Book Blurb: Dictionary of Major Biblical Interpreters
December 21st, 2007 by Danny ZachariasAnother homerun for InterVarsity Press has recently been released. The IVP New Testament dictionaries are absolutely invaluable to me, and I’m very happy to now have this dictionary on my shelf as well.
This is a revised, updated, and expanded version of the Historical Handbook of Major Biblical Interpreters
Dictionary of Major Biblical Interpreters
Edited by Donald K. McKim
2007
IVP, 1106 pages
Purchase from Amazon.COM or Amazon.CA
Here is the TOC:
Part 1: Biblical Interpretation through the Centuries
- Biblical Interpretation in the Early Church
- Biblical Interpretation in the Middle Ages
- Biblical Interpretation in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
- Biblical Interpretation in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
- Biblical Interpretation in Europe in the Twentieth Century
- Biblical Interpretation in North America in the Twentieth Century
Part 2: Major Biblical Interpreters
- Dictionary Articles (over 200 of them)
- Index of Persons
- Index of Subjects
- Index of Articles
Here are just a few of the 13 glowing endorsements on the dust jacket:
“This is an instructive, thought-provoking, generous-minded, reliable, absorbing, illuminating and imaginative work, often elegant, entertaining, incisive and provocative. It covers a remarkable galaxy of names, and it is written by people from a wide range of backgrounds, many of them world experts on their subject. Why did no one think of writing it before?”—John Goldingay
“Anyone interested in the history of interpretation–which today should include all of us–will profit from and appreciate this substantive volume, whose articles, unlike those in so many handbooks and dictionaries, are consistently of high quality. This revised edition, with its many new entries, is an advance beyond its excellent predecessor, and the generous and updated bibliographies will be of great assistance to those wishing to pursue further research.” —Dale C. Allison
“Ten years after the appearance of its well-received predecessor, the Dictionary of Major Biblical Interpreters joins the ranks of InterVarsity Press’s flagship series of reference works. Here is an excellent selection of entries covering a greatly expanded sweep of influential commentators ancient and modern, Catholic and Protestant, ‘conservative’ and ‘progressive,’ often contextualized with illuminating biographical information. The well-documented, often substantive essays benefit from an impressive international team of authors, many of whom are themselves representative of the state of the art of contemporary biblical interpretation. Serious students of the story of biblical interpretation will do well to clear another four inches on their reference shelf for this latest InterVarsity Press dictionary.” —Markus Bockmuehl
“The Scriptures, Old and New Testaments, have been the most thoroughly studied literary documents in the history of civilization. And sometimes the interpreters are almost as interesting as the texts they are reading. All who take the interpretation of the Bible seriously in our day will welcome this volume. After six historical essays, this volume introduces readers to more than two hundred of the most significant biblical interpreters, from the patristic period to modern times. By discussing each interpreter under four headings (context, life and work, interpretive principles, significance) and then concluding with a bibliography of the person’s most significant writings, modern interpreters are invited into the studies and the lives of their predecessors. This is far and away the finest introduction to the colorful characters that have determined how scholars and laypeople have read the Bible for the past two thousand years. Bravo, InterVarsity Press!” —Daniel I. Block
IVP is also offering a sample of one of the introductory chapters, Biblical Interpretation in the Middle Ages, as well as a sample entry, this one on Martin Luther.
This is an item you are going to want to have handy for many years to come.