Review
"Perusing this well-edited, fully indexed Companion is an exhilarating experience that is likely to lead readers to offer a sincere, if breathless, thanks to all involved in its creation." (Choice)
This volume is a delight, full of interest and surprises. It contains a wealth of fine scholarship made readable and the book is highly recommended … Immensely varied, accessible, and fascinating." (Journal of Contemporary Religion, October 2008)
“A sweeping and magnanimous overview … admirably achieves its goal with wit, aplomb, and a disciplinary breadth that is all too rare in biblical studies today … A welcome addition to the growing corpus of literature on the important relationship(s) between the Bible and culture.” (Review of Biblical Literature)
"An intriguing and highly engaging set of articles which demonstrate clearly how much of the world’s culture has been, and is, permeated with biblical imagery, ideas and influences." (Journal for the Study of the New Testament)
"A unique manual that demonstrates that biblical studies are no longer done exclusively in departments of theology ... For all reference libraries."
(International Review of Biblical Studies)
Review
"Concentrating vast bodies of knowledge in richly and vividly informative articles, this volume is a major contribution to religion and culture studies. It includes the three religions that use the Bible - Judaism, Islam, and Christianity - on topics as varied as film, Australasia, postmodernism, and the body. All scholars and students of religion and culture can learn from both the content and the method of this highly readable book."
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Margaret R. Miles, The Graduate Theological Union"It is clear that the Bible in Western culture is recognized not only as 'a source of revelation' but as a generative force in the propulsion of culture. Professor Sawyer knows as much as anyone about 'Reader Response' and the ways in which the Bible has been read over time - misread or strongly read - to impact and shape culture. In this volume he has gathered a first-rate group of scholarly interpreters who lead us into heretofore unexplored areas along the interface of culture and Bible. This book is a venturesome and welcome pioneer not only in new learnings, but also in new methods that will continue to evoke new interpretations. The volume signals a fresh direction in Scripture study."
–Walter Brueggemann, Columbia Theological Seminary
"Nowhere has the mutual interdependence between the Bible and culture been as thoroughly analysed as in the thirty contributions to this Companion. The rich variety of contents and perspectives of these imaginatively selected, densely packed chapters is overwhelming. A truly interdisciplinary work created by a group of internationally known scholars, this collection shows how the various aesthetic, political and religious aspects of culture inform and are still informed by biblical texts. They reveal how much our cultural imagination and practices are imbued with biblical images, themes and residues, but also how much present ways of thinking have moved far away from the Bible. The contributors discuss rabbinic, patristic, medieval, modern and postmodern approaches to the Bible, its global appropriations as also its reception and usage in Judaism, Islam and in contemporary ecological debates. These challenging essays invite much reflection and debate, making this Companion attractive to a wide range of readers."
–Ursula King, University of Bristol and London
