Review of Alissa Jones Nelson, Power and Responsibility in Biblical Interpretation: Reading the Book of Job with Edward Said, London, Routledge, 2012

Abstract

There has been a great deal of soul-searching of late in the Biblical Studies “guild” and around its edges as to the identity and proper goals of the discipline, if indeed there still exists a single discipline at all. This soul-searching has been prompted by a wide array of factors. One factor has been the proliferation of different methodological approaches in the later decades of the twentieth century and early years of the twenty-first, all accompanied by a concomitant efflorescence of interpretive perspectives and philosophical standpoints. Such newer approaches, perspectives, and standpoints entail different understandings of the respective roles of subjectivity and objectivity in the process of interpreting biblical texts. More recently we have also seen a burgeoning of reception-historical approaches to biblical texts (classical and ancient Near Eastern texts have also benefited from such treatment) which have emerged to challenge the hitherto dominant historicalcritical paradigms of the guild. Much of this, though by no means all, has taken place within the privileged and hallowed halls of the Western academy (or at least to a significant degree under its influence) and falls within the purview of what Alissa Jones Nelson terms “academic” or “idea-primary” (1) approaches. These approaches are dominated by readers trained in the languages, methods and ruling questions that have long shaped and determined the character and purpose of the Biblical Studies guild.