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        Christianity was born in the midst of a people who already possessed scriptures. Although the canon of the Hebrew Scriptures was not yet fixed, there was general agreement as to a basic list of books regarded as authoritative. From the very beginning, the early Christian community laid claim on these Hebrew Scriptures as its own. Eventually, there would be debates between Christians and Jews, as well as among Christians, about exactly which of these ancient books--if any-should be considered "Scripture." Yet even before such debates erupted it became clear that the vast majority of the people of Israel would not accept the Christian understanding of Hebrew Scripture. Christians claimed that Jesus of Nazareth, who had been-crucified by order of the Roman Empire, was the Christ, the Messiah. Most Jews rejected that claim. Such divergent understandings of the Hebrew Scriptures forced Christians to interpret the texts anew, in order to show how they pointed to Jesus as the Messiah. Thus it is true, as Rowan Greer has said, that "basic to the task of the formative period is the transformation of the Hebrew Scriptures so that they may become a witness to Christ (1)"'
        On the other hand, Christians were not the first to face the task of interpreting the Hebrew Scriptures. On the contrary, from the very beginning the people of Israel were constantly faced with the need to interpret the events of their history and the writings that spoke of them. When the Hebrew prophets looked at the exile and return from Babylon, they saw those events in the light of their ancestors' bondage in Egypt and their liberation from that bondage. Later, when they had to struggle against Syrian and Greek power, they saw that struggle in the light of both the exodus from Egypt and the return from exile. Thus the Hebrew Scripture that Christians claimed for themselves contained much of the history of its own interpretation-indeed, much of it was the record of that history.
        The same is true of the part of the Bible that we now call the New Testament (NT). The writers of the NT did not consciously set out to write Christian scriptures parallel to those the church had in common with Israel. Rather, they interpreted the events of Jesus' life and of the life of the church, in the light of the ancient scriptures of Israel. In doing so, they provided the earliest Christian interpretations of the Bible, and these in turn came to form part of the Christian Bible-just as the prophets' interpretations of the exodus came to form part of the Hebrew Bible (HB).
        This article deals only tangentially with NT interpretations of Hebrew Scriptures, centering attention on the history of Christian interpretation outside the [84] NT. Yet, it is important to remember that what we are retelling is not a history that began after the writing of the NT, or apart from it, but a history that actually continues the very process by which the entire Bible - Old Testament (OT) as well as NT - was written.

To the modern reader, early Christian interpretations of the Hebrew Scriptures appear to be transformations of the biblical text that alter its meaning. We tend to think of an original sense, understood historically, and to regard theological interpretation as a departure from the true meaning of the text. Nothing could be farther from the point of view of religious writers in late antiquity. Pagan, Jew, and Christian were united in assuming the general correlation of sacred texts with the beliefs and practices of religious communities. Scripture represented the authority for those beliefs and practices, but at the same time the religious convictions of the community unveiled the true meaning of Scripture. Far from supplying a new meaning, the transformations of sacred books disclosed their true significance (4).

[87] Prophecy. Let us look first at prophecy, which is the ancient method of biblical interpretations that modern readers will find less foreign, since it is often applied to this day. Although in the Bible a "prophet" is not necessarily nor primarily one who foretells the future, but rather one who speaks in the name of God, in most early Christian literature the term prophecy is already used, as it is today, in the sense of prediction. That is what is meant by most ancient Christian writers, and by modern historians of biblical interpretation, by a "prophetic" method of interpreting scripture. Briefly stated, this method sees in the words of an ancient text an announcement of something that would happen in the future-most commonly at the time of Christ, but also at the time in which the interpreter is living. This method is found throughout the NT, although not as often as one might think. (As we shall see further on, much of what we tend to read as prophecy may have been intended as typology.)
        Prophecy is certainly a preferred method of reading the OT in the Gospel of Matthew, where the theme of the fulfillment of prophecy appears repeatedly. According to Matthew, the birth of Jesus "took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet" (Matt 1:22 NRSV), and the same is true of his birth in Bethlehem (Matt 2:5-6), the flight into Egypt (Matt 2:15), the slaughter of the innocents (Matt 2:17-18), the decision to settle in Nazareth (Matt 2:23), and a host of other events.
        The same method was employed by other early Christian writers, both in the NT and outside of it. Very soon lists of prooftexts seem to have developed - what scholars call lists of Testimonia - for it is clear that different authors, some of whom do not seem to know each other's work, are quoting the same texts in a similar sequence. Whether such Testimonia were actual written lists of texts and their interpretation, or were transmitted orally through preaching and teaching - much as today's preachers borrow illustrations from each other - is not clear. The discovery of a Jewish list of testimonies at Qumran would seem to indicate that, even before the advent of Christianity, there were such written lists, some of them defending or promoting particular positions within Judaism, and that Christianity took up and adapted, if not the lists themselves, at least the practice of developing and employing such lists.
        Prophecy had the decided advantage that it was a fairly simple and straightforward method of showing the continuity between the religion of Israel and Christianity. Significantly, early Christian writers used prophecy, so to speak, "in both directions": They used it, much as it still is used today in some circles, to argue that Jesus was indeed the Messiah and that, therefore, if Jews are to be true to their Scriptures, they must accept him as such. But it was also used against Marcion and others who denied the authority of the OT, in order to prove that the OT was indeed the word of God-if Isaiah, for instance, predicted the virgin birth, this proves that Isaiah must have been truly inspired.
        One of the fullest ancient discussions on the interpretation of the OT as prophecy referring to Jesus and his followers is to be found in Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho. In this work, Justin depicts himself as debating the meaning of the OT with a Jewish scholar. According to Justin:

