The Bible was central to the Protestant Reformation. This splendid Handbook provides fifty scholarly essays on vital aspects of the Bible and Reformation movements: biblical canon, translation and print, biblical hermeneutics, bible commentators, and exegesis and theology of key texts and themes. The pieces are all excellent, making this an unsurpassed resource for realising ways in which Scripture was understood as sacred text in its various dimensions as well as marking its reception among scholars and clergy, laity and children. The book pays attention to confessional and radical reformers, Roman Catholics and women scholars.

A significant factor in combining these topics this way is, as the editors explain:

Basic is the question of canon (part i). What does ‘the Bible’ mean? Decisions here were far-reaching, especially the issue of the reception of the Hebrew Bible. Michael Graves notes that ‘Reformation scholarship on the Hebrew Bible grew out of fifteenth-century Renaissance enthusiasm for classical antiquity’ (p. 21). Protestant Hebraists emerged since exegesis of the Hebrew Scriptures was a major concern. Graves illustrates the handling of the Hebrew text by describing the work of Oecolampadius, Bucer and Calvin. Each, he finds, ‘employed Hebrew to expound the text according to its “Old Testament” context, while still making connections to Christ’ (p. 29). Later, text-critical investigations became a scholarly focus (p. 33).

The Bible in translation and print (part ii) was stimulated by Renaissance humanism (especially Erasmus) and the Polyglot Bible, which conveyed Reformation emphases on original biblical languages. The printing press and opportunities to format Bibles in ways that encouraged the laity to read and study the Bible personally meant emerging book markets for the Bible became robust. Additionally, the ‘visual culture’ of Reformation Bibles (with elaborate illustrations, especially in the chapter by David J. Davis) ‘offered the reader objects of meditation and devotion, aids in study and worship, guides to understanding and even defense against idolatry’ (p. 168). This Reformation visual culture ‘renegotiated and reinvigorated the traditional images of Scripture, providing a bevy of new readings of all-too-familiar stories’ (p. 168).

Relatedly, in the process of confessionalisation among the various emerging bodies, translations meant that each group made ‘particular choices on the level of text, paratext, canon, and even images’ (Wim François). Yet also, ‘texts could cross confessional divides’ as ‘Christian groups borrowed from each other’s translations’ (p. 221, cf. p. 247).

Reformation biblical hermeneutics (part iii) developed through the reflections of various scholars in emerging traditions. Basic was Nicholas of Lyra. Lesley Smith begins her chapter with the famous verse: ‘If Lyra had never played his lyre, Luther would never have danced’ (p. 253). Nicholas’s ‘four senses of Scripture’ became a model for reformers, especially Luther. Chapters here include studies of Lorenzo Valla (den Haan), Karlstadt (Johnson), Luther (Christopher Boyd Brown), Zwingli (Opitz), Roman Catholic exegesis from the Spirituali to the Jesuits (Roldán-Figueroa), Flacius (Ilić), Fulke (Gebarowski-Shafer) and the Radical Reformation (Hamilton). On display throughout are questions about the Bible’s status and authority, embracing an issue which Alastair Hamilton highlights: ‘Although it is not always specified, the question that looms behind much of the discussion of how the Bible should be understood is inspiration’ (p. 359).

Reformation Bible commentators (part iv) presents important reformers who contributed significantly to biblical interpretation. These sixteen chapters stretch from the ‘dawn of the Reformation’ with Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples (Schönau) to the third-generation reformer, Theodore Beza (Summers). The pieces here convey the breadth of Protestant confessions: Lutheran – Bugenhagen (Lohrmann), Melanchthon (Wengert); German and French Reformed – Oecolampadius (Poythress), Bucer (Noblesse-Rocher), Musculus (Ballor), Bullinger (Giselbrecht), Calvin (Holder); Anglican – Cranmer (Otto), Tyndale (Fabiny); and Radical – Hubmaier (Eccher), Münster (Martinuzzi). Roman Catholic, Cajetan (Arnold), also appears.

Importantly, two landmark women reformers – often overlooked in lineups of Protestant biblical interpreters – are presented as well: Marie Dentière (Pak) and Katharina Schütz Zell (McKee). Pak writes that Dentière ‘provided one of the first examples of an early modern Reformed woman’s extensive engagement with Scripture around themes of right worship and a vision for Protestant unity rooted in God’s Word alone’ (p. 491). Schütz Zell, says McKee,

‘Reformation Exegesis and Theology of Key Texts and Themes’ (part v) provides a significant array of interpretations of biblical texts which played essential roles in the doctrinal discussions among major emerging theological traditions. These discussions reflect their historical contexts as they evolved. The topics here are: celibacy and marriage (Genesis ii; Cameron), the Decalogue (Exodus xxxiv.28; Deuteronomy x.4; Clifford), papacy and ecclesiastical authority (Matthew xvi.18–19; John xx.23; xxi.17; Avis), the eucharist (John vi; 1 Corinthians x–xi; Burnett), baptism (Matt. xxviii.19–20; Mark xvi.15–16; Stjerna), righteousness (Romans i.17; Jammerthal), faith (Rom. iii.28; x.17; Adams), Church and State (Rom. xiii; Allison N. Brown), predestination (Rom. viii–xi; Ephesians i; Rouwendal), and the Trinity (Hebrews i.3; John i; Woo).

In Bruce Gordon’s fine foreword, he comments that ‘an invaluable contribution of this handbook is that it enables us to see more clearly the continuities and changes integral to the story of the Bible in the Reformation’ (p. xiv). The historical rootedness of this volume and all its chapters testify to Gordon’s affirmation and also underline another point that he makes: ‘We forget that the reformers did not work ex nihilo’ (p. xiii). Those who dealt with biblical texts and formulating doctrinal understandings did so, at their best, by reaching back to those who had set themselves on doing the same tasks before. In the Reformation period, they were able to draw on historical works and the theological thoughts of those who had gone before, both in the ‘far past’ and the ‘recent past’. The results then have become part of the historical story of the Bible and all that it has engendered through the centuries.

The editors of this volume have given us a rich treasury of historical understandings and have helped set trajectories for discussions and formulations about the Bible in the future. They have given us a wonderful resource which has value for our perceptions of the past and opens promises for new insights for times to come by ‘centring’ our focus on the Bible, which as they say ‘occupied the heart of the Reformation as both printed book and sacred Scripture’ (p. 5). Their fine volume reminds us, in their words that: ‘Biblical commentary by men and women abounded in the quest to access the meaning of God’s Word, the key to salvation. To center the Bible during the Reformation was critical in the reformers’ eyes to a recentering of faith in Jesus Christ’ (p. 5).