Don McKim has pulled together an impressive array of U.S., Canadian, and European Calvin scholars in this work. Individual chapters deal either with major books of the Bible (for instance, Genesis) or major portions of the Bible (the Prophets, for example, and the Pauline Letters). Many of the authors involved have dealt with the biblical books under consideration in other venues, and so what is presented in this volume can be seen as the distillation of scholarly work and analysis accomplished over, in some cases, years (for example, Susan Schreiner's chapter on Job, which clearly reflects her previous endeavors—her articles, presentations, and her very fine book, Where Shall Wisdom Be Found? Calvin's Exegesis of Job from Medieval and Modern Perspectives [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994]). Thus, we have here an excellent volume that serves as a good entry into Calvin's work on the Bible.

Of course, at one time, it was common to hear that Calvin was a man of one book—the Institutes. Elsie McKee, in publications in the late 1980s, showed the importance of the commentaries for understanding at least some things in the Institutes (though there were occasional suggestions before then that such was probably the case). And David Steinmetz, in his distinguished career, has done much—through not only his own publications (an essay of his concludes the volume under review) but in his mentorship of graduate students—to underline the importance of Calvin's commentaries, and how important it is to set Calvin's exegetical work in the context of the history of exegesis. This volume showcases how rich the fruits of those labors—and this direction in Calvin scholarship—has been.

In a way, it is surprising that a book like this is just now appearing, given the books and articles devoted to Calvin's exegesis (or that deal with his exegesis as part of a larger project) over the past twenty years. McKim certainly thinks so as well: “It struck me a few years ago … that while it is now axiomatic in Calvin studies to recognize the importance of his exegesis, we did not have a scholarly resource where we could turn to understand the ways he functioned as biblical interpreter on major segments of the Bible” (xi). This volume should now serve as a standard introduction for those interested in the topic of Calvin and the Bible.

Whereas all of the chapters in this volume are illuminating in their own way, and all serve well as introductions to the books or portions of the Bible for which they have responsibility, I would like to highlight one chapter as illustrative of the good things this book has to offer (and my biggest problem has been to choose just one—almost any of them would have sufficed for this purpose).

Wulfert De Greef analyzes Calvin as a commentator on the Psalms. In a brief introduction, he writes of the publication history of the Psalms commentary, and he touches on Calvin's humanist concern with the details of the text, a skill first honed in his first published work, a commentary on Seneca's De Clementia. De Greef then moves to a consideration of Calvin's library, exploring what texts Calvin may have had available—Hebrew and Latin texts of the Psalms, as well as the Greek Septuagint—as well as the various commentaries at his disposal, from the early church fathers to rabbinical works to contemporary treatments of the Psalms. Then De Greef moves into the heart of his treatment of Calvin, which deals with Calvin's exegesis. De Greef points out that Calvin stood apart not only from the medieval tradition of the four-fold interpretation of Scripture (as well from the spirit/letter dichotomy) but that he also, in fact, distinguished himself from his contemporaries as well in his handling of the Psalms. He notes that Calvin approached the text of the Psalms looking for their “historical” and “literal” senses (92), what Calvin himself called the “simple and natural” meaning of the text (94). Of course, Calvin was not woodenly literal in his interpretation of Scripture, and many today would wonder about what he thought was the “simple and natural” meaning of certain texts. But he was ultimately concerned with the history, context, and language of Scripture.

Yet, in some ways, overriding those concerns was Calvin's way of reading the Bible as a whole—for him, the Bible was one book. So his reading of the Psalms had a great deal to do with how to understand the Bible as a whole, how to conceive the relationship of the Old Testament to the New, and how to talk about the relationship of the church to Israel. Indeed, most important for the exegetical task, Calvin had to untangle the threads of language, history, and context in order, he thought, to spell out the relationship of Jesus Christ to the Psalms. And here, it seems, one finds Calvin's unique contribution in the exegesis of the Psalms—he chose neither to follow traditional exegesis of the Psalms by Christians in which passages were read spiritually so that they were all about Christ and not about, for instance, David in his particular circumstances, nor to follow Jewish exegesis in such a way that precluded prophetic references to Christ in the Psalms. Here then is the point: “[Calvin] listened to both Jewish and Christian exegetes in order that they might help him understand the Psalms. But in his expositions he made the final decision about what he thought the text had to say” (106).

There are other gems throughout this volume—Barbara Pitkin shows the uniqueness of Calvin's Johannine interpretation, and Ward Holder presents a new thesis on how to deal with the question of whether Calvin was more of a traditionalist or a humanist innovator. Again, these are just illustrative. So, one gets new theses along with confirmation of the importance of other works as foundational to the study of Calvin as an interpreter of Scripture, for example, T. H. L. Parker's histories of the production of Calvin's commentaries and A. N. S. Lane's work on Calvin and the church fathers (as most of the essays in this volume deal with the question of Calvin's exegetical relationship to the fathers).

Of course, this volume is an edited volume, and it has a few of the problems one normally associates with such works. Tense use is not always consistent. Most of the essays follow the same agenda, but not always with the same emphasis; some deal very briefly, for example, with the publication history of a work, whereas others spend considerably more space on that topic (in a few cases, too much so, taking up space better spent on the actual content and method of the works under consideration). And there is a certain repetitiveness, as each author lays down the basics for understanding Calvin as an interpreter of the Bible—for example, we read over and over about the importance of the Pauline material, especially Romans, for Calvin's theology and exegesis. In this regard, here lies my only real complaint about the book—I really wish that it included a chapter devoted to the Romans commentary by itself, given its obvious importance to Calvin and to the way interpreters of Calvin approach his exegetical work (again, this volume is filled with references to this).

Still, if one's only complaint about a book is that there should be more, that is really nothing more than a tribute to the fine quality of the work.