bible in the Middle Ages

Reading the Bible in the Middle Ages
Author: Jinty Nelson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2015-09-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 1474245730

For earlier medieval Christians, the Bible was the book of guidance above all others, and the route to religious knowledge, used for all kinds of practical purposes, from divination to models of government in kingdom or household. This book's focus is on how medieval people accessed Scripture by reading, but also by hearing and memorizing sound-bites from the liturgy, chants and hymns, or sermons explicating Scripture in various vernaculars. Time, place and social class determined access to these varied forms of Scripture. Throughout the earlier medieval period, the Psalms attracted most readers and searchers for meanings. This book's contributors probe readers' motivations, intellectual resources and religious concerns. They ask for whom the readers wrote, where they expected their readers to be located and in what institutional, social and political environments they belonged; why writers chose to write about, or draw on, certain parts of the Bible rather than others, and what real-life contexts or conjunctures inspired them; why the Old Testament so often loomed so large, and how its law-books, its histories, its prophetic books and its poetry were made intelligible to readers, hearers and memorizers. This book's contributors, in raising so many questions, do justice to both uniqueness and diversity.

The Bible in the Early Middle Ages

The Bible in the Early Middle Ages
Author: Robert E. McNally
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 127
Release: 2005-07-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 159752283X

In the first part of this intriguing study, McNally treats the complex social, intellectual, and theological factors that affected biblical interpretation in the early medieval period. In the second part he provides a classified bibliography of commentaries from the period.

Introducing Medieval Biblical Interpretation

Introducing Medieval Biblical Interpretation
Author: Ian Christopher Levy
Publisher: Baker Books
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2018-02-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1493413015

This introductory guide, written by a leading expert in medieval theology and church history, offers a thorough overview of medieval biblical interpretation. After an opening chapter sketching the necessary background in patristic exegesis (especially the hermeneutical teaching of Augustine), the book progresses through the Middle Ages from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries, examining all the major movements, developments, and historical figures of the period. Rich in primary text engagement and comprehensive in scope, it is the only current, compact introduction to the whole range of medieval exegesis.

Imaging the Early Medieval Bible

Imaging the Early Medieval Bible
Author: John Williams
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 238
Release: 1999
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0271017686

A unique exploration of the beginnings of biblical illustration and decoration.

An Introduction to the Medieval Bible

An Introduction to the Medieval Bible
Author: Franciscus Anastasius Liere
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2014-03-31
Genre: Bibles
ISBN: 0521865786

An accessible account of the Bible in the Middle Ages that traces the formation of the medieval canon.

Scripture And Pluralism

Scripture And Pluralism
Author: University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Symposium
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2005
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004144153

This book is a study of the multiplicity of ways the Bible was used by different groups during the Middle Ages. They explore different aspects of Christian Biblical Study in the face of the challenges of religious pluralism in the medieval and early-modern periods.

The Middle English Bible

The Middle English Bible
Author: Henry Ansgar Kelly
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2016-10-14
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0812293088

In the last quarter of the fourteenth century, the complete Old and New Testaments were translated from Latin into English, first very literally, and then revised into a more fluent, less Latinate style. This outstanding achievement, the Middle English Bible, is known by most modern scholars as the "Wycliffite" or "Lollard" Bible, attributing it to followers of the heretic John Wyclif. Prevailing scholarly opinion also holds that this Bible was condemned and banned by the archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Arundel, at the Council of Oxford in 1407, even though it continued to be copied at a great rate. Indeed, Henry Ansgar Kelly notes, it was the most popular work in English of the Middle Ages and was frequently consulted for help in understanding Scripture readings at Sunday Mass. In The Middle English Bible: A Reassessment, Kelly finds the bases for the Wycliffite origins of the Middle English Bible to be mostly illusory. While there were attempts by the Lollard movement to appropriate or coopt it after the fact, the translation project, which appears to have originated at the University of Oxford, was wholly orthodox. Further, the 1407 Council did not ban translations but instead mandated that they be approved by a local bishop. It was only in the early sixteenth century, in the years before the Reformation, that English translations of the Bible would be banned.