Sometimes He [the Holy Spirit] uttered words about what was to take place, as if it was then taking place, or had taken place. And unless those who read perceive this art, they will not be able to follow the words of the prophet as they ought. For example's sake, I shall repeat some prophetic passages, that you may understand what I say. When he speaks by Isaiah, "He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb before the shearer," He speaks as if the suffering had already taken place (5).

Allegory. Precisely such difficulties as these made other methods of biblical interpretation necessary. One of these other methods was allegory. Christians did not invent or create the allegorical method of interpretation, just as they were not the first to read the OT as a series of prophecies. On the contrary, allegorical interpretation of sacred and other ancient texts had been common practice in the Mediterranean basin long before the advent of Christianity. Among the Greeks and those who shared their cultural inheritance, it had become customary to interpret the ancient myths, particularly the poems of Homer and Hesiod, as allegories referring to various virtues or to the truths expounded more systematically by later philosophers (6).
        The same procedure had become popular among Jews. Some of the material discovered in Qumran, as well as a number of rabbinic writings of the same period, already provide examples of allegorical interpretation of ancient texts. However, it was particularly in Alexandria that this method of biblical
interpretation flourished among Jews who sought to show to their pagan neighbors that the Hebrew Scriptures were not as "barbaric" as might otherwise appear. Already in the second century BCE, a certain Aristobulos wrote an Exegesis of the Law of Moses, whose purpose was to demonstrate that "Moses"
had stated in allegory the same truths that the Greek philosophers later expounded, and therefore that whatever there was of value in Greek philosophy had been taken from Jewish Scriptures. Along the same lines, Philo of Alexandria, who was roughly a contemporary of Jesus, wrote extensively on the true meaning of sacred scripture, interpreting it as a vast allegory, and thereby making it compatible with what he and his contemporaries considered the best of Greek philosophy.
        Allegory thus had the advantage that it allowed exegetes to respond to those who objected that the biblical narratives were too crass and "unphilosophical." According to those who interpreted Scripture allegorically, in such cases the crassness resides not in the biblical text, but in the objection itself, which does not realize that the Bible speaks in a "spiritual" sense.

For who that has understanding will .suppose that the first, and second, and third day, and the evening and the morning, existed without a sun, a moon, and stars? and that the first day was, as it were, also without a sky? And who is so foolish as to suppose that God, after the manner of a husbandman, planted a paradise in Eden, towards the east, and placed in it a tree of life, visible and palpable, so that one tasting of the fruit by the bodily teeth obtained life? and again, that one was a partaker of good and evil by masticating what was taken from a tree? And if God is said to walk in the paradise in the evening, and Adam to hide himself under a tree, I do not suppose that any one doubts that these things figuratively indicate certain mysteries, the history having taken place in appearance, and not literally (7).

"Horse" in the Bible usually means "voice"; "today" means "the present age"; "leaven" means "teaching"; "silver" and "trumpet" mean "word"; "clouds" . . . mean "holy ones"; "feet" mean "the counsel by which we tread the journey of life"; "well" means "the teaching of the Bible"; "linen" means "chastity"; "thighs" mean "beginning"; "unmixed wine" means "misfortune"; "bottle" means "body"; "secret" and "treasury" mean "the reason (11)."

