The Postmodern Bible Reader

by Jobling, David; Pippin, Tina; Schleifer, Ronald

• ISBN13: 9780631219613
• ISBN10: 0631219617
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-08-22
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

A range of powerful contemporary engagements with the Bible by literary critics, philosophers, writers, and activists is brought together for the first time in this Reader. The twenty texts anthologized allow students to explore and interrogate different ways of making the Bible part of the postmodern world. The selection is based on the editors' experience of which texts best engage students and stimulate discussion in the classroom. A broad range of theoretical and cultural voices is represented, including creative approaches and queer theory. Each work is introduced by editorial comment tracing its definitions and history, and part introductions outline the interrelations between documents. In addition, a general introduction by the editors offers 'A Short Course on Postmodernism for Bible Readers', proposing seven seminal theoretical texts which students can read to gain an overview of postmodern thought. The Postmodern Bible Reader is an ideal complement to the successful A Postmodern Bible (1995) and like this text, communicates the excitement and controversy generated by new approaches to biblical studies.

Author Biography

David Jobling teaches at St Andrew's College, Canada, and is General Editor of Semeia. He is author of The Sense of Biblical Narrative and I Samuel.

Tina Pippin is Associate Professor of Religion at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia. She is the author of Apocalyptic Bodies: The Biblical End of the World in Text and Image (1999).

David Jobling teaches at St Andrew's College, Saskatoon, Canada, and is General Editor of Semeia. He is author of The Sense of Biblical Narrative and I Samuel.

Tina Pippin is Associate Professor of Religion at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia. She is the author of Apocalyptic Bodies: The Biblical End of the World in Text and Image.

Ronald Schleifer teaches at the University of Oklahoma and is co-editor of 'The Oklahoma Project for Discourse and Theory'. He is author of A. J. Greimas and the Nature of Meaning.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Acknowledgments	xv
Introduction: A Short Course in Postmodernism for Bible Readers	1	(34)
Epigraph: from Green Grass, Running Water	35	(8)
Thomas King
Part I Rereading the Bible
Introduction	43	(15)
The Structural Analysis of Narrative: Apropos of Acts 10--11	58	(20)
Roland Barthes
On the Possibility of Generating Aesthetic Messages in an Edenic Language	78	(14)
Umberto Eco
Reading the Bible	92	(10)
Julia Kristeva
Introduction to the Names-of-the-Father Seminar	102	(15)
Jacques Lacan
Dreaming in 1990	117	(11)
Helene Cixous
Parable and Performative in the Gospels and in Modern Literature	128	(14)
J. Hillis Miller
Body Politic	142	(35)
Mieke Bal
Part II The Politics of Reading
Introduction	163	(14)
J. L. Austin and the Book of Jonah	177	(6)
Terry Eagleton
The Song of Mary (Luke 1:46--55)	183	(5)
Ernesto Cardenal
Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians: Deliverance, Conquest, and Liberation Theology Today	188	(7)
Robert Allen Warrior
Slave Ideology and Biblical Interpretation	195	(10)
Katie Geneva Cannon
Ecce Homo, Ain't (Ar'n't) I a Woman, and Inappropriate/d Others: The Human in a Post-Humanist Landscape	205	(14)
Donna J. Haraway
A Pedagogy for Postcolonial Feminists	219	(14)
Zakia Pathak
From The Book of Sodom	233	(32)
Paul Hallam
Part III The Conscience of the Bible
Introduction	249	(16)
Meals Among Brothers: Theory of the Joker	265	(9)
Michel Serres
The Interior Structure of Made Objects	274	(22)
Elaine Scarry
From Ethics and Community	296	(23)
Enrique Dussel
On the Jewish Reading of Scriptures	319	(14)
Emmanuel Levinas
Whom to Give to (Knowing Not to Know)	333	(20)
Jacques Derrida
``Draupadi'' by Mahasweta Devi	353	(20)
Gayatri Spivak
Index	373