The Bible was, by any measure, the most important book in early modern England. It preoccupied the scholarship of the era, and suffused the idioms of literature and speech. Political ideas rode on its interpretation and deployed its terms. It was intricately related to the project of natural philosophy. And it was central to daily life at all levels of society from parliamentarian to preacher, from the 'boy that driveth the plough', famously invoked by Tyndale, to women across the social scale. It circulated in texts ranging from elaborate folios to cheap catechisms; and it was mediated in numerous forms, as pictures, songs, and embroideries; and as proverbs, commonplaces, and quotations.
Bringing together leading scholars from a range of fields, The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in Early Modern England, 1530-1700 explores how the scriptures served as a generative motor for ideas, and a resource for creative and political thought, as well as for domestic and devotional life. Sections tackle the knotty issues of translation, the rich range of early modern biblical scholarship, Bible dissemination and circulation, the changing political uses of the Bible, literary appropriations and responses, and the reception of the text across a range of contexts and media. Where existing scholarship focuses, typically, on Tyndale and the King James Bible of 1611, The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in England, 1530-1700 goes further, tracing the vibrant and shifting landscape of biblical culture in the two centuries following the Reformation.
Edited by:
Kevin Killeen (Senior Lecturer Senior Lecturer University of York),
Helen Smith (Director,
Director,
Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies,
University of York),
Rachel Judith Willie (Lecturer,
Lecturer,
Liverpool John Moores University)
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 246mm,
Width: 171mm,
Spine: 52mm
Weight: 2g
ISBN: 9780199686971
ISBN 10: 0199686971
Series: Oxford Handbooks
Pages: 784
Publication Date: 10 September 2015
Audience:
College/higher education
,
A / AS level
,
Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Acknowledgements ; List of Illustrations ; Note to the Reader ; Introduction: All other bookes ... are but Notes upon this : The early modern Bible ; PART I: TRANSLATIONS ; Part One Introduction ; A day after doomsday : Cranmer and the Bible translations of the 1530s ; Genevan legacies: The making of the English Geneva Bible ; A comely gate to so rich and glorious a citie : The paratextual architecture of the Rheims New Testament and the King James Bible ; The King James Bible and biblical images of desolation ; The Roman inkhorn: Religious resistance to Latinism in Early Modern England ; Retranslating the Bible in the English revolution ; PART II: SCHOLARSHIP ; Part Two Introduction ; The Septuagint and the transformation of biblical scholarship in England, from the King James Bible (1611) to the London Polyglot (1657) ; The Apocrypha in early modern England ; Isaiah 63 and the literal senses of scripture ; The sundrie waies of Wisdom : Richard Hooker on the authority of scripture and reason ; 'The Doors shall fly open': Chronology and biblical interpretation in England, c. 1630-c.1730 ; Early modern geographia sacra in the context of early modern scholarship ; Milton s corrupt Bible ; The commodification of scripture, 1640-1660: Politics, ecclesiology and the cultures of print ; Self-defeating scholarship? Antiscripturism and Anglican apologetics from Hooker to the latitudinarians ; PART III: SPREADING THE WORD ; Part Three Introduction ; The Church of England and the English Bible, 1559-1640 ; Hearing and reading : Disseminating Bible knowledge and fostering Bible understanding in early modern England ; All Scripture is given by inspiration of God : Dissonance and psalmody ; Ornament and repetition: Biblical interpretation in early modern English preaching ; Preaching, reading and publishing the Word in Protestant Scotland ; The Bible in early modern Gaelic Ireland: Tradition, collaboration and alienation ; 'Wilt thou not read me, Atheist? : The Bible and conversion ; PART IV: THE POLITICAL BIBLE ; Part Four Introduction ; Mover and author: King James VI and I and the political use of the Bible ; A King Like Other Nations : Political theory and the Hebrew Republic in the Early Modern age ; Digging, levelling and ranting: The Bible and the Civil War sects ; A year in the life of King Saul: 1643 ; That glory may dwell in our land : The Bible, Britannia, and the Glorious Revolution ; PART V: THE BIBLE AND LITERATURE ; Part Five Introduction ; The King James Bible in its Cultural Moment ; The noblest composition in the Universe or fit for the flames? The literary style of the King James Bible ; Epic, meditation, or sacred history? Women and biblical verse paraphrase in seventeenth-century England ; Scripture and tragedy in the Reformation ; This verse marks that: George Herbert's The Temple and scripture in context ; Blessed Joseph! I would thou hadst more fellows : John Bunyan's Joseph ; Paradise Lost, the Bible, and biblical epic ; PART VI: RECEPTION HISTORIES ; Part Six Introduction ; Donne's biblical encounters ; Domestic decoration and the Bible in the early modern home ; My exquisite copies for action: John Saltmarsh and the Machiavellian Bible ; Unbelief and the Bible ; Inwardness and English Bible translations ; Early modern Davids: From sin to critique ; Chronology ; Bibliography ; Notes on Contributors ; Index
Rachel Willie is Lecturer in English at Bangor University. She is author of Staging the Revolution: Drama, Reinvention and History, 1647-1672 (Manchester University Press). She has published on Milton, Charles I and martyrological discourse, and print and publishing in the nascent public sphere.
Reviews for The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in Early Modern England, c. 1530-1700
This volume proves once again that much indeed remains to be explored and that reception history is king. The volume, with impressively little overlap with other English language volumes on the Bible in the period, presents a collection of useful and well-researched essays on the development of the Bible in England, with some attention to Scotland and Ireland... [T]his volume contains some of the best examples of the work that global contemporary literary critics, biblical scholars, and historians have produced. * Ellie Gebarowski-Shafer, Religious Studies Review * [a] formidable and expensive volume the essays in this excellent collection are alert to the complexities and distinctive characteristics of the early modern period and its authors. * Warren Cernaik, Milton Quarterly * [a] splendid volume ... This handbook gives us the most far-reaching and detailed picture of the Bible in this place and period ever available ... [a] masterful collection of scholarly pieces on Englands early modern biblical culture. This is a treasure chest resource that more than repays careful and reflective study. * Donald K. McKim, Church History * Reading a book such as this in its entirety is a rare pleasure ... this book provides a more nuanced and better grounded understanding of cultural and religious transformations in early modern England. * Eyal Poleg, Journal of Ecclesiastical History *
- Winner of Winner, Roland H. Bainton Prize, Sixteenth Century Society & Conference.
