Some biblical interpreters' imaginations extend only as far as outlandish source theories or esoteric hypothetical audiences. The interpretive energies let loose in Glasgow over the past decade or so, however, have produced a cadre of interpreters who defy the disciplinary mandates of biblical criticisms in favour of reading the Bible with imaginations both careful and carefree. Infused with literary, political, art-critical, cinematic, liturgical and other interests, these essays display interpretive verve freed from the anxiety of disciplines -- with closely observed insights, critical...

In Between Biblical Criticism and Poetic Rewriting, Samuel Tongue offers an account of the aesthetic and critical tensions inherent in the development of the Higher Criticism of the Bible. Different 'types' of Bible are created through the intellectual and literary pressures of Enlightenment and Romanticism and, as Tongue suggests, it is this legacy that continues to orientate the approaches deemed legitimate in biblical scholarship. Using a number of ancient and contemporary critical and poetic rewritings of Jacob's struggle with the 'angel' (Gen 32:22-32), Tongue makes use of...