Biblical Poetics before Humanism and Reformation

A comparative study of the interpretation of the Bible in the Middle Ages.

Christopher Ocker (Author)

9780521089210, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 30 October 2008

284 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.42 kg

Taken from the hardback review: 'In Biblical Poetics before Humanism and Reformation, Ocker chronicles with exemplary scholarly depth, linguistic competence and erudite yet not pedantic prose the key shift in biblical hermeneutic, rhetoric and theology in the late Middle Ages.' Scottish Journal of Theology

Biblical Poetics before Humanism and Reformation is a study of the interpretation of the Bible in the late Middle Ages. Scholastic theologians developed a distinct attitude toward textual meaning in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries which departed significantly from earlier trends. Their attitude tended to erode the distinction, emphasized by the scholars of St Victor in the twelfth century, between literal and spiritual senses of scripture. Christopher Ocker argues that interpreters developed a biblical poetics very similar to that cultivated and promoted by Protestants in the sixteenth century, which was reinforced by the adaptation of humanist rhetoric to Bible reading after Lorenzo Valla. The book is a comparative study, drawing from a variety of unpublished commentaries as well as more familiar works by Nicholas of Lyra, John Wyclif, Jean Gerson, Denys the Carthusian, Wendelin Steinbach, Desiderius Erasmus, Philip Melanchthon, and John Calvin.

Introduction
1. Medieval exegesis
2. Signification
3. Rhetoric
4. Divine speech
5. Reformation
Conclusion
Appendix: Selections from commentaries.

Subject Areas: Biblical studies & exegesis [HRCG], Literary theory [DSA]