Exeter College alumnus publishes The Multiplicity of Scripture: The Making of the Antwerp Polygot Bible
Dr Theodor Dunkelgrün (University of Antwerp) has recently published his long-anticipated book, The Multiplicity of Scripture: The Making of the Antwerp Polyglot Bible (Toronto: PIMS, 2025). This ground-breaking study grew from research that Dunkelgrün pursued during his time as a visiting postgraduate student in History at Exeter in 2008, and at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies in 2010. Dunkelgrün came to Oxford from the University of Chicago to work with Joanna Weinberg, lecturer in Hebrew at Exeter and Professor emerita of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and with Piet van Boxel, then keeper of the Bodleian Library’s collections of Hebraica and Judaica. Weinberg and Van Boxel are also the founders and editors of the book series that features Dunkelgrün’s study.
The Antwerp Polyglot Bible, printed by Christopher Plantin between 1568 and 1573, stands as one of the most ambitious scholarly and typographical projects in the sixteenth century. It assembled ancient biblical versions in Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Greek, and Latin, and included philological and historical resources for their study. However, its publication sparked significant controversy; the inclusion of the Hebrew Bible and Jewish Targums in particular challenged the Council of Trent’s declaration that the Latin Vulgate was the sole authoritative version of the Bible. Can texts transmitted by Jewish tradition form an integral part of Christian Scripture? This fundamental question in the history of the study of the Old Testament also shaped the life and work of Exeter’s Benjamin Kennicott (1718-1783), to whom Dunkelgrün devoted an earlier publication. Dunkelgrün’s book now tells a new history of Renaissance biblical scholarship through the prism of the Antwerp Polyglot Bible.
The Multiplicity of Scripture is the first comprehensive study of how this monumental work was made. Drawing from an array of primary sources across European archives and libraries, Dunkelgrün reconstructs its intricate editorial history from within the Antwerp printing shop of Christopher Plantin, telling a story of crisis and craftsmanship, and highlighting the remarkable collaboration among scholars of different confessions who brought this masterpiece to life. In doing so, Dunkelgrün not only illuminates a pivotal moment in the history of material text of Scripture but also celebrates the enduring legacy of “the philological globalisation of the European mind”.
