A Bible contains much beyond its scripture: introductions, explanations, illustrations, organisational material, and more besides that facilitates our engagement with the text—and which may serve its own purposes besides. In reading the Bible we rarely forge an unmediated encounter with the scripture, but must read around it, beyond it, above and beneath it: reading the body alongside its margins. This book seeks to answer how readers of early modern bibles specifically read—and wrote about—their margins: headings, indexes, summaries, glosses, and other notes. Across editorial, clerical, lay, professional, and literary readers, this book demonstrates the diverse reading practices of those who pursued the margins of the early modern Bible. Though the notes that fill these margins have been traditionally lambasted as seditious and traitorous, this assumption is not corroborated by the reality of their use. This book attends to the actual use of these notes and demonstrates how a diverse early modern populace read the margins of the Bible and the impact this had on its interpretation. From William Tyndale’s New Testament to the impact of the King James Version, this monograph reconceptualises our understanding of biblical margins and how the bible was read, with repercussions for early modern scholarship across history, literature, and theology.
Online ISBN:9780198931607Print ISBN:9780197267677Publisher:British Academy
ContentsIntroduction 1 Directing Readers 2 Editors as Readers 3 Clerical Readers 4 Catholic Readers 5 Literary Readers Coda End Matter
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