Refractions of the Scriptural is a transdisciplinary collection of essays that seeks to construct a new field of scholarly inquiry with scriptures as a fraught category, analytical wedge, and site for excavation and problematization. The book focuses on the ways in which individual and social bodies manipulate—and are manipulated by— the politics and power encoded in language and formalized canonical knowledge. Scriptures, in this sense, function as complex phenomena that are instrumental to social conservatism as well as social critique and social change. The essays in this volume, written by established and up-and-coming scholars across a wide range of disciplines, seek to locate, engage, and interpret the ways in which the scriptural shapes and reshapes people and the dynamics of identity formation. The chapters are organized around four domains or types of inquiry: the cognitive, the conscientized, the inscriptive, and the formative. It will be of interest to scholars of religion, as well as those interested more broadly in critical social and historical studies.

The movement that is known as 'theological interpretation of Scripture' reminds us that the reading and exegesis of Scripture is an indispensable part of the theologian's work, not to be reserved to biblical scholars alone. This insight that the reading of Scripture is a theological responsibility is always at risk of being eclipsed by the modern disciplinary divisions between biblical studies, historical theology, and systematic theology. Intended as a contribution to the theological re-engagement with Scripture, this book invites a range of high-profile systematic and constructive theologians to reflect on the role that the reading and interpretation of Scripture plays in their theological work, both professionally and more personally. Spanning a cross-section of theological perspectives contributors reflect on the role of tradition in their reading of Scripture, the company they view as indispensable in their engagement with the text, the place of historical critical study and biblical studies, and the significance of their context. The book will be valued by all those who care for the place of Scripture in theology and the life of the church, as well as those who want an insight into the state of contemporary theology.

This volume of thirty articles covering a wide range of subjects related to Old Testament study is written by colleagues, friends and students of A. Graeme Auld to honour the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday.

Why do Shakespeare and the English Bible seem to have an inherent relationship with each other? How have these two monumental traditions in the history of the book functioned as mutually reinforcing sources of cultural authority? How do material books and related reading practices serve as specific sites of intersection between these two textual traditions? This collection makes a significant intervention in our understanding of Shakespeare, the Bible, and the role of textual materiality in the construction of cultural authority. Departing from conventional source study, it questions the often naturalized links between the Shakespearean and biblical corpora, examining instead the historically contingent ways these links have been forged. The volume brings together leading scholars in Shakespeare, book history, and the Bible as literature, whose essays converge on the question of Scripture as source versus Scripture as process—whether that scripture is biblical or Shakespearean—and in turn explore themes such as cultural authority, pedagogy, secularism, textual scholarship, and the materiality of texts. Covering an historical span from Shakespeare’s post-Reformation era to present-day Northern Ireland, the volume uncovers how Shakespeare and the Bible’s intertwined histories illuminate the enduring tensions between materiality and transcendence in the history of the book.

In this volume, Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski examines the experiences of domestic and quotidian space that contributed to the extant form of many foundational early Jewish and Christian scriptures. His analytical approaches are derived from diverse sources including modern psychological science, Gaston Bachelard's critical theories of domestic space, and Henri Lefebvre's observations regarding “spatial practice.” The result of this attention to textual “ecology” or “home-logic” is an innovative exploration of classic texts yielding exciting new interpretive possibilities for the Gospel of John, the undisputed Pauline letters, the Parables of Enoch, the Book of Revelation, the History of the Rechabites, and Augustine's De Trinitate. Experiences of loss, homelessness, imprisonment, and marginal dwelling lie behind these texts and contributed to their authors' re-imagination and re-establishment of home. Pruszinski proves inescapably that while the most familiar of experiences are often overlooked, they are also among the most important of formative influences on the early Jewish and Christian literary imagination.

A Wide Ranging Volume On Translations Studies, Probes This Discipline'S Approaches To Society And Language, To Cultural Hybridity And Identity Construction, To Minority Languages And Globalization; And Its Over-Lapping Relationships With The Disciplines Of Comparative Aliterature, Cultural Studies, And World Literature.

In this follow-up to They Were All Together in One Place? (2009) and Reading Biblical Texts Together (2022), biblical scholars from different racial/ethnic minoritized communities move beyond defining and pursing cross-cultural interpretation to investigating how spatial-geographical and temporal-historical locations affect the purposes and practices of minoritized biblical criticism today. Through an examination of a range of contemporary issues from HIV/AIDS to US immigration policy, contributors establish that how and why they engage the Bible are the result of the intersection of social and cultural factors. Contributors Cheryl B. Anderson, Hector Avalos†, Jacqueline M. Hidalgo, Tat-siong Benny Liew, Yii-Jan Lin, Vanessa Lovelace, Francisco Lozada Jr., Roger S. Nam, Aliou Cissé Niang, Hugh R. Page Jr., Jean-Pierre Ruiz, Fernando F. Segovia, Abraham Smith, and Vincent L. Wimbush demonstrate that interpretations carry broader implications for society and that scholars have ethical and political responsibilities to their communities and to the world.

The Latter Prophets--Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Book of the Twelve--comprise a fascinating collection of prophetic oracles, narratives, and vision reports from ancient Israel and Judah. Spanning centuries and showing evidence of compositional growth and editorial elaboration over time, these prophetic books offer an unparalleled view into the cultural norms, theological convictions, and political disputes of Israelite communities caught in the maelstrom of militarized conflicts with the empires of ancient Egypt, Babylonia, and Persia. Instructive for scholar and student alike, The Oxford Handbook of the Prophets features wide-ranging discussion of ancient Near Eastern social and cultic contexts; exploration of focused topics such as the persona of the prophet and the problem of violence in prophetic rhetoric; sophisticated historical and literary analysis of key prophetic texts; issues in reception history, from these texts' earliest reinterpretations at Qumran to Christian appropriations in contemporary homiletics; feminist, materialist, and postcolonial readings engaging the insights of influential contemporary theorists; and more. The diversity of interpretive approaches, clarity of presentation, and breadth of expertise represented here will make this Handbook indispensable for research and teaching on the Latter Prophets.

In this study of motives and arguments in Jesus' halakic conflicts, Thomas Kazen suggests a way beyond the use of traditional criteria of authenticity. Employing results from recent research on the development of halakah during the Second Temple period, which outlines trajectories and areas of tension within and between various Jewish movements, the author revisits the Synoptic conflict narratives about Sabbath observance, purity rules and divorce practices. Kazen disentangles theological motives from reasonable historical explanations and suggests relative dates and contexts for motives and arguments often ascribed to Jesus. He questions interpretations which focus on unique authority and suggests that Jesus' stance is better explained within the framework of prophetic criticism and a traditional Israelite understanding of Torah. With this study, he contributes as much to our understanding of halakic development during the Second Temple period as he does to our understanding of the historical Jesus and his relationship to contemporary movements.