Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Mark Chinca
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Daily Routines ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Written Texts

Christian devotional culture took very seriously the instruction of the Bible maxim “In all thy works remember thy last end [memorare novissima tua] and thou shalt never sin” (Sirach 7:40). From it were derived all kinds of practices and schemes for meditating on the so-called “last things”: death, judgment, hell, heaven, and (once the belief was codified dogmatically) purgatory. The introduction explains why the period from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century was crucial for the dissemination and transformation of instructions for meditating on death and the afterlife, and draws attention to the importance of written texts in enabling and supporting individual believers in their daily routines of devotion and meditation.

Textualization and the Book of Jeremiah

2021 ◽  
pp. 144-158
Author(s):  
Joachim Schaper
Keyword(s):  
Speech Act ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Written Texts ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
Specific Object ◽  
Book Of Jeremiah

Textualization implies the emergence of the concept of a “text” as a specific object that needs to be handled in a specific way: an object that is conceptualized as part of a tradition of reading and interpreting—indeed, an object that is constituted by the desire to preserve and make available a specific utterance (irrespective of whether that utterance was originally produced orally or in writing). Written texts therefore are the results of the desire of an individual or a community to establish a tradition for a speech act that the individuals or the community intend to preserve. As is the case with oral texts, written texts can give rise to ritualized or otherwise significant uses of the text-object. This is the key to the understanding of prophetic collections in the Bible, and especially in the book of Jeremiah. While “tradition” (Überlieferung) is the aim of textualization, that tradition comes in various shapes and forms. The growth of prophetic books is an excellent illustration of Konrad Ehlich’s analysis of the characteristics of textualization and its purposes, especially with regard to the fact that prophetic oracles were, in ancient Israel and Judah, textualized for the purpose of being preserved and performed and of serving as the basis for Fortschreibungen.

Biblical Exegesis and Early Modern Legal History in Calvin’s Mosaic Harmony

2020 ◽  
pp. 165-195
Author(s):  
Barbara Pitkin
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Biblical Exegesis ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The Relationship

The chapter examines John Calvin’s commentary on Exodus through Deuteronomy (1563) through the lens of sixteenth-century historical jurisprudence, exemplified in the works of Calvin’s contemporaries François de Connan and François Baudouin. Recent scholarship has demonstrated how Calvin’s historicizing exegesis is in continuity with broader contemporary trends in premodern Christian biblical interpretation; this chapter explores another essential context for Calvin’s approach to the Bible. The intermingling of narrative and legal material in these four biblical books inspired Calvin to break with his customary practice of lectio continua and apply his historical hermeneutic more broadly and creatively to explain the Mosaic histories and legislation. Calvin’s unusual and unprecedented arrangement of the material in this commentary and his attention to the relationship between law and history reveal his engagement with his generation’s quest for historical method.

The Bible and Evangelicalism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John G. Stackhouse
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Love Affair ◽  
Evangelical Protestantism ◽  
The Bible ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religious Resources

No tradition of Christianity loves and venerates the Bible more than does evangelical Protestantism. The history of this love affair dates back to Evangelicalism’s extended roots in the sixteenth century. In fact, precisely because evangelicals tend to set aside other religious resources such as liturgies, creedal statements, sacramental rituals, and clerical hierarchies in favor of the Bible, the identity, activity, and vitality of evangelicals has depended crucially upon the Bible in their midst. This chapter surveys how the Bible has figured in evangelical life and suggests how the role of the Bible is under stress amid sweeping changes in contemporary evangelicalism’s theology, piety, and mission.

