The most important advance in Biblical criticism in recent years has been the development, based on work done by literary theorists, of new ways of reading the Biblical texts including:
* feminist and social-scientific approaches
* narratology
* deconstruction
* reception theory and structuralism
* the refinement of older approaches such as reader-response theory.
The books in this series undertake to demonstrate both the range and profundity of such new approaches to the books of the Old Testament.
Each volume concentrates on a single book of the Old Testament, and applies one or more modern approaches to demonstrate the results that can be achieved.
By Mark G. Brett
July 20, 2000
Combining insights from social and literary theory as well as traditional historical studies, Mark Brett argues that the first book of the Bible can be read as resistance literature.Placing the theological text firmly within its socio-political context, he shows that the editors of Genesis were ...
By Marc Zvi Brettler
August 23, 2001
The Book of Judges has typically been treated either as a historical account of the conquest of Israel and the rise of the monarch, or as an ancient Israelite work of literary fiction. In this new approach, Brettler contends that Judges is essentially a political tract, which argues for the ...
By Alastair G. Hunter
July 22, 1999
Psalms examines the nature of the Psalms as a text in English, dealing specifically with the problem of translation and various aspects of the 'techniques' on reading, with relation to traditional approaches within Biblical studies and contemporary literary theory. Alastair Hunter also outlines a ...
By Lester L. Grabbe
July 09, 1998
In this provocative study, Lester Grabbe presents a unique approach to Ezra-Nehemiah with the combination of a literary and historical approach. Lester Grabbe challenges commonly held assumptions about Joshua and Zerubbabel, the initial resettlement of land after the exile, the figure of Ezra and ...
