Volume 2, Issue 1

This article examines Thomas Aquinas’ interpretation of Galatians 3:28 in his commentaries on the Pauline letters with an eye to Alisdair MacIntyre’s notion of “tradition-constituted enquiry.” An analysis of Aquinas’ multiple references to Gal 3:28 in his lectures on Paul reveal a consistent, theologically complex interpretation of this verse in terms of the regenerative grace of baptism in the rational soul, which is common to all human beings and prior to their differences. Aquinas’ reception of Paul demonstrates some convergences with MacIntyre’s account of “tradition-constituted enquiry,” suggesting further consideration of the latter as a helpful conceptual resource for reception history.

Though best known for its “cookbook” portion, the Menagier de Paris contains a wide miscellany of information. Written by a man for his fifteen-year-old wife, it teaches her to be a good wife in every sense of the word. It includes a treatise on the seven deadly sins and stories of good and bad women, many of which are drawn from the Bible. Recent scholarship has shown that contrary to long-standing assumptions, the Bible was widely known and read by the laity of the Middle Ages, especially in France and the Low Countries. The Menagier provides further support for these observations, as well as a fleshed-out example of how one member of the bourgeoisie interacted with the biblical text. Using the biblical text and commentaries, the author clearly interprets the church's teachings so as to fit his own lay context. He is unafraid to add to the biblical text in order to bring his characters to life or strengthen his points. The author of the Menagier is only one person, but he demonstrates the degree of devotion to and familiarity with the Bible that was possible for laymen of the late Middle Ages.

The Testament of Job is a Hellenistic reception of the biblical Book of Job written sometime between the first century BCE and first century CE. This paper is attentive to Hellenistic notions of the masculine ideal as one fused with notions of virtue, where gender corresponds to virtue more than to anatomy. Masculinity is a continuum on which one’s masculinity and virtuousness is subject to slippage. It is this dynamic that energizes and dramatizes the narrative of the Testament of Job : Job is engaged in a wrestling match to demonstrate his virtue, and to prevail over weakness and traits associated with femininity.

This paper examines the reception of Psalm 40 by Igor Stravinsky in the second movement of his “Symphony of Psalms” and by U2 in their song “40,” the final track on their 1983 album War. Though both limit their reception to only the first three verses of the psalm, their appropriation of the text indicates two different interpretations of the psalm within the Canon. Stravinsky places the verses between the concluding verses of Psalm 39 and the entirety of Psalm 150, the result of which is a typical personal lament psalm made up of lament, petition, assurance, and praise—a very different structure than the canonical Psalm 40's assurance followed by lament. U2's appropriation, on the other hand, is arguably more faithful to the text of the canonical Psalm 40 in that its concluding lyrics hearken back to the harrowing opening track of their album, the “lament” “Sunday Bloody Sunday.” The paper concludes by arguing that both Stravinsky and U2 remain faithful to the spirit of the psalter as a whole by re-appropriating the words of the psalmist for each musician's own Sitz I’m Leben.

This essay surveys a generation of scholarship since the death of Beryl Smalley, pioneer in the study of the medieval reception of the bible, in 1984. We try to give a fair representation of work produced in English, French, German, and Italian over the last thirty years. We report on: 1) editions, tools, and translations, 2) surveys and synthetic treatments, 3) work on medieval biblical hermeneutics, 4) studies of periods and individuals, 5) thematic studies and studies of biblical books and pericopes across broad periods, and 6) comparative work on Muslim, Jewish, and Christian exegesis. We describe a rapidly growing quantity of knowledge and expanding perspectives on biblical interpretation in medieval culture. We conclude with suggestions for future research.