Postmodern Interpretations of the Bible: A Reader

Postmodern Interpretations of the Bible: A Reader. Edited by A. K. M. Adam. St. Louis, Mo.: Chalice Press, 2001. xi + 277, $32.99 (paper).

This reader, edited by A. K. M. Adam, associate professor of New Testament at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, is shockingly unpretentious for something in the postmodern literary genre: many essays actually make sense and encourage the reader to read on. Perhaps this felicitous blend of method, content, whimsy, and wonder is a direct result of the editor's editorial model for the work. In his preface, Adam speaks of encouraging lively conversation-and not just among the converted "insiders." He imagines a cybercafe or coffee shop in which many tables are occupied by his authors and hoped-for readers. The conversations are vigorous, by no means uncritical, but not directed toward finding the one true meaning. The "expert" speaking assumes the interlocutor-reader knows something about the Bible, but not everything. Hence, a certain knowledge or passing acquaintance with methods of study of biblical texts is more or less assumed, but the "conversations" presented here are less interested in rehearsing methods of the past (obviously) than with suggesting trajectories for better questions in the here and now. Refreshing!

The Reader serves up a fine bill of fare: established scholars sip their methodological cocktales (not a misspelling by this feminist reviewer) next to those who could only be considered a Radical Other in former buffets of theory. Even non-biblical theologians have slipped in to occupy a table: Catherine Keller's essay on the Apocalypse (pp. 253-277), written from a postmodern, feminist analysis of power relations, is a goodie too delectable to miss. You will find in the showcase of savory offerings the likes of Brueggemann, Sugirtharajah, and Crossan; Jobling, Miscall and Fewell, served up beside those who are more relative newcomers (Black, Shields, and others). In fact, given the wide diversity of approaches and previous work, an "About the Contributors" list would have been highly useful.

Biblical books discussed in the various essays include Genesis, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Judges, oral prophetic traditions, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Micah, Song of Songs, and Proverbs. From the New Testament, we are invited to sample parables (husbandmen; prodigals), Mark, Acts, Romans, Corinthians, Philippians, the Apocalypse, and the Acts of Andrew. The "Most Fascinating Title of an Individual Essay" plaudit goes to J. Dominic Crossan's "The Power of the Dog" (pp. 187-194), which "sniffs out" the intersections among dogs, crosses, and corpses, requiring us to chase after and retrieve the differences between dogs-as-pets and packs-of-dogs-as-scavengers.

Overall, though the fare at this Postmodern Cafe is offered up with aplomb and whimsy-certainly an appropriate "subjectivity" for anyone 11 making a living" (or is that a "dying"?) from "doing" Bible-it is a standard postmodern assortment: high carb and fat on words, but low on the protein needed to keep one's vision clear when applying "Scripture" to modern communities. You will find here the typical menu: nausea, abuse, violence, death, despair, post-Holocaust suspicion, abjection, "nocturnal egressions" (F. Black on the Song of Songs, pp. 93-104), "tainted texts" (T. Oldenhage, pp. 165-177), silence, authority, and the making and unmaking of "docile bodies" (D. Krause, pp. 177-187). This may be a feast for some, but more cautious readers may wonder whether or not they have strayed out of a cafe and into some sort of theater specializing in a kind of bondage-drama of text, culture, and reader. Perhaps, given the burden of Scripture, that is the best that can be expected; but still, one is left with a case of hyperactive, caffeine-- induced, methodological jitters that remind us it is sometimes necessary to eat the bread of hope.

Still, this reviewer, for all the enjoyment of great "reads" and substantive questions, worries about the "audience," the shadowy Other of the postmodern meaning-making enterprise. Perhaps abjection and horror were the perfect conversational meal when, outside the cafe, materialism reigned supreme in the streets of the Secular City. Now, however, we are still stunned into shock by the memory of the folk of the city running away from disaster, each converted to a modern-day Lot's wife, coated in the dust of a violent eruption of all the dread towards which postmodern theory gestures. Will the conversations stay inside the safety of the academy's Methodological Cafe, or will they enter the street of despair, offering fresh hot mugs of extravagant hope to the rescuers laboring there?

CAROLE R. FONTAINE

Andover Newton Theological School

Newton Centre, Massachusetts

Copyright Anglican Theological Review, Inc. Summer 2002
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