The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries provided a number of new paradigms for reading the Bible that challenged the then prevailing literal or allegorical model of reading the Bible. In the late twentieth century, the number of methods for reading the Bible multiplied to such an extent that by the end of the century there were almost as many models for reading Scripture as there were readers of Scripture.

The editors have gathered essays by a number of internationally recognized scholars, ranging from evangelical biblical critics to postmodern biblical critics, who explore a...