Opening Israel's Scriptures

Opening Israel's Scriptures is a collection of thirty-six essays on the Hebrew Bible, from Genesis to Chronicles, which gives powerful insight into the complexity and inexhaustibility of the Hebrew Scriptures as a theological resource. Based on more than two decades of lectures on Old Testament interpretation, Ellen F. Davis offers a selective yet comprehensive guide to the core concepts, literary patterns, storylines, and theological perspectives that are central to Israel's Scriptures. Underlying the whole study is the primary assumption that each book of the canon has literary and theological coherence, though not uniformity. In both her close readings of individual texts and in her broad demonstrations of the coherence of whole books, Davis models the best practices of contemporary exegesis, integrating the insights of contemporary scholars with those of classical theological resources in Jewish and Christian traditions. Throughout, she keeps an eye to the experiences and concerns of contemporary readers, showing through multiple examples that the critical interpretation of texts is provisional, open-ended work--a collaboration across generations and cultures. Ultimately what she offers is an invitation into the more spacious world that the Bible discloses, which challenges ordinary conceptions of how things "really" are.

About the Author :
Ellen F. Davis is Amos Ragan Kearns Distinguished Professor of Bible and Practical Theology at Duke University. She has previously held positions at Union Theological Seminary, Yale University, and Virginia Theological Seminary. She is a theological consultant within the Anglican Communion and the author of Preaching the Luminous Word, Biblical Prophecy, and Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: an Agrarian Reading of the Bible.

Review :
Opening Israel's Scriptures offers a readable, engaging and canonically rangy collection of theological close readings. I suspect that they would spark enthusiasm for Israel's scriptures as a textbook for a first-year seminary course, in complement to the usual more workmanlike, historical introduction. Davis's collection of essays is a theologically, philologically, historically, and culturally informed reading of Scripture that demonstrates a useful hermeneutic for both Jewish and Christian readers of the HB/OT. Those of us who put Scripture to use in the context of contemporary faith communities will find much to emulate in this volume, and it should find a place on every faithful reader of Scripture's bookshelf. This book is recommended to those who are beginning more advanced study of the OT for the first time, especially if they have done little text work before. In all this is a rich suggestive offering of a daringly fresh kind. Davis moves beyond conventions of scholarship that have domesticated the text. Her discussion permits Jews and Christians to read together through the prisms of our different traditions. This reading is indeed "provisional, open-ended, collaborative" There is much in Opening Israel's Scripture to ponder and much to help with navigating this sometimes very distant and strange world of the Old Testament/Hebrew Scriptures. Davis is a worthy guide and a patient teacher. She writes with a generosity and love for her subject that inspires confidence and bids the reader to continue delving into these texts. The entirety of the Hebrew Bible presented compellingly, edifyingly, with hermeneutical brilliance -- what an achievement! My seminarians and I have pined for this sort of sweeping illumination of the artistry, joy, tears, and formative power of Israel's Scriptures. We are eager to emulate Davis's attunement to the inner dialogs of Scripture, her habits of relentless rumination on troubling texts, and her engagement with fascinating and diverse reading partners, ranging from premodern rabbis to modern African church leaders. Over the course of her distinguished career, Ellen Davis has consistently shown us how to read the Bible as it deserves and demands to be read -- slowly, carefully, lovingly, with openness of both heart and mind. Opening Israel's Scriptures is a treasure, at once literarily astute, theologically profound, and spiritually uplifting. It is positively studded with arresting insights, enabling us to see old texts with new eyes. Davis writes in a distinctively Christian yet wholeheartedly inclusive voice, eager to learn with and from others. A beautiful book to be read, re-read, and cherished. Ellen Davis gives us rich food for stimulating reflection on every page. She combines her profound understanding of the Hebrew text and its world with the illuminating experience of teaching it in other cultural communities such as women in South Sudan, and brings the Scriptures into sharp engagement with contemporary social realities and personal faith. Even points of disagreement will leave a reader enriched with challenging fresh insights. Ellen Davis's Opening Israel's Scriptures is a gift to both the Church and the academy.