The New Cambridge History of the Bible

Abstract

This volume examines the development and use of the Bible from late Antiquity to the Reformation, tracing both its geographical and its intellectual journeys from its homelands throughout the Middle East and Mediterranean and into northern Europe. Richard Marsden and Ann Matter's volume provides a balanced treatment of eastern and western biblical traditions, highlighting processes of transmission and modes of exegesis among Roman and Orthodox Christians, Jews and Muslims and illuminating the role of the Bible in medieval inter-religious dialogue. Translations into Ethiopic, Slavic, Armenian and Georgian vernaculars, as well as Romance and Germanic, are treated in detail, along with the theme of allegorized spirituality and established forms of glossing. The chapters take the study of Bible history beyond the cloisters of medieval monasteries and ecclesiastical schools to consider the influence of biblical texts on vernacular poetry, prose, drama, law and the visual arts of East and West.

A lacuna in Irish historiography: the Irish peregrini from Eoin MacNeill to The Cambridge history of Ireland and beyond

“…At times, the matter has been the subject of spirited scholarly exchange by specialists in medieval Irish studies while Hiberno-Latin biblical exegesis is largely ignored in works that treat biblical studies more broadly such as The new Cambridge history of the bible from 600 to 1450 and Beryl Smalley's The study of the bible in the middle ages. 64 As native Irish speakers, some peregrini continued to write in Insular script and make notes on the margins of their manuscripts in Irish. All of these exiles and scholars had to master secondary European languages as well as Latin, engaging in a polyglot intellectual culture.…”

The Latin New Testament

“…. Several important works have appeared during the preparation of this book, chief among which are the first two volumes of the New Cambridge History of theBible (Carleton Paget & Schaper 2013;Marsden & Matter 2012) and van Liere's Introduction to the MedievalBible (2014). The focus of the latter on a later period of reception and exegesis, with numerous examples from the Old Testament, offers an excellent complement to the present undertaking.…”