Typology. The third method of biblical interpretation that was current in the early church is typology. This method is discussed by Justin Martyr in the same text that has been partially quoted above, in which he compares and relates it to prophecy: "For the Holy Spirit sometimes brought about that something, which was the type of the future, should be done clearly; sometimes He uttered words about what was to take place, as if it was then taking place, or had taken place" (13).
        In this brief passage, it is important to note the contrast Justin makes between "words" (logoi) and "types" (typoi). The first refer to what we have called prophecy; there are words in the sacred text that refer to future events-particularly the events of the life of Christ and the birth of the church. In the "types," by contrast, what the Holy Spirit directs is not the actual words of the writer, but the events of which the writer speaks. Both point to the future, but in one case what points to the future is the text itself, and in the other it is the event of which the text speaks.
        This may be clarified by means of some examples from Justin himself:

The mystery, then, of the lamb which God enjoined to be sacrificed as the Passover, was a type of Christ; with whose blood, in proportion to their faith in Him, they anoint their houses, i.e., themselves, who believe in Him (14)."

And the offering of fine flour, sirs .... which was prescribed to be present on behalf of those purified from leprosy, was a type of the bread of the Eucharist, the celebration of which our Lord Jesus Christ prescribed (15)."

Hence also Jacob . . . being himself a type of Christ, had married the two handmaids of his two free wives, and of them begat sons, for the purpose of indicating beforehand that Christ would receive even all those who amongst Japheth's race are descendants of Canaan, equally with the free, and would have the children as fellow-heirs (16).

For consider all the things in the world, whether without this form they could be administered or have any community. For the sea is not traversed except that trophy which is called a sail abide safe in the ship; and the earth is not ploughed without it: diggers and mechanics do not do their work, except with tools that have this shape. And the human form differs from that of the irrational animals in nothing else than in its being erect and having the hands extended, and having on the face extending from the forehead what is called the nose, through which there is respiration for the living creature; and this shows no other form than that of the cross (18).

Medieval Monasticism. Reading the Bible through monastic eyes meant two things. It meant first of all that the Bible was usually interpreted as a call to monastic renunciation and contemplation. Gregory the Great, the main authority through whom the Middle Ages received the legacy of Christian antiquity, read the Bible primarily as a manual on morality and asceticism. During Gregory's time, and in the centuries immediately following, there was much less doctrinal and theological debate than there had been at the times of Origen or Augustine. Only in the ninth century, during the brief revival in learning brought about under the Carolingians, was there a measure of theological debate - and in those debates the Bible was indeed used as the main point of reference for correct doctrine. But by and large, Gregory and his successors for five centuries did not have to cope with significant theological dissent. Their struggle was more against the temptations of "the world" - and it was as an aide in that struggle that the Bible was most often read and interpreted. This, in addition to the lack of adequate tools for historical and linguistic research, meant that the most profitable and accessible way to interpret Scripture was as a vast moral allegory. Not only the Song of Songs, but also the stories of Moses, Job, and Ezekiel are in fact parables or metaphors referring to the soul's ascent to God and the many perils and temptations it finds along the way. Therefore, reading the Bible through monastic eyes first meant reading it allegorically, even when-as was the case with Gregory - one repeatedly denounced the dangers implicit in fanciful flights of allegorical interpretation.
        Reading the Bible through monastic eyes also meant reading it in the context of prayer and worship. What one must always keep in mind is that such use is in itself a form of interpretation. A reading of Isaiah 53 on Good Friday, for instance, is already an interpretation of that passage, even if no further words of explanation are added - and, as the same reading is repeated in the same liturgical context year after year, the interpretation implied by that setting becomes normative. Medieval monasticism, centering its life as it usually did on communal worship, developed its own traditions of biblical interpretation. Sometimes these traditions were expressed in treatises on the use of the Bible in worship, such as those of Bruno of Wurzburg in the eleventh century; but most often they were tacitly accepted as the normative interpretation of particular texts. In any case, the influence of these traditions can be traced far beyond the confines of monasteries, for as theology and biblical interpretation found wider fields of activity, they continued much of the legacy they had received from monastic liturgical interpretation. (It has often been remarked, for instance, that Martin Luther interpreted the psalms christologically as referring to Jesus. The reason why he did this, even long after leaving the monastery, is that when he was a monk he had grown accustomed to hearing and repeating particular psalms in specific settings of the liturgical year: Advent, Christmas, Good Friday, etc.)
        The twelfth century brought about both a revival of monasticism and the beginnings of new conditions that would eventually lead to an alternative way of reading the Bible. The outstanding figure in the monastic revival was Bernard of Clairvaux, who brought the tradition of monastic biblical interpretation to its high point. Devoted as he was to the contemplation of the humanity of Christ, Bernard paid attention to the historical, literal meaning of the NT, particularly the Gospels. However, his main purpose in reading Scripture was not to inquire what the sacred text says in itself, or what it was intended to say when it was written, but to benefit the soul in its quest for union with Christ. Read in the context of the monastic community, the text could yield a variety of meanings, according to the needs of each soul. Since the goal of the reading of Scripture is not knowledge, but the love of God, every reading that leads to such love is true and faithful. It is precisely this spiritual purpose of union with Christ that gives Scripture its unity; therefore, Bernard and his followers felt quite free to interpret the Bible allegorically - particularly the OT, which must be read in such a way as to find Christ in every single page.
        Thus, in spite of his deep respect for Scripture, Bernard could declare: "I no longer wish to listen to Moses, whom I find to be no more that a stutterer. Isaiah's lips are unclean. Jeremiah cannot speak, for he is but a child. Actually, all the prophets are mutes. Let me rather listen to Him of whom they speak (25)."

