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Centre for Research in Philosophy and Literature

The Bible as Rhetoric: Studies in Biblical Persuasion and Credibility

Edited by Martin Warner
Warwick Studies in Philosophy and Literature

Contemporary developments in literary studies and philosophy have focused attention on the literary and rhetorical dimensions of works whose primary concern is with issues of truth and falsity; at the same time biblical scholars have been attempting to find ways forward from the established history-based procedures of biblical criticism. These pioneering interdisciplinary papers explore the ways in which the persuasive strategies employed in the biblical texts relate (both positively and negatively) to their preoccupations with religious and historical truth. They clarify what is at issue in the apparently competing claims that the Bible should be read 'as literature' and 'as scripture'.

Uniquely, the volume brings together philosophers, literary critics, biblical scholars, theologians, and historians of ideas who combine the best biblical and historical scholarship with a range of contemporary approaches to the study of texts, from the deconstructive and the feminist through the Wittgensteinian to those of the heirs of the tradition of practical criticism. The volume is of importance both to those interested in the applications of contemporary literary theory and to all those concerned with the relation between religious and secular readings of the Bible.

The Editor:
Martin Warner teaches philosophy at the University of Warwick and was the founding Programme Director of its Centre for Research in Philosophy and Literature.