Biblical Commentary and Translation in Later Medieval England
Experiments in Interpretation

A new history of the origins of the English Bible, revealing the complex continuities between Latin commentaries and English translations.

Andrew Kraebel (Author)

9781108708128, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 2 February 2023

323 pages, 17 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.127 kg

'This is a book that specialists will find worth revisiting.' Patrick Hornbeck, Renaissance Quarterly

Drawing extensively on unpublished manuscript sources, this study uncovers the culture of experimentation that surrounded biblical exegesis in fourteenth-century England. In an area ripe for revision, Andrew Kraebel challenges the accepted theory (inherited from Reformation writers) that medieval English Bible translations represent a proto-Protestant rejection of scholastic modes of interpretation. Instead, he argues that early translators were themselves part of a larger scholastic interpretive tradition, and that they tried to make that tradition available to a broader audience. Translation was thus one among many ways that English exegetes experimented with the possibilities of commentary. With a wide scope, the book focuses on works by writers from the heretic John Wyclif to the hermit Richard Rolle, alongside a host of lesser-known authors, including Henry Cossey and Nicholas Trevet, and many anonymous texts. The study provides new insight into the ingenuity of medieval interpreters willing to develop new literary-critical methods and embrace intellectual risks.

1. Interpretive theories and traditions
2. Eclectic hermeneutics: biblical commentary in Wyclif's Oxford
3. Richard Rolle's scholarly devotion
4. Moral experiments: Middle English Matthew commentaries.

Subject Areas: Medieval history [HBLC1], Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD], Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]