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Reading Other Peoples’ Texts

Social Identity and the Reception of Authoritative Traditions

Alison L Joseph editor Ken S Brown editor Dr Brennan Breed editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Published:14th May '20

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Reading Other Peoples’ Texts cover

This interdisciplinary volume brings together eleven essays that explore the deep ties between the interpretation of scriptural texts and the perceived and projected social identities of their readers.

This volume draws together eleven essays by scholars of the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, Greco-Roman religion and early Judaism, to address the ways that conceptions of identity and otherness shape the interpretation of biblical and other religiously authoritative texts. The contributions explore how interpreters of scriptural texts regularly assume or assert an identification between their own communities and those described in the text, while ignoring the cultural, social, and religious differences between themselves and the text’s earliest audiences. Comparing a range of examples, these essays address varying ways in which social identity has shaped the historical contexts, implied audiences, rhetorical shaping, redactional development, literary appropriation, and reception history of particular texts over time. Together, they open up new avenues for studying the relations between social identity, scriptural interpretation, and religious authority.

This stimulating volume of essays draws attention to the fact that, in some sense, all acts of reading are reading other people’s texts and that scholars should be attentive to the range of actual and potential meanings these readings produce. The collection genuinely points to new directions in the conversations around interpretation and identity creation of ancient texts. As such, it makes a valuable contribution to reception history and does precisely what an edited collection of this sort ought to do. * Review of Biblical Literature *

ISBN: 9780567687333

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 614g

304 pages