Reading Other Peoples’ Texts

Ken Brown is Lecturer at Whitworth University, USA.Alison L. Joseph is Senior Editor of The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization and Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary, USA.Brennan Breed is Associate Professor of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary, USA.

• PrefaceAcknowledgmentsAbbreviations1. “Social Identity and Scriptural Interpretation: An Introduction” - Ken Brown, Whitworth University, USA and Brennan Breed, Columbia Theological Seminary, USA2. “Boundaries and Bridges: Journeys of a Postcolonial Feminist in Biblical Studies” - Musa W. Dube, University of Botswana, Republic of Botswana3. “Reading without History,” - Michael Satlow, Brown University, USA4. “What Happens to Precursor Texts in Their Successors?” - Robert L. Brawley, McCormick Theological Seminary, USA5. “Redaction as Reception: Genesis 34 as Case Study,” - Alison Joseph, Jewish Theological Seminary, USA6. “Between Our Ancestors and the Other: Negotiating Identity in the Early Reception of the Water from the Rock” - Ken Brown, Whitworth University, USA7. “Abrahamic Identity in Paul and Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum” - Kyle Wells, Westmont College, USA8. “Heracles between Slavery and Freedom: Subversive Textual Appropriation in Philo of Alexandria” - Courtney Friesen, University of Arizona, USA9. “Perspectives on a Pluriform Classic” - Choon-Leong Seow, Vanderbilt Divinity School, USA10. “Iconoclastic Readings: Othering in Isaiah 44 and in Its Reception in Biblical Scholarship,” - Sonja Ammann, University of Basel, Switzerland11. “Biblical Scholarship’s Ethos of Respect: Original Meanings, Original Texts, and the Reception History of Ecclesiastes,” - Brennan Breed, Columbia Theological Seminary, USABibliographyIndex

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.