The Origin of Money
In the Levant, various systems of weights and measures were used to establish the value of goods (see Weights table above). For example, a widely attested weight unit in the Bible is the bronze talent, which was about as much as a man could carry. The Hebrew word shekel also originally referred to a unit of weight but later became the name of a coin denomination. Silver and gold, which were more portable than bronze because smaller amounts of them were considered more valuable, became increasingly common during Iron Age II (1000–586 BCE). In some cases, silver and gold were kept as fragments and in others, as jewelry. The value of these pieces would be measured on a scale against officially regulated stones. This controlled exchange of metal currency was a precursor to the circulation of coinage, but it also continued in use alongside coins. Payment in kind also persisted alongside coinage throughout the biblical periods; for example, people paid tithes and land taxes with a portion of agricultural yields (often measured in volume). Around 600–550 BCE, the
Lydian kingdom (western Turkey) minted the first coins known in the Mediterranean; these were made of a gold-silver alloy, disk-shaped, and stamped with images. The use of coins, which proved convenient for compensating military and civic services, quickly spread across the Aegean and then throughout the Persian Empire. By the mid-fifth century, even the peoples of the Levant were minting their own coins, but they often continued to be treated as bullion (metal valued by weight).
Introduction to the Bible
Overview
The Bible is the world’s all-time bestseller. For more than two thousand years, people have been copying, translating, printing, annotating, selling, and buying the Bible. Many who buy it then read it and study it—at home, in churches and synagogues, and in schools from prekindergarten all the way through college and
graduate school. Some people, such as rabbis, priests, pastors, and biblical scholars, make a career of teaching and studying the Bible.
People study the Bible because it fascinates them. Its stories draw them in; its laws and prophecies call them to account; its poetry gives voice to a whole range of emotions such as grief, anger, joy, awe, and love. The Bible touches on all aspects of the human condition from family relationships to political power, war, race, nature, food, sex, suffering, and death. Most fascinating of all is its main character, God, who creates and sustains the heavens and the earth and calls humans into relationship with the divine.
Those who study the Bible have usually inherited one of the religious traditions that hold it sacred. The biblical text and its God, however, have not remained constant across those traditions as they developed over the centuries. For Jews, the Bible has three components. First comes the Law (Torah), given to the people of Israel by the one creator God and recorded in the five books of Moses. Second is the Prophets (Neviim), which includes the Former Prophets, who
wrote the four histories of Israel and Judah, followed by the Latter Prophets, whose spoken oracles were transcribed and collected into four more books. The third component includes the eleven Writings (Ketuvim), which contain prayers, wise sayings, more histories, and apocalyptic visions. The Law, Prophets, and Writings, written in Hebrew (with a touch of Aramaic), are drawn from the literature of ancient Israel and Judah.
Christians, whose first members were Jews of the first century CE, continued to worship the Jewish God but also revered Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Even as Christians swelled their ranks with non-Jews, they never abandoned the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. They came to call these books the Old Testament. They then added a New Testament with four versions of Jesus’s life history, one account of how Jesus’s followers continued his ministry after his death, twenty-one letters attributed to some of those followers, and one apocalyptic vision.
The Books of the New Testament
Since the trade language of their world was a common dialect of Greek, most early Christians knew the Old Testament in its Greek translation, called the Septuagint. While the Septuagint dates from the third or second century BCE, its oldest surviving manuscripts were produced mostly by Christians. In addition to texts found in the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint includes Jewish works from as early as the third century BCE, written in Greek but not found in the Hebrew Bible. These works include legends about characters such as the exiled Israelite Tobit and the Judahite widow Judith plus writings attributed to ancient kings and prophets. They also feature additions to the books of Esther and Daniel. Thirteen of these books, plus the additions to Esther and Daniel, remain in the Old Testaments of Eastern Orthodox Christians. In the West, Roman Catholic Old Testaments include the additions plus eight other books. Most Protestant Old Testaments do not include any of these books.
