What Then Does This Text Mean?

What Then Does This Text Mean? offers a comprehensive survey of the most common methods and approaches used in contemporary biblical scholarship to help students navigate both foundational and newer critical lenses being used in biblical interpretation today. Organized into five sections, this textbook brings together twenty-two essays by accomplished Bible scholars, each written in an accessible style and including detailed explanations of a particular approach along with an example of its application to a specific biblical passage. Each chapter defines key concepts, traces the approach’s origins, demonstrates its application to Scripture, considers its limits, and offers resources for further reading. Together, the chapters showcase the diversity of approaches in the field, highlighting how biblical interpretation continues to expand beyond traditional frameworks while embracing the question posed by Jesus in Luke 20:17: "What then does this text mean?" The first section explores approaches that focus on the biblical text itself: historical criticism, literary criticism, and textual criticism. The second and third sections examine how the text is read through the perspectives of various groups and communities, including African American, Asian American, Hispanic/Latino/a/x, Indigenous, childist studies, disability studies, feminist criticism, queer interpretation, and womanist interpretation. The fourth section presents interdisciplinary and thematic approaches, addressing the topics of performance criticism, social-scientific/social-historical criticism, and spatial theory. The fifth section explores interdisciplinary approaches that particularly focus on the impact of the text on the reader and wider world, including affect criticism, environmental hermeneutics, postcolonial criticism, reception history, and trauma hermeneutics. Ideal for students, scholars, and anyone curious about the study of the Bible, this volume offers a thorough introduction to the field of biblical interpretation. By presenting multiple lenses through which Scripture can be read, What Then Does This Text Mean? emphasizes that the Bible's meanings are plural and dynamic, enriching our understanding of its texts for contemporary readers and communities.