ABSTRACT
No single book could ever pretend to cover all the aspects - cultural, intellectual, spiritual, exegetical, linguistic, social and even polemical - of the history of the Bible in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This volume, the product of a conference on the subject, makes no pretence of being all-embracing, consisting as it does of a series of 'soundings', from different countries and from differing points of view, which produce a series of insights into some of the major issues involved. These issues include the interface between classical learning and the translation and interpretation of the text; the blurred nature of the transition between medieval and modern when it came to methods of exegesis; the complication, at times, of distinguishing between Catholics and Reformers in their attitudes towards the Bible; the ways in which the reading, translation and interpretation of the Bible could serve the specific and often practical aims of those involved; the social, political and religious impact of the translations of the Bible in the sixteenth century; and the issue (crossing the Reformation lines) of the extent to which the Bible should be available to the people, and the extent to which they needed to be led in their interpretation of it. This introduction is an attempt to recapture the debates that took place at the conference, after the individual contributions - debates which revealed the recurrence of these major issues from paper to paper.
