Biblical Scholarship and the Church: A Sixteenth-century Crisis of Authority

The rediscovery in the West of the original languages of the Bible gave rise in the early sixteenth century to a new interest in linguistic biblical scholarship. The question of where authority lay in relation to the translation and interpretation of the Bible became a key issue in the Reformation debate. This book explores the recurrent tension between scholarly approaches to the translation and interpretation of the Bible, and the authority of the Church and the place of the Bible in the life of the Church. Examining the issues as they re-emerged in the first half of the sixteenth century following the publication of Erasmus' Greek-Latin New Testament of 1516, the authors contrast the situation in England, where Reformation issues were dominant, and Italy, where the authority of Rome was never in question. Focusing particularly on the dispute between Thomas More and William Tyndale in England, and between Ambrosius Catharinus and Cardinal Cajetan in Italy, this book brings together perspectives from biblical studies and church history and provides access to texts not previously translated into English.