Although Jews and Christians operate with various concepts of God and the Bible, they have traditionally shared the conviction that the Bible (however they define it) is God’s word, written by God’s prophets and apostles. When they study the Bible, they seek to learn about God and God’s relationship with humans and the natural world. They search God’s word for answers to questions such as these: How can we know God? What is God like? What is our duty to God and to other humans? These questions are of the first importance to people who study the Bible within a religious context. But they are not the only questions that can be asked of the Bible. Biblical scholars, who study the Bible in an academic context, ask other questions: Who wrote the Bible? What can we know about the historical background of each book? Why were certain books included and others left out? What does the Bible mean, and how can we know? These kinds of questions fascinate biblical scholars. In their search for answers, they follow clues from the biblical text and also examine other ancient texts and
archaeological artifacts. They often arrive at surprising answers that lead to scholarly consensus, scholarly counterarguments, and still more questions.
The Composition of the Bible
Consider this question: Who wrote the Bible? Ancient evidence yields few definitive answers. It seems clear enough that no single individual composed all the biblical books. In fact, various inconsistencies within the first five books of the Bible suggest the work of several authors over as many as five centuries. Many scholars attribute few if any “psalms of David” to King David, no “proverbs of Solomon” to King Solomon, and less than half the book of Isaiah to the prophet Isaiah. They wonder about the various authorial styles, emotional tones, and historical circumstances reflected in the thirteen letters that bear the apostle Paul’s name. As for the remaining fourteen New Testament books—eight of them attributed to various apostles; six of them (including the gospels and Acts) anonymous—nobody knows for sure who wrote them.
It is a little easier to answer this question: What can we know about the historical background of each book? Evidence includes language usage and references to historical events, plus similarities with, references to, and citations by more easily datable works. Using these clues, scholars can often date biblical books (or portions thereof) to within at least a century or two. Sometimes, in the case of a prophecy with a clear historical referent, they can name the precise year.
More broadly speaking, we may safely say that the Bible was written in the context of empires. By the end of the tenth century, there were two Israelite monarchies: one headed by the Judahite descendants of King David in the south and the other by a series of dynasties to the north. Beginning in the middle of the ninth century BCE, the peoples of Israel and Judah began paying tribute to a succession of larger imperial powers. Invasion, pillage, and deportation followed in due course. By the end of the eighth century, the Assyrians ruled over Israel. The sixth century began with the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem and the
exile of many Judahites to Babylon. It ended with their restoration under the Persians. Then, toward the end of the fourth century BCE, the armies of Alexander the Great swept through. Within a few years, Alexander had died. His successors—first the Ptolemies in Egypt, then the Seleucids in Mesopotamia and Syria— ruled the territories of Israel and Judah until the Jewish Hasmonean dynasty, allied with Rome, carved out a century of relative independence. They paid tribute to Rome until Rome subjugated them in 63 BCE.
Imperial interest in Israel and Judah can be described in three words: location, location, location. With a sea to the west and a desert to the east, the narrow strip of Israelite and Judahite land served as a highway connecting two prosperous civilizations fed by mighty rivers. The Mesopotamian kings to the northeast and the Egyptian pharaohs to the southwest faced each other across the territories of Israel and Judah. This is why many of the Latter Prophets (Isaiah–Malachi) warn about dangers from Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon. The five books of Moses (Genesis–Deuteronomy) describe Israelite captivity in Egypt, while the Former
Prophets (Joshua–2 Kings) narrate the histories of Israel and Judah, culminating in their respective conquests by Assyria and Babylon. These books are thought to have reached their final form during the Babylonian exile. The book of Daniel is set in Babylon, the book of Esther in Persia. They along with several others may have been compiled in postexilic Judah: some under Persian rule; others during the period of relative independence as the Hasmonean dynasty expanded its reach in lands regarded by Roman rulers as the eastern shore of “Our Sea.”
All this indicates that much of the Hebrew Bible was written long after the events it describes. This does not necessarily imply inaccuracy. Most authors surely relied on oral and written sources that may indeed have preserved accurate details. It does, however, imply a certain kind of subjectivity. The stories of the patriarchs seem to have been told from the perspective of the Israelite and Judahite monarchies; the histories of Israel and Judah, written by Judahite exiles who had seen their kingdom crumble; the book of Daniel, composed by pious Jews facing religious
persecution from a Seleucid king based in Syria. Only the books of the Latter Prophets include oracles that pertain to the time of their delivery. The rest of the Hebrew Bible interprets the past, anticipates the future, lays down social and ritual protocol for hierarchical societies, and preserves poetry and words of wisdom.
