Religion and literature: Critical reflections on reading the Bible, literature, theology and culture to 2000

Abstract

Despite its status as a “best-seller " for thousands of years, the Bible is rarely actually "read". It has been used by religious traditions for various purposes, primarily to maintain its status as authoritative text within their institutions. But if we return to the ancient midrashic tradition of reading and interpretation as opposed to more recent practices of biblical interpretation within the academies, we encounter a relentless exercise in reading the texts of Scripture, and a rediscovery of their strange, dangerous and often subversive powers. This is particularly important now as we face our “postmodern condition ”, in which what emerges as important is not the power of the centre, but the necessary revival of those on the margins and those whose voices have been stifled. Returning to these nervous practices of reading the Bible we find ourselves within the critical debates of postmodernity as it struggles with an apocalyptic sense of ending and beginning at the turn of the millenium.