The Invention of the Biblical Scholar - by Stephen D Moore (Paperback)

About the Book

In this tale of two disciplines, Stephen D. Moore and Yvonne Sherwood invite the reader into a paradox: just as the wider field of literary studies has now come to operate after theory, biblical scholars continue their long search for an elusive Holy Grail?a definitive literary-critical theory. Understanding that paradox requires revisiting the peculiar history by which the curious figure of the biblical scholar was invented during the Enlightenment, and how contemporary biblical scholarship continues?however unwittingly?to pursue Enlightenment goals.

Book Synopsis

What is a "biblical scholar"? Stephen D. Moore and Yvonne Sherwood provide a thoroughly defamiliarizing and frequently entertaining redescription of this peculiar academic species and its odd disciplinary habitat. The modernand biblical scholar, they argue, is a product of the Enlightenment. Even when a biblical scholar imagines that she is doing something else entirely (something confessional, theoretical, literary, or even postmodern), she is sustaining Enlightened modernity and its effects. This study poses questions for scholars across the humanities concerned with the question of the religious and the secular. It also poses pressing questions for scholars and students of biblical interpretation: What other forms might biblical criticism have taken? What untried forms might biblical criticism yet take?