[97] Cathedral Schools and Medieval Universities. On the other hand, the twelfth century saw a parallel development that would soon lead to a different way of reading the Bible. With the growth of cities, cathedral schools began to rival monasteries as centers of learning, and a number of them eventually developed into universities. In these cathedral schools, and later in the universities, one read the Bible mainly as a source of knowledge and as a means of settling intellectual disagreements and disputes. The earlier centuries of the Middle Ages had been remarkably free of theological controversy; those that did arise were often mere repetition of debates that had taken place during the patristic period and thus often could be solved on the basis of patristic authority. The main opponents of most monastic readers of Scripture in the early Middle Ages were the devil, the flesh, and the world. It was as a shield against these opponents that such monks read the Bible, seeking guidance, inspiration, and wisdom. Beginning in the twelfth century, and flowering in the thirteenth, a new mood arose, particularly in the universities. Although the devil, the flesh, and the world were still considered the great enemies of the Christian life, the scholastics read the Bible as a source of knowledge and of arguments against those who disagreed with them. Thus once again, as had been the case during the great theological debates of the fourth and fifth centuries, the Bible tended to become the great arbiter in theological debate, rather than the guidebook leading the believer in the paths of faith and righteousness. One could say that while traditional monasticism read the Bible in quest of wisdom, the scholastics read it in quest of knowledge - although such contrasts should not be exaggerated, since most scholastics were also monks.
        Since the cathedral schools were the forerunners of the great medieval universities, it is to them that one must look for the historical background of scholastic biblical interpretation. One of the main activities of such cathedral schools was the development, compilation, and transmission of glosses to the biblical text. The master of a cathedral school would gather bits of information from earlier writers, which might clarify (or amplify) the meaning of a text, and would write such bits between the lines or at the margin of the text itself. Sometimes, although not usually, he would also add his own views or brief comments. Copied down by students and others, such glossae circulated widely among scholars. Since by their very nature they were compilations of previous wisdom, they influenced each other, so that the task of determining what comes from a particular master is almost impossible. Until the twelfth century, these various glossae were generally fragmentary, usually dealing with no more than a particular book or section of Scripture. Early in the twelfth century, however, Anselm of Laon, with the support and collaboration of several colleagues and students, set out to compile a gloss of the entire Bible. With constant addition and variation, this became known as the Glossa ordinaria, one of the main tools biblical scholars and commentators employed throughout the rest of the Middle Ages. Following its example and methodology, a number of these scholars produced fuller glosses on parts of Scripture, and these too became widely used. Most notable among them was the Magna glosatura of Peter Lombard on the Pauline epistles and the Psalter, which was not quite as influential in later scholasticism as were his four books of Sentences, but it did influence the manner in which the rest of the Middle Ages read Paul's works. In any case, since such glosses were mostly compilations of earlier views, they did not add much to the interpretation of Scripture, except by establishing standard interpretations of particular texts.
        Some of the masters of cathedral schools also produced commentaries on entire books of the Bible. By the middle of the twelfth century, there were numerous commentaries on most of the books of the Bible, and their number was growing rapidly. Greatly dependent on the glossae as they were, and written at a time when individual scholarship and authorship were not particularly prized, there is much repetition and similarity among these various commentaries. They were generally intended as an aid to preaching and teaching; therefore, their tone is often homiletical and hortatory.
        It has been pointed out that one of the main difficulties the authors of these commentaries found was the ancient tradition that distinguished between a "literal" and a "spiritual" sense in Scripture (26). By then, partly as a reaction to the excesses to which extreme allegorization could lead, it had become generally recognized that one should pay particular attention to the "literal" meaning of a text. This included not only grammatical commentary but also an exposition of the meaning of the text within its [98] original historical setting - to the degree that such was possible with the often scant knowledge of history that the Middle Ages possessed. Such "literal" meaning could not be bypassed in favor of the "spiritual." Nor should the two be confused. Therefore, the master was expected to give clear indication of when he was interpreting a text "literally" or "spiritually." The "spiritual" interpretation provided the master opportunity to apply the text to the religious and moral life, often by means of typology or of allegory. Most often, such spiritual interpretation was in truth a moral exposition, exhorting the student or the reader to greater effort in the pursuit of virtue.
        The difficulty was that, while the early scholastic commentators felt compelled to follow the traditional distinction between the literal and the spiritual, they had no clear theological framework to guide them in the application or evaluation of that distinction. On the one hand, the "literal" sense must govern all interpretation and must never be ignored, while, on the other hand, the "spiritual" was considered to be more valuable, for it dealt with permanent truth rather than with transitory events or things. Thus the early scholastic commentators found themselves at an impasse produced by the unavoidable tensions between their insistence on the value of the "literal" sense and their reliance on a Platonic metaphysics and epistemology. To them, true knowledge must be the knowledge of eternal, changeless reality, and such knowledge does not come through the senses. At best, sense perception leads to a pale imitation of eternal truth. At the worst, it leads to self-deception. How then can the "literal" meaning of Scripture lead to the "spiritual"?
        It was left to Thomas Aquinas to propose a way out of this impasse-which he conceived in terms of his own Aristotelian metaphysics and epistemology. Thomas believed that the senses played an important and necessary role in knowledge, which vas based on the knowledge of concrete, historical reality. He was, therefore, quite ready to admit that the author of a biblical text could not know all that the text itself would later come to mean in God's providence, as history unfolded. That original meaning is the "literal" sense. It is normative and must never be abandoned or contradicted. Later interpreters, being in a relatively privileged position because they know later history, can and should interpret the text according to the meaning learned from that history and from their present circumstances. This is the "spiritual" meaning of the text. The use of a text in order to derive such "spiritual" meanings is quite legitimate and even necessary, for without it the text would remain in the past, and not directly apply to different circumstances. Yet only the "literal" meaning has final authority, in the sense that it requires acceptance by all and can thus serve as the basis for theological argument.

