Reading Texts, Seeking Wisdom

Wisdom is a theme in Scripture and desirable in biblical interpretation and theology. In this book wisdom proves a fruitful motif for eighteen high-profile scholars as they explore how the Bible and theology have come together in the past -- in Judaism, in the early church, during the Middle Ages, in early modernity, and in the twentieth century.

A question running through all the essays is: How is current biblical scholarship to be related to past insights and modern methods? The authors also debate how wisdom relates to faith and to reason, and Jesus is discussed as the wisdom of God. Insights into these topic arise from intensive engagement with relevant texts: a Jewish scholar faces the challenge of genocidal texts in Deuteronomy; the book of Jonah is seen as a way of wisdom; two contributors examine the opening of Colossians, and the significance of Jesus as interpreter of Scripture at the end of Luke's Gospel is discussed. Lastly, the book looks ahead to highlights of future interaction between the disciplines of biblical studies and theology.

Contributors: Richard Bauckham, Markus Bockmuehl, James D. G. Dunn, David F. Ford, Daniel Hardy, Martin Hengel, Morna Hooker, William Horbury, Paul Joyce, Diana Lipton, Walter Moberly, Robert Morgan, Christopher Rowland, Graham Stanton, Denys Turner, John Webster, Rowan Williams, Frances Young.