The Invention of the Biblical Scholar: A Critical Manifesto - Softcover

Moore, Stephen D.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 080069774X ISBN 13: 9780800697747

Publisher: Fortress Press, 2011

Synopsis

What is a "biblical scholar"? Stephen D. Moore and Yvonne Sherwood provide a thoroughly defamiliarizing and frequently entertaining re-description of this peculiar academic species and its odd disciplinary habitat. The modern - and postmodern - biblical scholar, they argue, is a product of the Enlightenment. Even when a biblical scholar imagines that she is doing something else entirely (something confessional, theoretical, literary, or even postmodern), she is sustaining Enlightened modernity and its effects. This study poses questions for scholars across the humanities concerned with the question of the religious and the secular. It also poses pressing questions for scholars and students of biblical interpretation: What other forms might biblical criticism have taken? What untried forms might biblical criticism yet take?

About this title

About the Author:

Stephen Moore is Professor of New Graduate Division of Religion at The Theological School, Drew University, and the author of Poststructuralism and the New Testament: Derrida and Foucault at the Foot of the Cross (Fortress Press, 1994); coauthor of The Postmodern Bible (1997); and editor or coeditor of numerous volumes including Mark and Method: New Approaches in Biblical Studies, 2nd ed. (Fortress Press, 2008).

Yvonne Sherwood is Senior Lecturer in Bible and Judaism at the University of Glasgow and the author or editor of Derrida's Bible (2004); The Prostitute and the Prophet: Reading Hosea in the Late Twentieth Century (2004); A Biblical Text and Its Afterlives: The Survival of Jonah in Western Culture (2001); and the coauthor of Derrida and Religion: Other Testaments (2004).

Review:

&34No one is more conversant in literary Theory than Moore and Sherwood, who have for some time been smuggling it into biblical studies in creative ways. As literary critics become less enamored of the promise of Theory, Moore and Sherwood see new possibilities for biblical scholars to move beyond the modernist obsession with 'the Enlightenment Bible' and engage theorists who are 'getting religion.' Their critique is sometimes caustic, always right-on; their manifesto points beyond traditional historical-critical methods, identity politics, and 'contextualization' for its own sake to a new, genuine universality that may shape the future of our discipline." --Richard Horsley, Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and the Study of Religion, retired, University of Massachusetts, Boston

"Tongue-in-cheek and down-to-earth, this manifesto pairs clarity with a personal voice. A breath of fresh air, it makes everyone interested in being a "good" biblical scholar sit on edge. Sit tight! It's worth it." --Mieke Bal, Academy Professor, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences

"Tongue-in-cheek and down-to-earth, this manifesto pairs clarity with a personal voice. A breath of fresh air, it makes everyone interested in being a "good" biblical scholar sit on edge. Sit tight! It's worth it." --Mieke Bal, Academy Professor, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences

About this edition

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 080069774X
• ISBN 13: 9780800697747
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 120
• Editor: Sherwood Yvonne