Biblical Limits is a new series which brings to the traditional field of Biblical Studies literary criticism, anthropology and gender-based approaches, thus reaching new ways of understanding Biblical texts.
Jesus Framed is a collection of essays on reading the gospel of Mark. It uses literary theory, most notably the writings of Roland Barthes, to examine some of the difficulties in the text of Mark. A series of close readings of the gospel of Mark is compared to similar texts, both biblical and otherwise. Drawing on Mark's famous phrase that "to those who are outside...

This controversial book explores the presence of the fantastic in Biblical and related texts, and the influence of Biblical traditions on contemporary fantasy writing, cinema, music and art.
The contributors apply a variety of critical concepts and methods from the field of fantasy studies, including the theories of Tolkien, Todorov, Rosemary Jackson and Jack Zipes, to Biblical texts and challenge theological suppositions regarding the texts which take refuge in science or historiography.
Violence, Utopia and the Kingdom of God presents a provocative and arresting new analysis...

Institutions and ideologies lay down parameters of accepted reading for those who wish to maintain acceptable status in their guilds. This is equally true in the church and in the academy. However, interpretation can refuse and transgress such boundaries. The Greek god Hermes was both a thief and a conveyor of messages, and "hermeneutics," the practice of interpretation, shares in this joint heritage of Hermes. Indeed, interpretative thieves constantly transgress the boundaries of both the permitted and the decorous.
Readings of the canonical gospels have a particular place in this...

This provocative book pursues a series of questions associated with canon(s) of the Bible. How does the canon influence the meaning of the texts of which it is composed? Could texts be "liberated" from the canon, and what would this liberation do to them or to the canon? What does the biblical canon signify about its constituent texts? What does canonical status imply about texts that are included in the Bible, as well as texts that are excluded from it? How does a canon-a cultural and ideological product-influence or create ideology and culture?

In The Control of Biblical Meaning,...

Screening Scripture offers a unique new perspective on religion and film. The book proposes that there is no natural connection between scripture and film-even for those movies that seem to have an obvious relationship to religious text. It is only the viewer that makes this connection. From this perspective, Screening Scripture opens up new possibilities for viewing these movies and reading these texts with each other.

The contributors to this volume serve as creative viewers who make these connections for some of today's most popular and provocative films. The scriptures discussed...

W]hen they saw him walking on the sea they thought it was a ghost (phantasma), and cried out; for they all saw him, and were terrified (Mark 6:49, RSV)

There
is a growing awareness among biblical scholars and others of the
potential value of modern and postmodern fantasy theory for the study
of biblical texts. Following
theorists such as Roland Barthes, Tzvetan Todorov, and Gilles Deleuze
(among others), we understand the fantastic as the deconstruction of
literary realism. The fantastic arises from the text's resistance to
understanding; the...

Can the different pictures of Jesus in the New Testament be reconciled? Or are they simply simulations, the products of a virtual Gospel? Simulating Jesus argues that the gospels do not represent four versions of one Jesus story but rather four distinct narrative simulacra, each of which is named "Jesus." The book explores the theory and evidence justifying this claim and discusses its practical and theological consequences. The simulations of Jesus in each of the gospels are analysed and placed alongside Jesus simulacra elsewhere in the Bible and contemporary popular culture. Simulating...