Reading and interpreting the Bible, whether as an 'ordinary' or critical reader, has always been strongly influenced by a person's own experience. They demonstrate the variety of ways in which the Bible can have meaning for different people. The contributors offer challenging new perspectives on the ancient biblical books and individual texts of the Torah, the prophets, the Gospels, (Pauline) letters and Revelation. The Personal Voice in Biblical Scholarship contains the original essays of distinguished Jewish and Christian scholars of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament from all over the world and a variety of backgrounds.

This handbook provides a comprehensive guide to methods, terms, and concepts used by biblical interpreters. It offers students and non-specialists an accessible resource for understanding the complex vocabulary that accompanies serious biblical studies. Articles, arranged alphabetically, explain terminology associated with reading the Bible as literature, clarify the various methods Bible scholars use to study biblical texts, and illuminate how different interpretive approaches can contribute to our understanding. Article references and topical bibliographies point readers to resources for further study. This handbook, now updated and revised to be even more useful for students, was previously published as Interpreting the Bible: A Handbook of Terms and Methods. It is a suitable complement to any standard hermeneutics textbook.

In Using Our Outside Voice, Greg Carey contends that responsible public biblical interpretation requires the ability to enter a conversation about the Bible, to understand the various arguments in play, and to offer informed opinions that others can understand. This role demands not only basic knowledge but also identifiable skills, habits, and dispositions. Carey does not suggest that public interpreters of the Bible are more insightful or more correct than are other people. But public biblical interpretation involves participating in reasoned conversations about the Bible and its significance. People appeal to the Bible for all sorts of reasons. The work of public biblical interpretation involves a level of accountability, both scholarly and moral. Carey encourages interpreters to develop proficiency in historical, cultural, and literary modes of interpretation as well as to cultivate familiarity with a broad range of interpretive options, including those from diverse cultural locations and historical points of view. Many interpreters work within the context of particular faith traditions and are accountable for engaging those traditions in meaningful, constructive ways. Public interpreters also are accountable for the ethical implications of their work. Using Our Outside Voice is ideal for students in biblical studies and those who teach, preach, and interpret the Bible.

This comprehensive exploration of the interpretive process, now available in paperback, has served as a successful textbook. It focuses on the three "worlds" of biblical interpretation--the world of the author, the world of the text, and the world of the reader--to help students develop an integrated hermeneutical strategy. The book offers clear explanations of interpretive approaches, which are supported by helpful biblical examples, and succinct synopses of various interpretive methods. Pedagogical aids include end-of-chapter review and study sections with key terms, study questions, and suggestions for further reading.

Empowering Memory and Movement Elisabeth Schssler Fiorenza completes a three volume look across her influential work and career. In Transforming Vision (2011) she drew from a career of pioneering scholarship to offer the contours of a critical feminist hermeneutic. The chapters in Changing Horizons (2013) sketched a theory of liberation. Now, the consequences for a liberating praxis are evident in interviews and essays that look back over personal and movement history, look around at challenges and potentialities, and look ahead to an emancipatory future, the critical engagement with scripture always at the center.

Tribal biblical interpretation is a developing area of study that is concerned with reading the Bible through the eyes of tribal people. While many studies of reading the Bible from the reader's social, cultural and historical location have been made in various parts of the world, no thorough study that offers a coherent and substantive methodology for tribal biblical interpretation has been made. This book is the first comprehensive work that offers a description of tribal biblical interpretation and shows its application by making a lucid reading of Matthew's infancy narrative from a tribal reader's perspective. Using reader-response criticism as his primary method, Zhodi Angami brings his tribal context of North East India into conversation with Matthew's account of the birth of Jesus. Since tribal people of North East India see themselves as living under colonial rule, a tribal reader sees Matthew's text as a narrative that actively resists and subverts imperial rule. Likewise, the tribal experience of living at the margins inspires a tribal reader to look at the narrative from the underside, from the perspective of those who are sidelined, ignored, belittled or forgotten. Tribal biblical interpretation presented here follows a process of conversation between tribal worldview and Matthew's narrative. Such a method animates the text for the tribal reader and makes the biblical narrative not only more intelligible to the tribal reader but allows the text to speak directly to the tribal context.

New and challenging readings of biblical characters This volume of collected essays introduces the concept of interfigurality, the interrelations and interdependence between characters in the Gospel of John and in the Synoptic Gospels and the Hebrew Bible.The essays are informed by a narrative-critical reader-response, (post)feminist hermeneutics and an autobiographical approach to biblical texts. This volume encourages transformative encounters between present-day readers and the ancient biblical texts. Features: Previously unpublished conference papers and published essays A new perspective on the relation between New Testament and Hebrew Bible Foreword by Fernando F. Segovia Ingrid Rosa Kitzberger is an independent scholar and the author of Transformative Encounters: Jesus and Women Re-viewed (1999) and the editor of The Personal Voice in Biblical Interpretation (1998) and Autobiographical Biblical Criticism: Between Text and Self (2002).