Postmodern Use of the Bible: The Emergence of Reader-Oriented Criticism

Harry Emerson Fosdicks classic volume entitled The Modern Use of the Bible enabled readers in the first part of this century to make the pilgrimage into the modern era and to understand the Bible in an idiom informed by critical and historical assumptions and approaches. The exchange of the historical context for the dogmatic transformed biblical study into an exciting discipline both spiritually and intellectually. The critical distancing of the text in the historical approach however has gradually trnasformed biblical writings into museum pieces without contemporary relevance. For contemporary readers a satisfying approach cannot be uncritical but it must move beyond the critical. Postmodern Use of the Bible encourages a continual pilgrimage. In this book readers are provided resources to enable them to make sense for themselves in the light of challenges to major critical assumptions and strategies of The Modern Use of the Bible. The same goal is in mind--to allow the Bible to speak in a contemporary idiom. --from the Introduction Contents Introduction 1. How Have We Made Sense of the Bible? 2. Toward the Postmodern 3. Literary Perspectives and Resources for Postmodern Use: Structures Codes and the Readers 4. The Role of the Reader: Imaging the Sacred 5. The Role of the Reader: Actualizing of Biblical Discourse Conclusion Edgar V. McKnight is William R. Kenan Jr. Professor Emeritus of Religion at Furman University. He is the author of What Is Form Criticism? Meaning in Texts The Bible and the Reader Reading the Bible Today and Jesus Christ in History and Scripture.