Abstract
It is a mark of the distinction of John Barton, Emeritus Oriel and Laing Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture in the University of Oxford, that this excellent volume is the third to be published in his honour, following, for his 60th birthday, Aspects of Amos: Exegesis and Interpretation, edited by Anselm C. Hagedorn and Andrew Mein (New York and London, 2011), and for his 65th birthday Biblical Interpretation and Method: Essays in Honour of Professor John Barton, his Festschrift volume edited by Katharine J. Dell and Paul M. Joyce (Oxford, 2013).
The present work focuses on an area to which John Barton has made a particularly distinctive and influential contribution, namely the study of the use of the Bible in ethics. It is divided into three parts, in turn ‘establishing’, ‘enabling’ and ‘enacting’ the exegetical and the ethical. The thirteen essays cover ‘The Basis of the Exegetical and the Ethical: What is the Biblical Text?’ (Alma Brodersen); ‘Prophecy and the United Monarchy: The Origins of Exegesis in Prophetic Imitation’ (James E. Patrick); ‘How to Do Things with Scrolls: Writing and Ritual in Jeremiah 36’ (Laura Quick); ‘Scepticism within the Academy: Questioning the History of Israel’ (Katharine Dell); ‘The Riddle Minor Genre in the Old Testament: Clarity and Obscurity (Aulikki Nahkola); ‘Keeping Company in the Psalms: Ethics and Exegesis’ (Megan Daffern); ‘Ethics in Song of Songs’ (Anselm C. Hagedorn); ‘Yahweh as the Direction of Reference in Ezekiel’s Oracles Against the Nations’ (Andrew P. Langley); ‘The Typological Interpretation of Scriptural Quotations in the New Testament: A Test Case for the Bible in the Academy’ (Benjamin Sargent); ‘From Exclusion to Inclusion? Deuteronomy 23:1-8 in Philo and Beyond’ (Hywel Clifford); ‘Is There an Ethical Way to Read Genocidal Commands in “Holy Writ”?’ (Christian Hofreiter); ‘The Wisdom of Jonah: Biblical Interpretation in Late Antiquity’ (Kris Sonek); ‘A Tale of Two “Houses”: The Scandals of Hereditary Succession and Super-Mega-Church Construction in Korea, and Old Testament Ethics’ (S. Min Chun). There is an Introduction by the Editors and a short ‘Conclusion’ is supplied by John Barton himself.
This coherent interdisciplinary collection, written by an international team, all of them doctoral students of the honorand, is full of good things and is warmly commended.