Content area
Full text
How to Understand the Sacred Scriptures. From Clavis Scripturce Sacra by Matthias Flacius Illyricus. Translated by Wade R. Johnston, with an introduction by Jack Kilcrease. (Saginaw, Michigan: Magdeburg Press, 2011, Pp. 118. $9.99.)
As his title indicates, Wade Johnston has translated the prolegomenon to the second volume of Lutheran theologian Matthias Flacius Illyricus' 1567 treatise on biblical hermeneutics. Volume 2 is titled Ratio Cognoscendi Sacrarum Literarum (A Method of Understanding the Sacred Writings) ; the work as a whole is tided Clavis Scripturce Sacroe, seu de Sermone Sacrarum Literarum (A Key to Sacred Scripture, or the Language of the Sacred Writings). Johnston justifies translating Illyricus's treatise by its "foundational" importance for hermeneutical theory and in the hope that someone else may translate more of the work (6-7). With both the judgment and the hope I concur. I also hope that such a work may build on the strengths and avoid the weaknesses of Johnston's.
The...