The books of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament were thus written over the course of many centuries under the domination of several empires. In contrast, the New Testament books were written within one hundred years under the domination of one empire, that of Rome. Scholars attribute the earliest books to Paul, who sent letters to his followers in the 50s and early 60s CE. The remaining books were composed after the Jewish War. This war, a revolt by Jews against Rome, began in 66 CE and reached its highest pitch in 70 CE with a five-month siege of Jerusalem that resulted in the destruction of its temple. It marked the consequent transfer of Jewish leadership from temple priests to members of a learned sect called Pharisees. It also marked a transfer of leadership in Rome from
the Julio-Claudian to the Flavian dynasty, whose founder, Vespasian, and his son Titus had successfully trounced the Jewish revolutionaries.
The Roman Empire and its hierarchical social structures set the stage for New Testament literature. The gospels relate that Herod Antipas, the Jewish ruler of Galilee appointed by Caesar Augustus, gives the order to decapitate Jesus’s forerunner, John the Baptist. Jesus, thought by his followers to be the Messiah—the anointed king who would inherit David’s throne predicts the Jewish War. He is crucified by order of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea appointed by Tiberius Caesar. The remaining books tell how the “good news” about Jesus spreads by way of Roman roads and trade routes, while imperial policies regarding deportations, executions, and emperor worship put Christians at odds with Pharisees and Romans alike. The provinces pay their taxes, the poor seek patronage from the rich, and many are enslaved.
On this Roman stage, the New Testament plays out its drama in Jewish scenes. Even when the settings
include cities such as Antioch and Rome, the action concerns resident Jews and Judaism. The New Testament is steeped in Judaism because Jesus and his followers were Jewish. So was Paul, along with most (some say all) of the New Testament authors. Therefore, the New Testament books consistently refer to Israel, Israel’s God, daily prayer, the Jerusalem temple, ritual purity, holy days, and David’s dynasty.
The Compilation of the Bible
The New Testament books also consistently refer to Israel’s scriptures. By the time of Jesus, the Hebrew Bible had long been regarded as the depository of Jewish tradition. The Law and the Prophets were recited regularly in synagogues. Recitations were sometimes accompanied by the standard oral translations necessary for conveying the ancient Hebrew text into Aramaic, the language of the ancient Near East. Psalms were sung in the Jerusalem temple. The New Testament writers therefore refer to the Law, the Prophets, the Psalms, and other Writings, often interpreting them in light of their belief that Jesus was the Messiah.
These books were not the only Jewish literary works of their day. Others circulated throughout the ancient world. They included the books that wound up in the Septuagint along with many that did not. These additional books, some attributed to biblical characters such as Noah’s great-grandfather Enoch and David’s son Solomon, appear in various lists from as early as the sixth century CE. They are now known to Christians as the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Still other books date from about the middle of the second century BCE through the early decades of the first century CE. These books, written by pious Jews who lived apart from the political and religious centers of the day, were discovered in the 1940s among a cache of scrolls hidden near a ruined settlement by the Dead Sea.
Following the loss of the Jerusalem temple in 70 CE, Jewish practice centered on observance of prayers, holy days, and purity regulations in homes as well as in synagogues. The Pharisees (who came to be known as rabbis) established schools to train young men in their traditions of interpreting the Law, often in light of
the Prophets and various Writings. Their interpretations laid the foundation for Judaism as it is known today. As early as the end of the first century CE, and certainly by 200 CE, the rabbis had agreed on which Writings would be studied along with the Law and the Prophets. They included books attributed to David (Psalms), Solomon (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs), and the prophet Jeremiah (Lamentations). They also included a brief tale concerning David’s family origins (Ruth) and the book of Esther, which, although it never mentions God, tells the story behind the popular holiday of Purim. By the middle of the tenth century, leading rabbis had accepted a copy of the early medieval Masoretic Text as the standard version of the Law, Prophets, and Writings. The Hebrew Bible—its contents and wording—was now (for lack of a better word) canonized.
The term canon refers to a collection of books held sacred by religious communities and deemed by their leaders as authoritative for belief and practice. The Bible is the Bible because it was canonized. In
accepting the Masoretic Text, the rabbis elevated it above other versions, including Hebrew texts of the Bible still hidden among the Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient rabbinical quotations of older Hebrew texts, and the Septuagint. Likewise, Christians authorized certain books and wordings while sidelining others. Their process, however, evolved somewhat differently from that of Jews.