The literal sense was defined as the sacred writer's full original meaning. It included the whole message which he meant to convey at the prompting of his inspiration for the benefit of his public whether present or future .... The spiritual sense was defined as the meaning which God, the chief author of Scripture and of the events it describes, had put into sacred history. The sacred writers, who took part in it, could not understand a significance which had not yet been revealed. Their successors would discern it in the light of subsequent revelation. Thomas deduced from his premise that no argument could be drawn from the spiritual interpretation, but only from the literal. The spiritual could be used for edification of the faithful, but not for proof.
The Thomist definition gained general acceptance, hesitating at first in some quarters, but later carrying conviction. It disposed of the difficulties arising from metaphor and prophecy and focused interest on the writer's original meaning. It restricted the use of moralities in political propaganda, where they caused most muddle . . . . On the other hand, lecturers made free with Thomas's permission to use the spiritual senses for edification. What master would have cared to deprive his pupils of instruction in the technique of preaching? Allegories and moralities, no longer "higher" or "nobler," remained indispensable. They would last in exegesis just as long as the medieval sermon lasted (27).

Catholic Interpreters. The scholastic reading of Scripture, and even much of the scholastic method that was closely associated with it, continued in the work of a number of Catholic theologians, much of whose work was quite independent from anti-Protestant polemics, such as the great Dominican professor at Salamanca, Domingo Banez (1528-1604). At the same university, another Dominican scholar, [100] Francisco de Vitoria (1492-1546) applied the traditional scholastic method to an entirely new theological problem in his lectures On the Indians. Thomas de Vio Cajetan (1468-1534), who became involved in the issues regarding the Protestant Reformation because he was papal legate to Germany when the Reformation erupted, developed much of his theology along traditional lines. His Commentaries on the Summa, published from 1507 to 1522, in general reflect the same exegetical and hermeneutical methods that Thomas Aquinas had developed.
        As anti-Protestant polemics came to the foreground in Catholic theology, the scholastic method proved particularly useful. Here was a method whose characteristic reading of Scripture was doctrinal and polemical. In its traditional form, it had developed subtle distinctions and had even created disagreement and debate where there was none, for the very sake of its method. Now that some of the central doctrines of Christianity were debated, most traditional theologians sought to refute the reformers by means of a similar method. In the polemical writings of theologians like John Eck (1486-1543), James Hochstraten (1460-1527), and James Latomus (1475-1544), one can see the scholastic method of reading Scripture, now applied to the task of refuting the doctrines of Protestantism.
        It was the thrust of anti-Protestant polemics that led the Council of Trent (1545-63) to its two major decisions regarding the Bible and its authority (29). (The Council also defined the canon of Scripture, but this was not then at issue between Protestants and Catholics; in any case, all that it did in this respect was to ratify the decisions of the earlier Council of Florence.)
        The most momentous declaration of Trent regarding Scripture had to do with its authority vis-a-vis the authority of tradition. In this regard, the Council decreed that on matters of faith and morals the books of Scripture were to be held "in equal devotion and reverence" with the tradition of the church. Almost one fourth of those present at the Council would have preferred the use of the word similar rather than equal, but they were outvoted. It also appears that most of those who voted for the final decree did not intend to say that tradition was an independent, or even a parallel, source of Christian doctrine, but simply that Scripture should always be interpreted in agreement with it. In any case, this decree left its mark on Roman Catholic biblical interpretation, at least until Vatican II reopened the issue. This, however, did not mean that all was settled, for it is quite clear that there are many different and even contradictory elements in Christian tradition; thus there was still ample room for argument and disagreement. What it did mean was that the theological and hermeneutical debate would often turn away from Scripture to the issue of what tradition actually held - theologians who disagreed on the meaning of a biblical text were to settle their differences, not exclusively or even primarily by examining the text itself, but by searching the tradition. It was also unclear how far that tradition extended. Most Protestant theologians agreed on granting at least a measure of authority to the patristic tradition, as illumining the meaning of the biblical text. But the Council of Trent, and particularly its more extremist interpreters, understood by "tradition" all the teachings and declarations of the church and its teachers, including those of the medieval scholastics and even the present magisterium of the church.
