Modeled on Zürich: a fresh study of Miles Coverdale’s 1535 Bible

The publisher addresses his customers: a detail from the opening of Froschauer's remarks on the differences between the 1534 Zurich Bible and its antecedent.

Developed from the appendices to my doctoral thesis, this article in the journal Reformation was published as part of a special issue, in memory of the great Tyndale scholar David Daniell (1929-2016). Scholars have often assumed that the 1534 Zurich Bible was simply a reprint of the 1531 edition. This is a false assumption. Indeed, the differences are sufficient to prove that the first English bible in print had a manifest dependency on the later version, demonstrable in spite of the fact that Coverdale used other sources. The argument is necessarily forensic, the careful groundwork enabling subsequent illustration of Coverdale’s own agency as a translator.

Continue reading “Modeled on Zürich: a fresh study of Miles Coverdale’s 1535 Bible”

How to govern differently

It seems that caring for other websites led me to neglect this personal one. So I’m belatedly documenting some of the intervening time, and–as I sometimes do–preparing a backdated post to keep things in some kind of chronological sequence.

When I first began work with the Jam and Justice team, the post was a 9-month filler, with a view to obtaining follow-on funding to develop some of the Linguistic DNA resources for use with schools. Continue reading “How to govern differently”

The Quest for Biblical Literacy

Curricula, Culture and Case Studies

Book cover for
Rethinking Biblical Literacy (2015)

ABSTRACT
A companion piece to the 2011 Postscripts article, this invited chapter contextualises recent discourse about biblical literacy, its decline and its desirability, by examining past statements about and measures of biblical literacy and looking at who the stakeholders are. One can usefully distinguish between those advocating knowledge of the Bible for religious purposes (the pursuit of “scriptural literacy”) and those who present it as culturally important, in terms of heritage or the ability to make Continue reading “The Quest for Biblical Literacy”

Practi[s]ing Biblical Literacy

Case Studies from the Sheffield Conference

With Nicky Hallett (University of Sheffield, UK), Carl Tighe (Derby University, UK), and José Luis Lopez Calle (Universidad Valladolid / Carlos III University, Madrid, Spain).

ABSTRACT:
When and how does the Bible enter the classroom? In May 2011, the department of Biblical Studies at the University of Sheffield hosted a conference on the role of the Bible in secondary and higher education. This paper addresses the notion of biblical literacy, providing an account of the emergent practices discussed, with in-depth treatment of three case studies. The examples are drawn from the fields of English Literature, Economics, and Creative Writing. The different role of the Bible in education in North American and British contexts is also considered, and the article concludes with considerations for future collaboration.

Keywords: Biblical Literacy; Creative Writing; Economics; English Literature; Higher Education; King James Version; Religious Education; Secondary Education; Curriculum.

Published in:
Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds, 7.2 (2011) pp. 173-196. DOI: 10.1558/post.v7i2.173