With regard to content, each of the three major Christian traditions (Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Protestant) developed its own authoritative collection of books. The differences, found only in the Old Testament, resulted from eventual disagreement over the authority of the Septuagint. The Septuagint had been translated centuries earlier for Greekspeaking Jews and was commonly used by early Christians. As Christianity spread from Aramaicspeaking Jews in Judea and Galilee to Greek-speaking Jews and gentiles dispersed throughout the Roman Empire, the Septuagint grew in popularity. Since common Greek was the empire’s trade language, the earliest Christian authors wrote in Greek, sometimes
with a distinctive Aramaic flavor. When they quoted the Scriptures, they mostly quoted the Septuagint. In this way, the Septuagint became the Bible of the first Christians. It remained so through the first two centuries of the Common Era, centuries that saw the additions of books such as Tobit and Judith. Those centuries also saw the writing of Christian stories, letters, and teachings attributed to first- and second-generation followers of Jesus such as Matthew, John, Thomas, Peter, James, Paul, Mark, Luke, and Barnabas. These writings began to circulate among Christian communities, where they were copied, recopied, and passed along. Local communities began to develop their own ideas about Jesus’s identity and significance. The variations can be detected even in their earliest writings. For all their similarities, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John composed at different times and in different places—paint slightly different portraits of Jesus. While Paul’s letters tend to emphasize salvation by faith in Christ’s atoning death,
the Letter of James stresses the importance of good deeds.
The communities that copied and circulated the individual writings eventually began to compile them. Collections of Paul’s letters are among the existing manuscripts dated to about 200 CE, while several third-century manuscripts contain only Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The task of making collections and authorizing them became more important in 313, when the Roman emperor Constantine, in the wake of a battle that extended his authority eastward into Mesopotamia, declared his support for Christianity. In 325, he presided over a council of bishops from Britain to Persia who together affirmed the divinity of Christ. In 331, he commissioned the production of fifty Greek Bibles. This order almost certainly spurred efforts to determine exactly what to include. In 367, the bishop of Alexandria published a list of twenty-seven books widely associated with the teachings of Jesus and his first followers. These books came to be recognized as the New Testament canon.
Meanwhile, common Latin had replaced common Greek as the Roman Empire’s trade language, and Latin versions of the Bible began appearing. In the late fourth century, the scholar Jerome produced a new Latin translation of the twenty-seven Christian books, which enshrined them as the official New Testament for the Roman Catholic Church. Jerome also produced a new Latin translation of the Septuagint. Before completing the project, however, he decided that God’s word ought to be translated from its original languages. He replaced his translations of the Greek Law, Prophets, and Writings with translations from a Hebrew version. In its final form, therefore, Jerome’s Old Testament included the books of the Septuagint in order, some translated from Hebrew and others from Greek. In the fifteenth century, Jerome’s Vulgate, as it was called, became the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church. Today the Vatican authorizes the use of a 1979 revision and approves various translations of the same Hebrew and Greek books into contemporary languages.
Roman Catholic Old Testament
Starting in the sixteenth century, when Western European Protestants began to break away from the Roman Catholic Church, they forsook the Latin Vulgate. Because they believed that God’s word should be understood by all people, they translated the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament into their contemporary languages. A few Protestant groups included books that appeared in the Septuagint (and the Vulgate) but not in the Hebrew Bible. To distinguish them from the books originally written in Hebrew, they called them the “Apocrypha,” or “the things that are hidden away.”
As for the churches in the Eastern Roman Empire, they never adopted the Vulgate. They had always read the Septuagint and New Testament in their own languages, starting with Greek versions in Greece and North Africa along with Syriac translations in Syria and Palestine. In the middle of the eleventh century, they broke with Rome. Eastern Orthodox Bibles therefore include the books of the Septuagint (including a few not found in the Roman Catholic Bible) along with the previously established New Testament.
Greek Orthodox Old Testament
Thus in all three major Christian traditions the New Testament contains the same twenty-seven books, while the contents of their Old Testaments differ. The wording of their Bibles differs, too, because Eastern and Western traditions are based on different texts. The traditional Eastern Orthodox Old Testament relies on a version of the Septuagint, and its New Testament derives from ancient Greek manuscripts known as Byzantine texts that were produced in the Eastern Roman Empire. In contrast, modern Roman Catholic and Protestant Bibles are translated from the Masoretic Text and from so-called standard texts of the Septuagint and the Greek New Testament. These standard texts are compiled by text critics, biblical scholars who strive to reconstruct what the authors originally wrote. (In the context of biblical scholarship, the term critic means someone who seeks not to disparage but to discern.) Text critics consult a large variety of ancient Greek manuscripts, each with slightly different wording. They sift through the
variants, using strenuous criteria to judge which wording is most likely to have been the original. They then publish that wording in standard texts.
