R. S. Sugirtharajah is Professor of Biblical Hermeneutics at the University of Birmingham. His publications include Postcolonial Criticism and Biblical Interpretation (2002) and The Bible and the Third World (2001).

• Introduction; 1. Textually conjoined twins: Rammohun Roy and Thomas Jefferson and their Bibles; 2. Salvos from the Victorian pulpit: conscription of texts by Victorian preachers during the Indian rebellion of 1857; 3. Thorns in the crown: the subversive and complicit hermeneutics of John Colenso of Natal and James Long of Bengal; 4. Texts and testament: the Hebrew Scriptures in colonial context; 5. Imperial fictions and biblical narratives: entertainment and exegesis in colonial novels; Afterword.

'R. S. Sugirtharajah, who is Professor of Biblical Hermeneutics at the University of Birmingham, has brought together interesting essays on the relationship between the Bible and the colonial experience. He is strategically adept in his reading, offering in-depth comparisons between four pairs of figures.' Church Times