BIBLE, CHRISTIAN INTERPRETATION
OF
. Put together over centuries and argued over for longer, full of inconsistencies,
contradictions, obscurities, peculiar vocabulary and syntax, ancient poetry, and tribal law,
the Bible is an interpreter’s dream: a source that claims to be authoritative—the written
Word of God—and to be both necessary and sufficient for the salvation of the believer.
Generations of scholars have exercised their learning and ingenuity on this text of texts.
The medieval West was not, then, unusual in its fascination with the Bible as a starting
point for commentary and interpretation. Its particular interest for students of
interpretation (or “exegesis,” after the Greek term) lies not only in studying the methods
in which medieval biblical scholars worked but also in trying to discern links between
exegesis and everyday life. Medieval society was a Christian society, inasmuch as the
ruling societal myth was Christian. With few exceptions, everyone was considered to be
Christian. Rulers were Christian princes, and the church held, or attempted increasingly
to abrogate to itself, temporal as well as spiritual powers. In such circumstances, the
teachings of the Bible, as laid down by authoritative scholarship, had pertinence for an
audience wider than academic theologians or devout laypeople.
Over the period A.D. 500–1500, the circumstances of biblical interpretation varied a
great deal, moving from Carolingian schools, through monasteries, to secular (i.e.,
religious but nonmonastic) schools and universities. By the mid-13th century, the
interpretation of the Bible had become the preserve of professional theologians, working
in universities and generally members of the mendicant orders. Scholastic “questions”
from this period ask who could interpret the Bible: any believers or only trained
interpreters? While theologians had to admit that the Holy Spirit could move any simple
believer to a correct understanding of the Word of God, they nevertheless inclined firmly
toward professionalization and credentialism.
Before considering how medieval interpreters went about their work, we must ask
what exactly was the Bible at this time. The Bible as a physical object rarely existed in
one single volume (called a “pandect”), or even two—Old Testament and New. It was
much more likely to come in sets of books on the lines established by Cassiodorus in the
6th century. Six-volume sets of Pentateuch, History books, Minor Prophets, Major
Prophets, Gospels, and finally Acts, Epistles, and Revelation were common. As the canon
of the Old Testament varied in the Hebrew and Greek traditions, some books, such as
Maccabees, might be included although they were understood to be apocryphal. The
order of books was not always consistent.
Of the translations of the Bible into Latin, the most common was that of Jerome,
known now as the Vulgate. By the 13th century, it was rare to find a Bible that was not
Jerome’s translation, accompanied by his prefaces to each book or group of books and
including his Liber de nominibus hebraicis, an alphabetical list explaining the meaning of
biblical proper nouns.
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