        The second momentous decision of the Council of Trent was its declaration that the Vg edition of Scripture was to be "taken as authentic in public readings, disputations, preaching, and exposition." The Council issued this decree as a response to those reformers who based some of their arguments on the original Greek and Hebrew texts of the Bible, and also to the proliferation of vernacular translations that seemed to undercut a number of doctrines based on the Vg. The mood of the more conservative elements in the Council was expressed by a Spanish cardinal who declared that vernacular translations were "mothers of heresy" and should, therefore, be forbidden-or at least limited to less dangerous books like Psalms and Acts. Although his extreme position did not win the day at Trent, soon many among the more conservative Catholics interpreted and applied the decrees of the Council along those lines.
        Strictly speaking, the Council left much room for maneuvering: It did not determine which of the many variant Latin texts were to be regarded as authentic; it reaffirmed the authority of the Hebrew and Greek texts; and it neither precluded nor prohibited new translations. Yet, partially as a response to the concern of those who feared that vernacular [101] translations would result in heresy, the Council ordered that such vernacular versions be published with explanatory notes. The main purpose of these notes vas to ensure that the biblical text was interpreted according to the teachings of the church. (As a reaction to this policy, Protestant Bible societies developed their own policy to publish the Bible "without notes.") In practical terms, this conciliar decision tended to limit the freedom of biblical scholars and interpreters. As the Roman Catholic Church became more conservative, and its translations of the Bible into the various vernacular languages were based on the Vg instead of the original languages, Catholic believers throughout the world were placed at a decided disadvantage to Protestants.
        This does not mean that biblical scholarship ceased. On the contrary, the quest for the original text and its meaning continued and even flourished after the end of the Middle Ages. The fall of Constantinople (1453) brought to Western Europe a flood of Greek manuscripts and scholars, which led to a revival in Greek studies in the West. The invention of the movable-type printing press made scholars increasingly aware of the degree to which manuscripts had been corrupted as they were copied and recopied, and for the first time provided the opportunity to produce multiple copies of an identical text. The result was a veritable flood of critical editions of ancient texts.
        The scholar whose name has become indissolubly united with this movement is Erasmus of Rotterdam. He tended to read the Bible much as the earlier monastic tradition had done, as a source of wisdom and moral inspiration. Yet it was not his interpretation of the Bible, but his more scholarly work on its actual text, that proved to be most significant. His edition of the Greek NT, published in 1516, marked a new age in biblical scholarship. In 1520, a group of scholars at the university of Alcala in Spain, under the direction of Cardinal Francisco Ximenes de Cisneros, published the Complutensian Polyglot Bible, which included texts in Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, and Latin. Ximenes himself was aware of the impact such studies could have on theology, for on receiving the first volume of this Bible he declared that it "opens the sacred sources of our religion, from which will flow a theology much purer than any derived from less direct sources" (30) - a view that, had it been professed a generation later, would have been declared to be heretical. Even after the anti-Protestant reaction had made statements such as Ximenes' questionable, Catholic scholars continued this tradition of biblical scholarship. In 1568-72, Benito Arias Montano, at the behest of Philip II, published in Antwerp a polyglot Bible that included texts in Hebrew, Greek, and Syriac as well as a literal Latin translation. In 1597, the sixteen volumes of Alfonso Salmeron's Commentaries on the New Testament were published posthumously; Salmeron was one of the original companions of Ignatius in the founding of the Jesuits. Although the seventeenth century did not see an equal production of Catholic biblical scholarship, the tradition continued until it once more came to the foreground in modern times.

