The biblical tradition of the Iberian Peninsula from the eighth to the Twelfth Centuries seen from a typological standpoint

© 2016 Universidade Catolica Portuguesa. All right reserved. This paper gives an overview of the national and international research on the biblical tradition of the Iberian Peninsula between the eighth and twelfth centuries. It describes and analyzes the status quaestionis from various perspectives, seeking to broaden the dominant Spanish-centred research, which widely neglected the Hispanic peripheries, such as Catalonia or Portugal, and focused on single outstanding manuscripts without situating important features of Iberian Bible production within the wider European context. The paper crosses mental, geographic and scientific barriers to pioneer new methods of refining our understanding of the biblical landscape of the medieval Iberian Peninsula. It assesses the heuristic dimensions of research on underestimated or even neglected Bible fragments and highlights the role of Andalusian Arabic Bible translations within the panorama of the Iberian biblical tradition. In addition, it draws attention to the rich, but hitherto neglected study of glossed Bibles of the new French type, and finally underlines the historical, exegetical and transcultural evidence of non-biblical texts transmitted in the context of Iberian Bible manuscripts.