The Reformation of the Literal

Prophecy and the Senses of Scripture in Early Modern Europe

Erik Lundeen

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2025
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780567718815
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

What does it mean to read the Bible 'literally'? Recent debates on the Protestant reformers have focused on whether they were stridently literal interpreters or maintained a place for allegorical readings. However, in this nuanced book, Lundeen argues that the question of what in fact constituted the Bible's literal sense was also a key question in early modern debates.

There is no clean binary of literal versus allegorical; instead, reformers subtly produced a variety of competing literalisms. There was not one literal sense in the Reformation, but many.

To make this case, Lundeen comparatively analyzes Reformation-era commentaries on the prophet Isaiah. He further highlights the little-known but influential works of the Basel reformer Johannes Oecolampadius, who was the first Christian to publish commentaries on most of the biblical prophets in the sixteenth century.

By placing Oecolampadius in conversation with a host of his better-known Christian and Jewish predecessors and contemporaries, this book reframes a central aspect of Reformation-era biblical exegesis, while also providing a constructive resource for those who seek to read the Bible's ancient prophets as Christian scripture today.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Series Page
• Table of Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Abbreviations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction The Varieties of Literalism
• Chapter 1 Biblical Humanism and the Quest for Truth
• Chapter 2 Deciphering Figures of Speech with the Church Fathers
• Chapter 3 Establishing Authoritative Readings with Medieval Christians
• Chapter 4 Finding Coherence and Contemporaneity with Medieval Jews
• Chapter 5 Harvesting the Tradition with the Reformers
• Chapter 6 Debating Referentiality with the Reformers
• Conclusion The Literal Sense Reconsidered
• Bibliography
• Index of Names and Subjects
• Index of Scripture Citations
• Copyright Page