I’ve been waiting years for a book such as this: a comprehensive treatment of the nature, history, and significance of the Bible’s literal interpretation. Here is a sustained argument for the importance of reading with the Reformers, which in Provan’s account means doing as they say, not exactly as they do. This is a brave book that sails against the prevailing winds of hermeneutical fashion, charting a ‘fifth way’ that avoids reductive historical, expansive postmodern, narrow literalistic, and unregulated spiritual ways of reading the Bible. Read literally, Scripture is not a wax nose that can be turned this way or that, but a divinely inspired, authoritative text with real bite.
~Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Research Professor of Systematic Theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
Using the magisterial Reformation for his compass, Provan surveys the current landscape of biblical interpretation and seeks to chart a faithful path forward. His sprawling, historiographical cartography explores the trails taken by those he styles as inveterate historical critics, unrepentant fundamentalists, modish postmoderns, and fashionable post-Protestants, all so he can offer a timely affirmation of ‘literal’ reading, rightly understood. Provan’s ‘fifth way’ entails a chastened, reframed use of critical methods, rather than capitulating to them or rejecting them. His ultimate destination is a renewed emphasis on ‘the Great Biblical Story as a canonical whole.’
~Stephen B. Chapman, Associate Professor of Old Testament and Director of Graduate Studies in Religion, Duke University
Iain Provan has given us here a vigorous affirmation on how to read the Bible as a Protestant. An important and nuanced argument set in the context of the wider Christian tradition and recent hermeneutical developments, this book stands out among the welter of recent writings on the Reformation.
~Timothy George, Dean, Beeson Divinity School at Samford University and general editor of the Reformation Commentary on Scripture
This prodigiously well-read, well-written, elegant, and accessible study has a passionate and serious treatise to expound. As its title hints, it is not another book on the history of interpretation, except in the sense that Professor Provan believes that the history of interpretation, especially in the time of the Fathers and the Reformers, has vital significance for the twenty-first century. So, we need to pay attention if we are to get interpretation on the right track five hundred years after Luther posted his theses. Aspects of Professor Provan’s own thesis about literal interpretation are unfashionable and therefore need to be pondered with open minds.
~John Goldingay, David Allan Hubbard Professor of Old Testament, Fuller Theological Seminary
Iain Provan's new work is an impressive and timely book with an ambitious purpose–nothing less than an elucidation and defence of a reformed hermeneutic of Scripture in relation to the whole history of Bible interpretation, both pre- and post-Reformation. In it he defends a literal reading of Scripture, which he defines in terms of the dynamic relation of both the letter of the text and the communicative intentions of its human (and divine) authors.
~Simon Burton, Expository Times
In the Reformation, the inspiration and authority of the Bible—its perspicuity, efficacy, and sufficiency—came to the fore. For the present generation that has lost its confidence in the Bible, Iain Provan’s book has recaptured and recovered the internal structure and logic of the Reformation hermeneutic, with its emphasis on the literal sense
~Dennis Ngien, Renaissance and Reformation
As a source for learning about the history of biblical interpretation, this book covers an impressive amount of material. Ten chapters examine interpretive issues addressed by Christians in the early church and the Middle Ages, five chapters cover the interpretive goals and methods of the reformers and early modern Protestants, and six chapters evaluate contemporary movements in biblical hermeneutics such as form criticism, narrative criticism, and the canonical reading of scripture.
~Martin Lohrmann, Lutheran Quarterly
…Nothing short of a tour de force.
~Roger L. Revell, Journal of Reformed Theology
The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture is a laudable attempt to reform and revive Protestant hermeneutics by bringing contemporary biblical interpretation into conversation with the core convictions of both the reformers and their medieval and patristic antecedents.
~Jonathan Reimer, First Things
On the whole, Provan’s work is an admirably broad and serious attempt to define and recover the literal interpretation of Scripture. He displays a wide-ranging and impressive knowledge of the history of biblical interpretation that one wishes were found among more biblical scholars. Indeed, Part I of Provan’s book could easily be required reading in a graduate-level course on hermeneutics or the history of exegesis.
~Erik Lundeen, Themelios
In this massive, wellorganized volume, Provan argues in an erudite, all-sweeping way what he calls the 'seriously literal interpretation' of Scripture (20, 639), namely, a 'reformed' (lowercase) approach of reading the Scripture which is 'consistent with magisterial Reformation principles and practices' that are 'both rooted in pre-Reformation biblical hermeneutics and embraced in post-Reformation, non-Protestant Christianity' (21). The right way of reading the Scripture, which Provan identifies as the 'fifth way,' is to read the biblical text according to its literal sense given that we properly understand what 'literal' means in each biblical instance.
~Vincent Kam, Concordia Journal
