The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in Early Modern England C.1530-1700

The Bible was, by any measure, the most important book in early modern England. It preoccupied the scholarship of the era, and suffused the idioms of literature and speech. Political ideas rode on its interpretation and deployed its terms. It was intricately related to the project of natural philosophy. And it was central to daily life at all levels of society from parliamentarian to preacher, from the 'boy that driveth the plough', famously invoked by Tyndale, to women across the social scale. It circulated in texts ranging from elaborate folios to cheap catechisms; and it was mediated in numerous forms, as pictures, songs, and embroideries; and as proverbs, commonplaces, and quotations.

Bringing together leading scholars from a range of fields, The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in Early Modern England, 1530-1700 explores how the scriptures served as a generative motor for ideas, and a resource for creative and political thought, as well as for domestic and devotional life.

Sections tackle the knotty issues of translation, the rich range of early modern biblical scholarship, Bible dissemination and circulation, the changing political uses of the Bible, literary appropriations and responses, and the reception of the text across a range of contexts and media. Where existing scholarship focuses, typically, on Tyndale and the King James Bible of 1611,The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in England, 1530-1700 goes further, tracing the vibrant and shifting landscape of biblical culture in the two centuries following the Reformation.

Kevin Killeen, Senior Lecturer, University of York,Helen Smith, Reader, University of York,Rachel Judith Willie,Lecturer, University of Bangor

Kevin Killeen in Senior Lecturer in Renaissance Studies at the University of York. He has editedSir Thomas Browne: 21st Century Authors (OUP, 2014), and is author of Biblical Scholarship, Science and Politics in Early Modern England: Thomas Browne and the Thorny Place of Knowledge (Ashgate, 2009; winner of the CCUE Book Prize, 2010) and co-editor, with Peter Forshaw, ofBiblical Exegesis and the Emergence of Science in the Early Modern Era (Palgrave, 2007). He is currently completing a monograph entitled 'The Political Bible in Early Modern England' and is editing two volumes for The Oxford Works of Sir Thomas Browne.


Helen Smith is Reader in Renaissance Literature at the University of York. She is author ofGrossly Material Things: Women and Book Production in Early Modern England (OUP, 2012; winner of the SHARP DeLong Book History Prize, 2013, and the Roland H. Bainton Literature Prize, 2013), and co-editor, with Louise Wilson, ofRenaissance Paratexts (CUP, 2011). Helen is PI on the AHRC research network, 'Imagining Jerusalem, c. 1099 to the Present Day'. She is currently co-editing, with Simon Ditchfield, 'Conversions: Gender and Religious Change in Early Modern Europe', and completing a monograph on early modern ideas of matter and their material expressions.


Rachel Willie is Lecturer in English at Bangor University. She is author of Staging the Revolution: Drama, Reinvention and History, 1647-1672 (Manchester University Press). She has published on Milton, Charles I and martyrological discourse, and print and publishing in the nascent public sphere.