Protestant Interpreters. All of these traditions of biblical scholarship and interpretation merged and took new forms in Martin Luther. As an Augustinian canon, he had learned and always continued to practice the medieval monastic tradition of reading Scripture for wisdom and edification. As a doctor and professor of Bible, he was well aware and made use of the scholarly and philological work of Erasmus and his medieval predecessors. As a reformer, he soon found himself involved in controversies that forced him to read Scripture as a source of doctrine and knowledge - although he never did this after the manner of the scholastics.
        The study and interpretation of the Bible was one of Luther's paramount concerns even before the beginning of the Reformation. Luther's other main concern, which soon coalesced with his biblical interpretation, was the quest for redemption and its meaning. A modern scholar has correctly assessed the importance of biblical interpretation for Luther in declaring that "it was as a Biblical theologian that Luther understood himself and wanted others, both his friends and his enemies, to understand him .... It was as a Biblical theologian that he took up polemics. In fact, it was as a Biblical theologian that he became the Reformer (31)."
        Although Luther has become famous for his principle of sola scriptura, it is important to note that for him the "Word of God" was much more than Scripture. According to the Bible itself, the Word of God is none other than God: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1 NRSV). Furthermore, the Word is God in action. When God speaks, God does. "God said, `Let there be . . . ' and there was" (see Genesis I ). What this means is that God's Word, more than mere information that can be contained in a written page, is action - creative and redemptive action. This action comes to us primarily in Jesus Christ, and comes to us through history. Although Christ is also the cosmic Second Person of the Trinity, it is in his historical act of redemption, and in the community of the faithful, that we come to know him. Thus the Word of God comes to us primarily as an act of redemption - even though that Word has already been active in the world since the very act of creation. For these reasons, although Luther held great respect for the Bible, insisting on its primary and unique authority, for him the Bible is the Word of God in a derivative sense, because it contains the record of the actions of the Word of God on our behalf.
        This provided Luther with an argument against those who declared that, since the church had determined the canon of Scripture, the church had authority over the Bible. It is also the reason why many of Luther's statements regarding Scripture prove so shocking to those who hold to biblical inerrancy. As to the first, Luther simply declared that it was not the church, but the gospel, that produced the Bible. All the church did was to recognize the gospel in certain books, and not in others. Ultimately, the gospel -t he redemptive action of God - is above bath the church and the Bible. For the same reason, those who hold fast to the inerrancy of Scripture, even at the expense of the gospel, are themselves in error, for they read the Bible as a book of information about the world and about God rather than as a book of gospel and redemption. "Luther recognized mistakes and inconsistencies in Scripture and treated them with lofty indifference because they did not touch the heart of the Gospel (32)." It is for this reason that he can declare that James is "an epistle of straw," for he cannot find the gospel in it. It is also for that reason that he feels free to apply the methods of scholarship to the biblical text, with no fear that it will thereby lose its authority.
        When reading the Bible for edification, and even for non-polemical theological argument, Luther's reading is often typological, and may even lapse into allegory. Yet he also agreed with Thomas Aquinas that when it came to theological debate only the literal meaning should be employed. Hence, "Luther's insistence that in a theological controversy, where proof rather than mere illustration was needed, only the precise meaning of a Scriptural text was to be used. He did not mean that it was altogether illegitimate to use Scriptural passages for the illustration of a point analogous to their meaning. His sermons and commentaries abounded with instances of just such use, some of them skillful, others humorous. But he put such use of the Scriptures into the same category as allegory. It was legitimate for illumination, not for support (33)."
        Calvin also insisted on the need to ascertain the historical meaning of a text. Given his humanistic and legal training, he did this much more consistently, and with a more critical approach, than Luther. "Calvin like Luther was quite ready to recognize manifest error in the New Testament, in a citation from the Old Testament and in matters of chronology (34)." From the humanists, he learned the need to establish the original text, and to read it in its historical context, before seeking to apply it to contemporary debates. From the tradition of legal scholarship, he learned the principle of accommodation: God's revelation, like human laws, was always given in a way suitable to its historical and human context (35). It was the interpreter's task to clarify its meaning, both in its original setting and in the interpreter's own setting.
