In the volume entitled The Mission of God, author Christopher J.H. Wright (2006) endeavors to search for a missional hermeneutic that unlocks the Bible’s grand narrative. The book’s comprehensiveness and extensiveness would be difficult to match in years to come. However, the books of Ruth and Esther are notably overlooked and mentioned only in passing. This glaring omission implies an insignificance and irrelevance of the two books in contributing to the hermeneutic of missions. Should these two books be included or excluded in the grand narrative of the mission of God? This paper positions Ruth and Esther at an indispensable place in a missional hermeneutic that nuances the intricacies of the Abrahamic covenant, the diaspora, and gender in God’s grand narrative.
CarruthersJ (2008) Esther through the Centuries. Blackwell Bible Commentaries. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell.
3.
FischerI (1999) The book of Ruth: A “Feminist” commentary to the Torah? In BrennerA (ed.) A Feminist Companion to the Bible: Ruth and Esther. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, pp. 24–29.
4.
FoxMV (1991) Character and Ideology in the Book of Esther. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans.
5.
GinDH (2010) Ruth: identity and leadership from multivocal spaces. In HertigYLSunC (eds) Mirrored Reflections: Reframing Biblical Characters. Eugene, Or.: Wipf & Stock, pp. 57–71.
6.
GloverN (2009) Your people, my people, an exploration of ethnicity in Ruth. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament33.3: 293–313.
7.
HancockRS (2013) Esther and the Politics of Negotiation: Public and Private Spaces and the Figure of the Female Royal Counselor. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press.
8.
Hambrick-StoweCE (1983) Ruth the New Abraham, Esther the New Moses. The Christian Century: 1130.
9.
HawkLD (2015) Ruth. Apollos Old Testament Commentary 7B; Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press.
10.
HonigB (1999) Ruth, the model emigree: mourning and the symbolic politics of immigration. In BrennerA (ed.) A Feminist Companion to the Bible (Second Series): Ruth and Esther. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, pp. 50–74.
11.
HumphreyWL (1977) A life-style for diaspora: a study of the tales of Esther and Daniel. Journal of Biblical Literature92: 211–23.
12.
HousePR (1998) Old Testament Theology. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press.
13.
KuanJ Kah-Jin (2000) Daisporic reading of a diasporic text: identity politics and race relations and the Book of Esther. In SegoviaFF (ed.) Interpreting Beyond Borders. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, pp. 161–173.
14.
LeeEP (2006) Ruth the Moabite: identity, kinship, and otherness. In DayLPresslerC (eds) Engaging the Bible in a Gendered World: An Introduction to Feminist Biblical Interpretation in Honor of Katharine Doob Sakenfeld. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, pp. 89–101.
15.
SegoviaFF (1995) Toward a hermeneutics of the diaspora: a hermeneutics of otherness and engagement. In SegoviaFFTolbertMA (eds) Reading from this Place: Social Location and Biblical Interpretation in the United States. Vol 1Minneapolis: Fortress Press, pp. 57–74.
SpinaFA (2005) The Faith of the Outsider: Exclusion and Inclusion in the Biblical Story. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans.
18.
SternER (2010) Esther and the politics of diaspora. Jewish Quarterly Review100.1: 25–53.
19.
TalmonS (1963) “Wisdom” in the book of Esther. Vetus Testamentum13: 419–455.
20.
TribleP (1978) God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.
21.
TribleP (1976) Two women in a man’s world. Sound59: 251–279.
22.
Van WoldeE (1997) Intertextuality: Ruth in dialogue with Tamar. In BrennerAFontaineC (eds) A Feminist Companion to Reading the Bible: Approaches, Methods, and Strategies. London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, pp. 426–451.
23.
WanE (2011) Diaspora Missiology: Theory, Methodology, and Practice. Portland, Or.: Institute of Diaspora Studies.
24.
WeerakoonK (2015) Evangelical intercultural identity: a new resource for twenty-first century mission?Colloquium47/1.
25.
WetterA-M (2015) On her Account: Reconfiguring Israel in Ruth, Esther, and Judith. Bloomsbury: T & T Clark.
26.
WhiteSA (1989) Esther: a feminine model for Jewish diaspora. In DayPL (ed.) Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, pp. 161–177.
27.
WrightCJH (2006) The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative. Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic.
28.
YeeGA (2007) “She Stood in Tears amid the Alien Corn” Ruth, the Perpetual Foreigner and Model Minority. In BrockRNKimJHLanKPYangSA (eds) Off the Menu: Asian and Asian North American Women’s Religion & Theology. Louisville, Kent.: Westminster John Knox, pp. 45–65.
29.
YoderCR (2001) Wisdom as a Woman of Substance: A Socioeconomic Reading of Proverbs 1–9 and 31:10–31. BZAW 304; Berlin: Walter DeGruyter.
30.
YongA (2014) The Future of Evangelical Theology: Soundings from the Asian American Diaspora. Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic.
