Scripture and Pluralism: Reading the Bible in the Religiously Plural Worlds of the Middle Ages and Renaissance: (123 Studies in the History of Christian Traditions)

The Mediterranean and Western-European sphere in the Ancient, Medieval and Early-Modern Periods was a world of complex and deeply rooted religious Pluralism – Jews, various sects of Christians, Muslims, and pagans all lived side by side and interacted regularly. The essays in this volume explore what happened when Christians read the Bible faced with the challenges posed by this religious pluralism. Topics covered include early Christianity’s use of the Bible under persecution, Arab-Christian Biblical study within the Islamic World, Jewish-Christian scholarly interaction in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance, and the role of late-medieval vernacular editions of the Bible in paving the way for the Reformation. Contributors include: Thomas E. Burman, Andrew Gow, Sidney H. Griffith, Thomas J. Heffernan, Frans van Liere, E. Ann Matter, Bernard McGinn, Constant J. Mews, Michael A. Signer, Lesley Smith, and Anne Marie Wolf.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Introduction, Thomas E. Burman 1. Nomen sacrum: God’s Name as Shield and Weapon in the Acts of the Christian Martyrs, Thomas J. Heffernan 2. Arguing from Scripture: The Bible in the Christian/Muslim Encounter in the Middle Ages, Sidney H. Griffith 3. Andrew of St. Victor, Jerome, and the Jews: Biblical Scholarship in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance, Frans van Liere 4. Consolation and Confrontation: Jewish and Christian Interpretation of the Prophetic Books, Michael A. Signer 5. The World As Text: The Bible and the Book of Nature in Twelfth-Century Theology, Constant J. Mews 6. William of Auvergne and the Law of the Jews and the Muslims, Lesley Smith 7. Precedents and Paradigms: Juan de Segovia on the Bible, the Church, and the Ottoman Threat, Anne Marie Wolf 8. Challenging the Protestant Paradigm: Bible Reading in Lay and Urban Contexts of the Later Middle Ages, Andrew Gow 9. Religious Dissidence and the Bible in Sixteenth-Century Italy: The Idiosyncratic Bible of Lucia Brocadelli da Narni, E. Ann Matter 10. Apocalypticism and Violence: Aspects of Their Relation in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, Bernard McGinn List of Contributors Index of Biblical and Qurʾānic References Index of Persons and Places Subject Index

About the Author :
Thomas J. Heffernan, Ph.D. (1977, University of Cambridge), is Kenneth Curry Professor of the Humanities at the University of Tennessee. He has published widely in the field of hagiography, medieval religious literature, and is currently completing a critical edition of the Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis. Some of his other books are: Sacred Biography (Oxford University Press, 1988) and The Liturgy of the Medieval Church (2nd Edition; Western Michigan University, 2005). Thomas E. Burman, Ph.D. (1991, University of Toronto), is Lindsay Young Associate Professor of History at the University of Tennessee. He is the author of Religious Polemic and the Intellectual History of the Mozarabs, c. 1050-1200 (Brill, 1994) and, most recently, of Reading the Qur'an in Latin Christendom, 1140-1560 from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Review :
Apocalypticism was connected with revolutionary movements only in the late Middle Ages and the early modern period, their rise not sufficiently explained until now. To the extent that it is not only (…) apocalyptic apologies for violence which are on the rise, but more general religious apologies for (religion-based) conflicts, his appeal to attempt to "better understand" may well be extended more generally to the exchanges between religions. This volume contributes to such a better understanding. Ineke van 't Spijker, Church History and Religious Culture