Calvin's New Testament Commentaries

This enlarged and revised edition of a much-acclaimed, full-length study (1971) of Calvin's New Testament commentaries expounds upon Calvin's principles of interpretation. It considers early sixteenth-century hermeneutics and gives special emphasis to the reformers Melanchthon, Bucer, and Bullinger and to "rhetorical" interpretation. A chapter on Calvin's view of the New Testament canon leads to an extensive section on the Creek and Latin texts of the New Testament; the conclusion is that this basic Creek text for the earlier commentaries was not that of Erasmus but the Colinaean text of 1534. The final chapter shows Calvin at work on his commentaries and describes the sources he used for social, geographical, and linguistic understanding of the New Testament. Extensive bibliographies of Calvin's commentaries, as well as those of the relevant Greek and Latin Bibles and the classical, patristic, medieval, and renaissance work to which he was indebted, complete this comprehensive study. Calvin emerges as the first great modern commentator and, above all, as the faithful minister of the World of God.