This comprehensive collection of articles presents a compelling argument that the great diversity of interpretation of biblical texts described in volume one of this series, the Ancient Period (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2003), continued in the medieval, Renaissance, and Reformation periods. The editors note that the reasons include “the great variety of communities and individuals who have interpreted the biblical text, the open-ended and multi-layered richness of the biblical text itself, the inclination of later biblical texts to interpret and build on earlier biblical texts, and the multitude of methodologies which have been used to interpret the biblical texts” (vii). Beyond the essays on the important figures and topics that one would expect to find, the volume is strengthened by its description of interpretative developments in Jewish biblical exegesis, in Eastern Orthodox interpretation, and among Anabaptist reformers. In addition, the history of the Christian and Hebrew biblical scriptures themselves is narrated.

The volume serves the expert in the history of biblical interpretation as its contributors, who have mastered individual texts and faith communities, generalize by reading exegetical works themselves and not just the general prefaces, which may describe the intended method of the exegete but not what happens as the multi-layered richness of the biblical text is actually engaged. Great progress has been made in the history of biblical interpretation as scholars have read understudied biblical commentaries and biblical editions and translations in their contexts. A mark of the depth of this volume is that more figures than Rashi and Aquinas are treated, although there remains a great deal to be learned (Ocker, 272). Melanchthon receives the same attention as Calvin and Luther in the Reformation period. The novice will appreciate that the editors seem to have insisted that the contributors define every technical term. One may want to take issue with a definition of “anagogical” (Mayeski, 92) or generalizations like the use of sola scriptura to define biblical interpretation in the Protestant Reformation (Gibbs, 385), but this makes the book all the more useful in the classroom.

The volume pays close attention to the development of the text of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures and editions of the biblical material itself so that one always knows what a medieval, Renaissance, or Reformation scholar may have been using in the study or classroom. The evolution from early texts based on the Septuagint to the critical editions of Erasmus with their emphasis on philology, historical contexts, and textual criticism (Rummel, 293–94) to modern critical editions based on the best manuscripts makes clear that the texts being interpreted have never been uniform in the church. Translations of scriptures into the vernacular also resulted in diverse interpretations.

Readers will discover that Jewish medieval interpreters of the Hebrew Bible shared with Christian scholars a development from the spiritual to the literal sense. Thus methods were similarly culturally and contextually determined, and their methods influenced one another (Harris, 151). In the late medieval and Reformation periods the literal sense absorbed the senses that were previously considered spiritual (Ocker, 267–68), and Calvin overstuffed the literal sense (Pitken, 347). Medieval commentators saw Christ as the subject of the scriptures and emphasized the soteriological theme; thus this was not a Reformation discovery. The exegetical achievements of reformation giants in the tradition were not without precedent and their quality beyond comparison (Pitken, 343). Like the medieval exegetical tradition, the Reformation traditions were also not monolithic. Whereas the reformed and Anabaptist hermeneutical keys were both christological for Calvin and Luther, proclamation of God's central acts in history was soteriological. Anabaptist hermeneutics focused on Jesus himself, rather than primarily on doctrines describing his redeeming work: Jesus was not only redeemer but also an example to imitate and teacher to obey (Murray, 412). There were unique developments in theology and the use of rhetoric; however, as Wengert shows in his discussion of the Lutheran distinction between law and gospel, “This hermeneutical shift meant a concomitant change in the interpretation of the traditional proof text for allegory, 2 Corinthians 3:6 (“The letter kills, and the Spirit gives life”). The exegete's task was no longer to penetrate (or escape) killing in the literal sense in order to discover the spiritual meaning of a text. Instead, the text itself, as God's destroying and creating Word, effected death and life (or terror and comfort) in the hearer” (326–27).

The volume has contemporary relevance for Bible readers active in their faith communities, for it admonishes those who wish to be too literalist in their readings, as if the scriptures have always been read flatly with every word and sentence equally valued. As Mary Meyeski points out, “Like the church fathers, medieval exegetes believed, first of all, that the Bible was not only, nor even primarily, a text, or an inert artifact to be studied by whatever methods were to hand. Rather it was first and foremost a living word, a sacred force or energy that enlivens the church. As the resurrected Christ lived on in the community, present in the word proclaimed and enacted in ritual and in the living community itself, so too did the scriptural word live on” (86). Luther also saw the scriptures as text, not just to be written and read, but also to be preached and heard (Thompson, 312). For Calvin, “The meaning of Scripture is not puzzled out on one's own, but discerned in the context of worship and study with others” (Pitken, 355). For the Anabaptists, the congregation was crucial to interpretation, and Paul Blowers shows how modern Orthodox biblical scholars draw upon patristic exegesis and higher criticism for a “multilevel hermeneutic” for and in the church (194, 195). I commend this volume to the readers of Church History for it is as multi-layered and rich as its subject.