A volume of collected essays that explores what we can learn about the producers and readers of biblical books by looking into matters of language, rhetoric, style, and ideology. What do they teach us about these literati's world of knowledge and imagination, about the issues they had in mind and the ways they came to deal with them through authoritative literature? The book includes essays on such issues as whether linguistic theories can solve literary-critical problems, on what is "late biblical Hebrew," on parallelism and noun groups in biblical poetry, and the communicative meaning of some linguistic choices.

Contemporary social theory has been much concerned with the re-assertion of ethnic identities in both Western and non-Western politics. This international collection of twenty-one essays contributes to the wider conversation by examining the construction and contestation of ethnic identities both within the Bible itself and in biblical interpretation. An introductory essay brings into focus the main themes of the book - ethnocentrism, indigenity, concepts of culture and the politics of identity - and highlights the ethical issues arising. Part One explores selected texts from the Hebrew Bible and from the New Testament, making use of methodological perspectives drawn from a range of disciplines. Part Two, "Culture and Interpretation," looks at examples of how ethnicity figures both in the popular use of the Bible and in professional biblical interpretation. This publication has also been published in paperback, please click here for details.