Biblical scholars also translate the Hebrew and Greek texts into modern languages, including English. The first English Bible, William Tyndale’s New Testament, was published in 1525. Other popular English Bibles include the King James Version (1611), the Revised Standard Version (1952), and the New American Bible (1970). The SBL Study Bible uses the New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition (2022), a revision of the original New Revised Standard Edition (1991). This translation was produced through the collaborative work of Protestant, Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Jewish scholars. They aimed to make their translation as literal as possible without sacrificing readability. They also strove for transparency. For example, when they used an ancient variant (often found among the Dead Sea Scrolls) to clarify confusing Masoretic Text expressions or replaced uncertain wordings in the
standard Greek text, they indicated the options in the footnotes.
The Study of the Bible
Most people who study the Bible prefer a translation in their own language. Biblical scholars, however, study the Bible primarily in Hebrew and Greek. Their profession is as old as the Bible itself, as attested by the story of the scribe Ezra, who is thought to have brought the law of Moses to Jerusalem from Babylon in the mid-fifth or early fourth century BCE. The biblical account states that Ezra “had set his heart to study the law of the LORD and to do it and to teach the statutes and ordinances in Israel” (Ezra 7.10). A thirdcentury BCE scribe named Jesus ben Sira, author of Sirach, saw himself as one who “devotes himself to the study of the law,” is “concerned with prophecies,” and seeks “the hidden meanings of proverbs” (Sir 38.34—39.3). The apostle Paul, a highly trained Pharisee who wrote at least seven New Testament books, focused his interpretive skills on passages from the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms that could give meaning to the death of Jesus.
In the centuries that followed, biblical scholarship was strictly a religious endeavor, practiced in schools and monasteries by rabbis and clerics. It is not so with modern biblical scholarship, which was born in the all-male Christian universities of eighteenth-century Western Europe. While other scholars began to use the scientific method as a discipline for understanding the origins of life and the universe, biblical scholars began to use historical criticism as a discipline for understanding the origins of the Bible. They sought to identify the Bible’s authors, audiences, and historical circumstances, to view those authors and audiences within those circumstances, and to determine the historical accuracy of the authors’ accounts. They relied on evidence from the Bible itself and from other ancient writings and artifacts. As modern thinkers, many subscribed to the view that all phenomena have natural causes. Some therefore began to question whether God had, in fact, created the heavens and the earth in seven days, taken the prophet Elijah into heaven, or raised Jesus from the dead. They offered strictly rational
explanations of biblical miracles, concluding that a windstorm had parted the Red Sea and that Jesus had fed a large crowd by teaching about kindness so that his listeners began to share their food with others. In an effort to discern what Jesus really said and did, others initiated a quest for the historical Jesus. They scoured the New Testament, using explicit criteria to discern the veracity of its claims. For example, a saying or event that does not fit the historical context of first-century Roman Palestine cannot be attributed to Jesus. He would not have needed to forbid a woman to divorce her husband because Jewish law already forbade it. On the other hand, a saying or event that would have embarrassed the first Christians but was reported anyway is likely to have occurred. Scholars are certain that Jesus was crucified because his followers took such pains to argue that he was in fact God’s Messiah despite his shameful execution.
Other historically minded scholars focused on the Bible’s authors and audiences within their historical contexts. Many concluded that most books cannot be attributed to their traditional authors. They also
studied the authors’ perspectives on the times in which they seem to have written. The authors of Deuteronomy and the Former Prophets, for example, are thought to have been exiled Judahites loyal to the Davidic monarchy and the Jerusalem temple. In an effort to ingrain those loyalties in their audiences, they explained Judahite control of their land as God’s reward for obedience to the commandments. Conversely, their losses of land (to the Babylonians in particular) served as God’s punishment for disobedience, especially in the form of idol worship.
