These chapters emerge from a 2011 symposium of the ‘Insular Christianity Project’ based at Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin. The focus is on ‘the rise, spread and impact of the Protestant understanding of the Bible in early modern England, the challenges posed to it, and the responses these provoked’ (p. 2). The appearance of the King James Version (KJV; 1611) marks the midpoint of the volume where attention spans from the 1520s, when printed English Bibles began to emerge, to the intensifying debates of how Scripture is to be interpreted that marked the decades of revolution in the mid-seventeenth century and on towards the century's end. The result is a highly interesting collection from top scholars that expands our horizons and deepens our understanding of a variety of topics that denote important dimensions of ways in which the Bible was received and interpreted during this very yeasty period.

Emerging English Protestantism was marked by English translations including by Coverdale, the ‘Matthew’ Bible (1537; later Taverner's Bible), the Great Bible (1539), the ‘Bishops’ Bible’ (1568) and, most influentially, the Geneva Bible (New Testament, 1557; full Bible, 1560). The Geneva translation, with its theological annotations reflecting the Reformed proclivities of the Marian exiles who translated it, also has ‘rightly been seen as crucial to the advancement of new modes of encounter with the sacred text received as a mass-produced, more affordable, and more portable book’ (p. 4). It went through over 140 editions between 1560 and 1644. But the KJV (no annotations) overtook the Geneva Bible in popularity and established supreme ‘market dominance’ by the 1650s (p. 149). With around one million copies of the Scriptures published in England before 1640 (mostly in the Genevan and KJV), ‘Bibles were everywhere’, writes Crawford Gribben (p. 145). The hope of the Homily on Scripture, used in the Church of England (and probably written by Cranmer), that Christians could have a continuing engagement with Scripture was now more possible. The Scriptures, the homily said, ‘ought to be much in our hands, in our eyes, in our ears, in our mouths, but most of all in our hearts’, and ought to be the subject of ‘continual reading and meditation’ (p. 4).

Armstrong's introduction on ‘Protestant England and the English Bible’ splendidly sets the stage for the eight pieces that follow. Lucy Wooding discusses the Bible-generated religious imagery of the medieval Church and ways in which this was conveyed to the laity and displayed visually. As she notes, ‘in the late medieval church, the act of faith was inextricably involved with the act of seeing’ (p. 29). Wooding shows that the impact of the Reformation was not to eradicate imagery (as previous scholarship has maintained) but rather to adjust to a continuing place for imagery in the emerging culture. According to Wooding, ‘to argue that a religion of the word replaced a religion of the image does not accurately describe the process of cultural adaptation at work between the late fifteenth and the early seventeenth centuries’ (p. 52; citing Arnold Hunt, in the note, Wooding writes that ‘Yet it can still be described as “intuitively right”’). Instead, the ‘imaginative’ became part of ‘a cultural transformation as a gradual rearrangement of religious modes of expression’ (p. 52).

Ian Green's ‘The laity and the Bible in early modern England’ is a thorough and fascinating study leading to his conclusions that even with lay acquaintance with the Bible increasing, familiarity with the Scriptures ‘took time to develop, and probably varied considerably according to the age, educational standard, and social rank of the reader’ (p. 82). Further, while the clergy urged that ‘all men and women should read the Bible regularly, they found it difficult to trust the laity to draw the messages they wished them to draw’ (p. 83). This raised the issue of biblical interpretation – the ongoing and vexing problem of what constitutes valid interpretation.

Preachers had to interpret biblical texts, as Mary Morrissey's ‘Nuts, kernels, wading lambs and swimming elephants: preachers and their handling of biblical texts’ shows. Morrissey cites William Perkins, Matthew Sutcliffe, Richard Bernard and Andreas Hyperius who urged preachers to use catechetical formularies (for example, the Lord's Prayer, the Decalogue and the Creed) that teach basic Christian faith and for them to interpret Scripture in light of their prior knowledge of Christian doctrine. Biblical proof texts helped to establish ‘networks of associate meanings’ (p. 100) and gave flexibility of interpretation in light of contemporary contexts. Thus commonplace biblical meanings could develop (p. 102).

Two fine pieces noting Roman Catholic perspectives and contributions are by Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin on the Bellarmine and Whitaker debate, and Gordon Campbell on ‘The Catholic contribution to the King James Bible’. Both are highly interesting and helpful.

‘“Not the Word of God”: varieties of antiscripturism during the English Revolution’ by Ariel Hessayon presents ways in which different religious communities denied the truth and authority of Scripture. Among these are various Baptists, ‘Seekers’, Levellers, Diggers, Ranters, Quakers, Muggletonians and other ‘blasphemers’. Sectarian attitudes toward the Bible were part of a broader, generally millenarian outlook that ‘privileged the spirit over flesh, inner illumination over outward ordinances, divinely revealed knowledge over university-trained scholarship’ (p. 182).

Hessayon's piece follows Gribben's fine discussion of ‘Bible reading, Puritan devotion, and the transformation of politics in the English Revolution’ which shows how political positions emerged from Scripture study and ‘as the chaos of civil war gave way to the period of Cromwellian control, there developed an increasing diversity of opinion as to Scripture's political utility, which evolved into the rejection of Puritan biblicism that marked Thomas Hobbes's analysis of the context in his Behemoth (1679)’ (p. 160).

Justin Champion's concluding piece on Hobbes shows how as Hobbes moved to subject the canon of Scripture to the civil powers, ‘he made the Word of God contingent on political agency’ (p. 205).

This sterling collection of pieces is a treasury of insights about ways in which the Bible was read and understood, as well as its impact in the early modern world. Issues emerging then are with us still in various ways.