Houses of the Interpreter: Reading Scripture, Reading Culture

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Baylor University Press, 2003 - Religion - 288 pages
Going beyond merely charting biblical scholarship and how it has both influenced and been influenced by cultural influences, Jeffrey focuses upon the art of biblical interpretation - how sculptors, musicians, poets, novelists and painters have read the Bible. By doing so, he demonstrates how such cultural interpretation has deepened the Church's understanding of the Bible as scripture and how, remarkably, this cultural reading has even contributed to theology and the practice of faith. enterprise (scriptural authority, narrative, the Old Testament as Christian scripture and the role of the reader, gender and postmodernism) in specific authors and artists (such as Chaucer, Bosch, Sir Orefo and C.S. Lewis) and he does this in constant conversation with literature, both eastern and western. fewer trained theologians than one might expect, and it is his thesis that the Church's desire and need for a deeply consistent and intellectually coherent biblical theology will only be satisfied by including the treasury of foundational interpreters that he assembles. But Jeffrey even here is careful to argue that the understanding of the un-ordained, the laity, needs also to be gathered up and most carefully reflected upon in the light of scripture itself.

From inside the book

Contents

How Firm a Foundation ?
3
Masterplot and Meaning in Biblical Narrative
15
SelfExamination and the Examination of Texts
39
Charity and Cupidity in Biblical Tradition
55
The Gospel according to Isaiah
75
Scripture in the Houses of
85
Authority and Interpretation in the House of Fame
87
Chaucers Friars Unpaid Rent
111
Parody and Piety in Boschs Haywain
135
Music for the End of Time
155
Reading Wisely Reading Well
173
Reading the Bible with C S Lewis
181
Scripture Gender and Our Language of Worship
195
The Teaching Authority of Jesus and the Fatherhood of God
213
Postmodern Theology and Perennial Truth
227
Copyright

Conversion in the English Saints Plays
117

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About the author (2003)

David Lyle Jeffrey is a Distinguished Professor of Literature and the Humanities and Provost at Baylor University.

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