Modern biblical scholars have interested themselves not only in the Bible’s authors but also in those authors’ written sources. Some searched the texts for possible oral traditions such as psalms of lament and the so-called Christ hymn in Phil 2. Some examined differences in style and content among various portions of the Law, contributing to a theory that the first four books of Moses include oral and written traditions compiled and edited by priests who added their own priestly regulations. Other source-critical theories address similarities and differences among
the first three gospels. Many argue that the Gospel of Mark was written first. The authors of Matthew and Luke then copied independently from Mark, each making his own editorial tweaks and adding material from a now-lost collection of Jesus’s teachings. A growing minority argue instead that Matthew was written first. The author of Luke copied from Matthew, making changes, additions, and deletions. The author of Mark then produced an edited version of both Matthew and Luke. The identification of sources yields evidence for discerning the agendas of the authors who are thought to have edited (redacted) those sources. This discernment process, known as redaction criticism, involves examining differences between the edited text and its sources. Since all editorial changes involve strategic choices, authors’ editorial tendencies often indicate what they are trying to convey. If Matthew copied from Mark, for example, he eliminated or softened Mark’s reports that Jesus’s disciples were confused or afraid. Instead, he portrayed them as students who were gradually learning from their
teacher. Matthew is also thought to have compiled Jesus’s sayings into five distinctive discourses, mirroring the five books of Moses. If he wrote after the destruction of the temple, when Roman authorities supported Pharisees in their efforts to focus Jewish piety on adherence to rabbinic interpretation of the Law, Matthew’s portrayal of Jesus as a teacher like Moses would have offered a strong counternarrative for his Christian audience. This example demonstrates how scholars use historical criticism, including source criticism and redaction criticism, to discern what the Bible means— in this case, what Matthew’s Gospel might have meant to its original author and audience. Literary criticism performs a similar function. It involves analyzing factors such as how an author selects a genre, outlines the work, portrays conflicts and characters, uses the techniques of formal rhetoric, highlights various themes, refers to the Scriptures, and selects words. It shows how these choices contribute to the effect of an author’s work on its intended audience. For instance, literary analysis of
Hebrew poetry illuminates how its parallel lines invite audiences to compare, contrast, and confirm its ideas. Paul’s writings exhibit strategic handling of the Greco-Roman letter genre. He used the standard greeting and prayer to set a tone, the body to lay out his concerns and arguments in an orderly fashion, and the closing to reinforce his points and name his supporters. His themes convey his main concerns, whether about Christian love among believers from different social backgrounds (1 Corinthians) or the relative status of Jewish and gentile followers of Jesus (Romans). By studying historical and literary evidence, biblical scholars have articulated persuasive theories about how the Bible was written and what its original authors intended to convey. Many of their ideas have outlived the scholars who first proposed them. Nevertheless, their methods have been subject to critique. Even with access to physical and written evidence of ancient lives and literature, how accurately can scholars characterize authors who wrote thousands of years ago? How sure can they be about those authors’
intentions? Starting in the 1970s, some began to interpret biblical narrative within the limits of evidence that seemed more definitive: the stories themselves. They scrutinized literary features such as genre, characterization, and plot. They used each narrative to construct its author and audience, not so as to identify historical persons but rather to discern what the story indicates about the one capable of crafting it and those expected to understand it. Narrative criticism has focused attention on the political maneuvering between David and Saul as depicted in 2 Samuel, the role of minor characters in Mark, and symbolism in John.
Meanwhile, the demographics of biblical scholarship were changing. The discipline is now less dominated by men of European ancestry and more inclusive of women as well as scholars with roots in Asia and the Global South. Queer scholars and scholars with disabilities join them in bringing new perspectives to biblical studies. These perspectives include those of feminist scholars, less interested in the faith of the patriarch Abraham than in the struggles of his wife
Sarah and her servant Hagar; queer scholars, less interested in David and Bathsheba than in David and Jonathan; disabled scholars, less interested in Jesus’s healing of the man who lives among the tombs than in the man’s social alienation; descendants of the colonized and the oppressed, less interested in the universal reign of Christ than in the political appropriation of that ideal—first championed in resistance to the Roman Empire—by their latter-day Christian colonizers and oppressors.
One might say that there are as many perspectives on the Bible as people who study it. The Bible itself reflects the perspectives of a multitude, from the Judahites and Israelites who chronicled their histories to the prophets who spoke in God’s name and the first Christians who studied and interpreted their works with reference to Jesus. The Bible’s books were collected, canonized, and translated from many more perspectives. In that light, this particular edition—with its scholarly introductions and notes—now invites contemporary readers to bring their perspectives to the age-old study of the Bible.
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