Invective and Discernment in Martin Luther, D. Erasmus, and Thomas More

2005 ◽  
Vol 98 (4) ◽  
pp. 469-488 ◽  
Author(s):  
Constance M. Furey
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Desiderius Erasmus ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
The Real ◽  
Modern Reader ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Simple Question ◽  
Lord Chancellor ◽  
The Church

The scathing insults that fill texts by sixteenth-century Christian reformers can shock even a jaded modern reader. In the prefatory letter to the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520), for example, Martin Luther begins by wishing for “grace and peace in Christ” before launching his attack on the “brainless and illiterate beast in papist form” and its “whole filthy pack of … asses,” and concludes by exhorting his reader to rise up against the Catholic hierarchy: “Continue courageously, noble sir; in this way the disgrace of the Bohemian name will be abolished, and the sludge of the harlot's lies and whoring shall again be taken up in her breast.” Or consider the nasty invectives by the English Lord Chancellor and future Catholic martyr, Thomas More, against not only Luther but also Matthew Tyndale, who translated the Bible into English. More calls these men the “devil's disciples”: Luther “a pimp, an apostate, a rustic, and a friar”; and Tyndale “a babbler, and a devil's ape.” Even Desiderius Erasmus, the erudite Catholic humanist, filled his writings with insults both satirical and blunt and proclaimed that theologians “are more stupid than any pig” (sue stupidiores). Fierce words commonly appear in the midst of religious controversies, and one may choose to skim past this hyperbolic outrage in search of the real message. Insulting rhetoric, however, does provide a sensitive barometer of religious concerns in the sixteenth century and yields unexpectedly complex answers to a simple question. What does negative speech accomplish?

Who Compiled the Sixteenth-Century Patristic Handbook Unio Dissidentium?

1965 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 237-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Peters
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
Infant Baptism ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Bible ◽  
High Level ◽  
And Function

The purpose of this paper is to raise a problem of more than antiquarian interest in Reformation literary history. The Unio Dissidentium is a collection of passages from the Bible together with nearly 550 quotations, many of them quite lengthy, from the Fathers. This latter feature gives to the book much of its interest, as well as a place in the patristic revival begun by the classical humanists and brought to a high level of development by the work of such men as Erasmus and Beatus Rhenanus.So far as can with certainty be stated, the first part of Unio Dissidentium was published by the Antwerp printer, Martin de Keyser, in March 1527. The ten sections into which it is divided contain passages supporting the compiler’s theology on such current theological issues as original sin, infant baptism, predestination, the nature and function of law, grace and merit, faith and works, and human ordinances. Later that same year the same printer published the second part, dealing with the value of the Word of God, penitence, brotherly correction, fasting, prayer, indulgences, the Eucharist, ecclesiastical constitutions, the vocation of all Christians to be priests, kings, and prophets, and antichrist. To the editions printed in and after 1531 a further three sections were added, the first two of which are on expensive funerals and the flight and persecution of Christians, respectively, while the third is the tract of Pseudo-Augustine, De Essentia Divinitatis.

Moses and the Magistrate: a Study in the rise of Protestant Legalism

1975 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. D. L. Avis
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Law ◽  
Civil Laws ◽  
The Church

‘It is now disputed at every table’, declared Whitgift in 1574, ‘whether the magistrate be of necessity bound to the judicials of Moses’. Edwin Sandys told Bullinger of Zürich in the previous year that it was being maintained, to the great trouble of the Church, that ‘The judicial laws of Moses are binding upon Christian princes, and they ought not in the slightest degree to depart from them’. Though often neglected by historians as an important factor in the Reformation, the question of the validity of the Old Testament judicial (as opposed to moral or ceremonial) law frequently arises in the writings of the Reformers, and their various answers made no slight impact on the course of events. It bears directly on Henry VIII's divorce and the bigamy of Philip of Hesse; the treatment of heresy and the possibility of toleration; the persecution of witches; usury and iconoclasm; Sabbatarianism and the rise of the ‘puritan’ view of the Bible as a book of precedents, and the corresponding shift to legalism in Protestant theology. The question is also of fundamental relevance to the thought of the Reformers on natural law, the godly prince and magistrate, and the so-called ‘third use of the law’. This article is an attempt to survey, up to the end of the sixteenth century, the various interpretations of the Mosaic penal and civil laws, with particular reference to the development of legalistic tendencies after Luther.

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