The Reformation period
The English theologian John Colet (c. 1466–1519) broke with medieval scholasticism when he returned from the Continent to Oxford in 1496 and lectured on the Pauline letters, expounding the text in terms of its plain meaning as seen in its historical context. The humanist Erasmus (c. 1466–1536) owed to him much of his insight into biblical exegesis. By the successive printed editions of his Greek New Testament (1516 and following), Erasmus made his principal, but not his only, contribution to biblical studies.
Martin Luther (1483–1546) was a voluminous expositor, insisting on the primacy of the literal sense and dismissing allegory as so much rubbish—although he indulged in it himself on occasion. The core of scripture was to him its proclamation of Christ as the one in whom alone lay man’s justification before God. John Calvin (1509–64), a more systematic expositor, served his apprenticeship by writing a youthful commentary on the Roman statesman and philosopher Seneca the Younger’s (c. 4 bc–ad 65) De clementia (“Concerning Mercy”); systematic theologian though he was, he did not allow his theological system to distort the plain meaning of scripture, and his philological–historical interpretation is consulted with profit even today.
Scientific exegesis was pursued on the Catholic side by scholars such as F. de Ribera (1591) and L. Alcasar (1614), who showed the way to a more satisfactory understanding of the Revelation. On the Reformed side, the Annotationes in Libros Evangeliorum (1641–50) by the jurist Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) were so objective that some criticized them for rationalism.