Reformation of the Literal

<p><b>What does it mean to read the Bible 'literally'? Recent debates on the Protestant reformers have focused on whether they were stridently literal interpreters or maintained a place for allegorical readings. However in this nuanced book Lundeen argues that the question of what in fact constituted the Bible's literal sense was also a key question in early modern debates.</b> <p/>There is no clean binary of literal versus allegorical; instead reformers subtly produced a variety of competing literalisms. There was not one literal sense in the Reformation but many. <p/>To make this case Lundeen comparatively analyzes Reformation-era commentaries on the prophet Isaiah. He further highlights the little-known but influential works of the Basel reformer Johannes Oecolampadius who was the first Christian to publish commentaries on most of the biblical prophets in the sixteenth century. <p/>By placing Oecolampadius in conversation with a host of his better-known Christian and Jewish predecessors and contemporaries this book reframes a central aspect of Reformation-era biblical exegesis while also providing a constructive resource for those who seek to read the Bible's ancient prophets as Christian scripture today.</p>