Historically, religious scriptures are defined as holy texts that are considered to be beyond the abilities of the layperson to interpret. Their content is most frequently analyzed by clerics who do not question the underlying political or social implications of the text, but use the writing to convey messages to their congregations about how to live a holy existence. In Western society, moreover, what counts as scripture is generally confined to the Judeo-Christian Bible, leaving the voices of minorities, as well as the holy texts of faiths from Africa and Asia, for example, unheard. In this innovative collection of essays that aims to turn the traditional bible-study definition of scriptures on its head, Vincent L. Wimbush leads an in-depth look at the social, cultural, and racial meanings invested in these texts. Contributors hail from a wide array of academic fields and geographic locations and include such noted academics as Susan Harding, Elisabeth Shüssler Fiorenza, and William L. Andrews. Purposefully transgressing disciplinary boundaries, this ambitious book opens the door to different interpretations and critical orientations, and in doing so, allows an ultimately humanist definition of scriptures to emerge.

Historically, religious scriptures are defined as holy texts that are considered to be beyond the abilities of the layperson to interpret. This volume takes a look at the social, cultural and racial meanings invested in these texts.

Throughout history, the study of sacred texts has focused almost exclusively on the content and meaning of these writings. Such a focus obscures the fact that sacred texts are always embodied in particular material forms—from ancient scrolls to contemporary electronic devices. Using the digital turn as a starting point, this volume highlights material dimensions of the sacred texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The essays in this collection investigate how material aspects have shaped the production and use of these texts within and between the traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, from antiquity to the present day. Contributors also reflect on the implications of transitions between varied material forms and media cultures. Taken together, the essays suggests that materiality is significant for the academic study of sacred texts, as well as for reflection on developments within and between these religious traditions. This volume offers insightful analysis on key issues related to the materiality of sacred texts in the traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, while also highlighting the significance of transitions between various material forms, including the current shift to digital culture.

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.

Scripturalizing the Human is a transdisciplinary collection of essays that reconceptualizes and models "scriptural studies" as a critical, comparative set of practices with broad ramifications for scholars of religion and biblical studies. This critical historical and ethnographic project is focused on scriptures/scripturalization/scripturalizing as shorthand for the (psycho-cultural and socio-political) "work" we make language do for and to us. Each essay focuses on an instance of or situation involving such work, engaging with the Bible, Book of Mormon, Bhagavata Purana, and other sacred texts, artifacts, and practices in order to explore historical and ongoing constructions of the human. Contributors use the category of "scriptures"—understood not simply as texts, but as freighted shorthand for the dynamics and ultimate politics of language—as tools for self-illumination and self-analysis. The significance of the collection lies in the window it opens to the rich and complex view of the highs and lows of human-(un-)making as it establishes the connections between a seemingly basic and apolitical religious category and a set of larger social-cultural phenomena and dynamics.

The second edition features an updated commentary on each book of the Hebrew Bible that is authoritative for African and African-diaspora communities worldwide. It highlights issues of the Black community (such as globalization and the colonial legacy) and the distinctive norms of interpretation in African and African-diaspora settings.

This collection of essays describes the pursuit of biblical scholarship in the twenty-first century and explores the implications of modern and postmodern approaches, collaborative and emancipative models of graduate and undergraduate education, and public and political uses of the Bible. Special attention is given to the role of the Society of Biblical Literature. Essays by nine SBL presidents appear in the collection, which honors SBL Executive Director Emeritus Kent Harold Richards.