Admen and Eve


Book Description

This remarkable new book, the first of its kind, is an analysis of a phenomenon that biblical scholars have scarcely taken notice of, much less studied critically-the use of the Bible in advertising. Focussing on the figure of Eve, Admen and Eve shows how she has become the ultimate postfeminist icon of female sexual and consumer power, promoting self-regarding individual choice over collective political action for today's 'I'm not a feminist but ...' generation. Contemporary advertising, Edwards shows, deploys a collage of images simultaneously reflecting and dictating the ideals and ideologies that inform much of Western culture. Exploiting the cultural mythology that surrounds Eve, advertisers constantly recycle images of this biblical figure because she is easily recognizable by the target consumer. In so doing, they are shaping how women and men see each other and themselves and how they treat each other and themselves, persuading them to become their culturally dictated dream through the products they consume. Eve in advertising is then a revealing example of how the Bible functions today. But Admen and Eve is not a value-free and apolitical analysis; it is an incitement to the exposure and subversion of today's dominant cultural attitudes to gender roles.




The Oxford Handbook of the Bible and American Popular Culture


Book Description

The study of the reciprocal relationship between the Bible and popular culture has blossomed in the past few decades, and the time seems ripe for a broadly-conceived work that assesses the current state of the field, offers examples of work in that field, and suggests future directions for further study. This Handbook includes a wide range of topics organized under several broad themes, including biblical characters (such as Adam, Eve, David and Jesus) and themes (like Creation, Hell, and Apocalyptic) in popular culture; the Bible in popular cultural genres (for example, film, comics, and Jazz); and "lived" examples (such as museums and theme parks). The Handbook concludes with a section taking stock of methodologies and the impact of the field on teaching and publishing. The Oxford Handbook of the Bible and American Popular Culture represents a major contribution to the field by some of its leading practitioners, and will be a key resource for the future development of the study of both the Bible and its role in American popular culture.




Discovering Genesis


Book Description

Concise, student-friendly introduction to Genesis Iain Provan here offers readers a compact, up-to-date, and student-friendly introduction to the book of Genesis, focusing on its structure, content, theological concerns, key interpretive debates, and historical reception. Drawing on a range of methodological approaches (author-, text-, and reader-centered) as complementary rather than mutually exclusive ways of understanding, Discovering Genesis encourages students to dig deeply into the theological and historical questions raised by the text. It provides a critical assessment of key interpreters and interpretive debates, focusing especially on the reception history of the biblical text, a subject of growing interest to students and scholars of the Bible.




Rethinking Biblical Literacy


Book Description

What do people know about the Bible, and how much do they know? The media often discusses the worrying 'decline' in biblical literacy, but what does this really mean, and how can we measure this assumed 'decline'? How can we go about teaching 'biblical literacy', and about teaching teachers how to teach it? Rethinking Biblical Literacy explores the question of biblical literacy, examining the Bible's use, influence and impact in advertising, street art, poetry, popular erotic literature, Irish and UK secondary education, stand-up comedy and The Simpsons TV series to display the different types of literacy and knowledge of the Bible. Katie B. Edwards brings together several specialists in the cultural use, impact and influence of the Bible to examine the contested nature of biblical literacy and to explore the variety of ways of 'knowing' about the Bible. The picture created is one of a broad range and at times surprising depth of knowledge about what remains arguably the most influential collection of texts ever to be published.




The Bible and Comics


Book Description

This interdisciplinary volume seeks to trace the diverse ways in which stories of biblical women have been reimagined in and as comic books. Feminist biblical scholarship has previously addressed the tradition that relegates female biblical characters to secondary roles, merely enabling the male characters to attain their own goals. Using examples from both secular and religious comic Bibles, and comic Bibles aimed at children and older audiences, Zanne Domoney-Lyttle now fully considers contemporary remediations of biblical narratives to the same degree. Remediating ancient, biblical text into modern, graphical comic books affects the reception of the text in several ways. This book aims to investigate how the production, format, and function of comic Bibles encourages the depiction of biblical characters from a contemporary perspective, while also showing some fidelity to the text. By presenting a focused analysis on women in the Bible, wider issues concerning popular-cultural retellings of the Bible in general begin to surface, including matters concerning reception history, the space between art and literature inhabited by biblical comics, and issues of translation and interpretations within contemporary remediations.




