Biblical Interpretation in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION FROM THE EARLY SIXTEENTH THROUGH the late seventeenth century

is separated from medieval exegesis by the philological advances associated with the Renais-sance and by the theological and ecclesiological developments associated with the Reforma-tion. In relative contrast with patristic and medieval exegesis, the exegetical efforts of the six-teenth and seventeenth centuries rested on a profound recourse to the biblical text in its original languages and on an increased focus on the literal sense of the text. Still, the interpre-tive efforts of the Reformers (their successors) and their Roman Catholic contemporaries be-long to the so-called precritical model. Medieval interest in the meaning of the text for faith, love and hope (the three spiritual directions of the quadriga or allegorical method) finds par-allels in the sermons and commentaries of the Reformers, as does the traditional sense of the unity of the scriptural message as grounded in the inspiration of the prophets and apostles by the divine Author. Even so, the exegetical work of the Reformers cannot easily be detached from the work of their successors: there is continuity of interpretive principles and of textual assumptions, just as there is continuity in exegetical result between the commentators of the sixteenth and those of the seventeenth century. The Era of the Reformatio