        Some of the lesser figures of the Reformation did insist on the absolute inerrancy of Scripture. Andreas Osiander, for instance, sought to reconcile the diverse accounts of particular events in the various gospels by claiming that every account that differed from the others in any detail must refer to a different event (36). Since the Lord's Prayer in Matthew is different from that in Luke, Jesus must have taught two different prayers. And, since the number of fishes, loaves, and leftover baskets are not the same in any two Gospel accounts, Jesus must have fed a different multitude in each of those accounts.
        The literalism of the Anabaptists proved a greater challenge than that of Osiander and others like him, [103] for it had serious political and ecclesiastical implications. While the various Anabaptist groups differed on many points of doctrine, they all tended to agree that the practices of the church in the NT ought to be followed to the letter. This included not only believers' baptism, which soon became the trademark of Anabaptists, but also the relationship between the church and society at large. In the NT, the church is a persecuted community. Most theologians in the sixteenth century held the traditional view that this was a matter of historical circumstance. Not so the Anabaptists, who held that when Christians are truly faithful they will necessarily be persecuted, because their views, values, and mores will clash with those of society at large. The reason why believers' baptism became so important was precisely that baptism was supposed to indicate a radical break with that society, and infants were incapable of making that decision. Infant baptism takes for granted that those who grow up in a Christian society will be Christians. The Anabaptists did not believe that there was such a thing as a Christian society. The NT speaks of a church that clashes with the world, and that is, therefore, part of the very nature of the church. To claim otherwise would be to declare the NT to be no longer valid for the church.
        By the seventeenth century, much of the freshness of Luther and Calvin had been lost. Given the emphasis the great reformers had placed on Scripture, it was unavoidable that their followers would develop detailed theories as to its inspiration and authority. The Protestant scholastics of the seventeenth century insisted on the "full" and "verbal" inspiration of Scripture. Full inspiration means that everything in the Bible - even those things that the authors knew by natural means - is directly inspired by God. Paul knew by natural means about the money sent by the Philippians. But the Holy Spirit inspired what he wrote to them about it, just as the Holy Spirit inspired what he had to say about the meaning of the cross. Furthermore, the Spirit inspired the exact words the authors were to use, and this is what is meant by "verbal" inspiration. If one notes a difference in style between various authors, this is due to the Spirit's taking such differences into account, and dictating to each author different words according to what would have been the natural style of each. By the early eighteenth century, Lutheran theologian David Hollaz claimed that the vocalization points in the Masoretic text of the OT were just as inspired as the Sermon on the Mount. Similar developments took place among theologians of the Reformed tradition, where Francois Turretin (1623-87) declared that not only was the vocalization of the OT inspired, but also the Holy Spirit had kept later copies safe from all error (37).
        Partly as a reaction to scholasticism, a series of movements appeared, emphasizing the need for personal piety rather than strict, cold orthodoxy. Pietists, Moravians, Methodists, and many who participated in the Great Awakenings in the United States were all convinced that the Bible should be read primarily as a guide to Christian life and piety. Most of them were orthodox in their beliefs and did accept the authority of the Bible in doctrinal matters. For them, however, the main reason why Christians should read the Bible was not so much to discover and clarify obscure points of doctrine, but to illumine their own lives. In some ways, the approach of many a Methodist to the Bible was reminiscent of the approach of a medieval monk: The Bible should be read in a disciplined fashion, in a context of prayer and devotion, and with the purpose of improving the quality of one's discipleship.
        Typical of this approach to Scripture are the words of John Wesley in the Preface to his Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament:

If you desire to read the Scriptures in such a manner as may most effectually answer this end [of holiness], it would be advisable: (1) To set apart a little time, if you can, every morning and evening for that purpose. (2) At each time, if you have leisure, to read a chapter out of the Old, and one out of the New, Testament .... (3) To read this with a single eye, to know the whole will of God, and have a fixed resolution to do it. In order to do know his will, you should, (4) Have a constant eye to the analogy of faith .... (5) Serious and earnest prayer should be constantly used before we consult the oracles of God .... (6) It might also be of use, if, while we read, we were frequently to pause and examine ourselves by what we read (38).

No period of Christian theology has been as radically exposed to a consistent attempt to relive the theology of its first adherents. The ideal of an empathetic understanding of the first century without borrowing categories from later times has never been an ideal before, nor have the comparative sources for such an adventure been as close at hand and as well analyzed. There have always been bits and pieces of an appeal to the original meaning over against different later dogmas and practices of the church .... But never before was there a frontal nonpragmatic, nonapologetic attempt to describe OT or NT faith and practice from within its original presuppositions (44).