Art as Biblical Commentary


Book Description

Art as Biblical Commentary is not just about biblical art but, more importantly, about biblical exegesis and the contributions visual criticism as an exegetical tool can make to biblical exegesis and commentary. Using a range of texts and numerous images, J. Cheryl Exum asks what works of art can teach us about the biblical text. 'Visual criticism' is her term for an approach that addresses this question by focusing on the narrativity of images-reading them as if, like texts, they have a story to tell-and asking what light an image's 'story' can shed on the biblical narrator's story. In Part I, Exum elaborates on her approach and offers a personal testimony to the value of visual criticism. Part 2 examines in detail the story of Hagar in Genesis 16 and 21. Part 3 contains chapters on erotic looking and voyeuristic gazing in the stories of Bathsheba, Susanna, Joseph and Potiphar's wife and the Song of Songs; on the distribution of renown among Jael, Deborah and Barak; on the Bible's notorious women, Eve and Delilah; and on the sacrificed female body in the stories of the Levite's wife (Judges 19) and Mary the mother of Jesus.




An Introduction to Religious Language


Book Description

Religious language is all around us, embedded in advertising, politics and news media. This book introduces readers to the field of theolinguistics, the study of religious language. Investigating the ways in which people talk to and about God, about the sacred and about religion itself, it considers why people make certain linguistic choices and what they accomplish. Introducing the key methods required for examining religious language, Valerie Hobbs acquaints readers with the most common and important theolinguistic features and their functions. Using critical corpus-assisted discourse analysis with a focus on archaic and other lexical features, metaphor, agency and intertextuality, she examines religious language in context. Highlighting its use in both expected locations, such as modern-day prayer and politics, and unexpected locations including advertising, sport, healthcare and news media, Hobbs analyses the shifting and porous linguistic boundaries between the religious and the secular. With discussion questions and further readings for each chapter, as well as a companion website featuring suggested answers to the reflection tasks, this is the ideal introduction to the study of religious language.




The Bible and Digital Millennials


Book Description

The Bible and Digital Millennials explores the place of the Bible in the lives of 18 to 35 year-olds who have been born into the digital age. As the use of digital media becomes increasingly pervasive, it should follow that it will have a significant effect on people’s engagement with religion and the sacred texts associated with it. Drawing on contemporary in-depth surveys, this study unpacks digital millennials’ stance towards, use of and engagement with the Bible in both offline and online settings. The book features results from a nationally representative survey of 2,000 young British people specifically commissioned for this project. The data is also compared with the findings of others, including a poll of 850 British Bible-centric Christians and recent Bible engagement surveys from the USA. This book investigates the relevance of the Bible to the lives of those who have grown up in the digital age. It will, therefore, offer fresh insight to any scholar of biblical studies, religion and digital media, and religious studies.




Out of the Shadows


Book Description

The story of the Bible us most often told as the story of men, from patriarchs to prophets, kings, disciples and apostles. But women are there, sometimes in the background, sometimes striding powerfully onto the stage. Their story is moving, prophetic and good news for the congregations to whom we preach. Out of the Shadows seeks to enable preachers to see these often marginal characters in a new light, offering ideas about how to communicate their stories with power, resonance and punch.




A History of the Bible


Book Description

A literary history of our most influential book of all time, by an Oxford scholar and Anglican priest In our culture, the Bible is monolithic: It is a collection of books that has been unchanged and unchallenged since the earliest days of the Christian church. The idea of the Bible as "Holy Scripture," a non-negotiable authority straight from God, has prevailed in Western society for some time. And while it provides a firm foundation for centuries of Christian teaching, it denies the depth, variety, and richness of this fascinating text. In A History of the Bible, John Barton argues that the Bible is not a prescription to a complete, fixed religious system, but rather a product of a long and intriguing process, which has inspired Judaism and Christianity, but still does not describe the whole of either religion. Barton shows how the Bible is indeed an important source of religious insight for Jews and Christians alike, yet argues that it must be read in its historical context--from its beginnings in myth and folklore to its many interpretations throughout the centuries. It is a book full of narratives, laws, proverbs, prophecies, poems, and letters, each with their own character and origin stories. Barton explains how and by whom these disparate pieces were written, how they were canonized (and which ones weren't), and how they were assembled, disseminated, and interpreted around the world--and, importantly, to what effect. Ultimately, A History of the Bible argues that a thorough understanding of the history and context of its writing encourages religious communities to move away from the Bible's literal wording--which is impossible to determine--and focus instead on the broader meanings of scripture.