Metacriticism of Biblical Scholarship

Call For Papers: We are hosting three sessions. One is an invited panel on the theme "The Vulnerable Bible," featuring three recent books in conversation on the theme of "the Bible" and vulnerability (to moral critique, manuscript discoveries, textual corruption, readings and "mis"readings, etc.): Andrew Jacobs' Gospel Thrillers, Rebecca Scharbach Wollenberg's The Closed Book, and Jill Hicks-Keeton's Good Book. The second invited panel is a collection of senior scholars invited to review their own first books. For the third panel, we are issuing an open call on the broad theme "Claiming the Boundaries of Biblical Studies." Critical research over the last several decades has attempted to account for the reality that scholarly study of the Bible has always been animated by agendas beyond the Academy. In recent years, the “big tent” ethos of the Society of Biblical Literature has led to various groups and institutions explicitly identified by these agendas have attempted to assert their place within the field of biblical studies within the society, but this is a symptom of larger trends where the study of the Bible is claimed by special interest groups with an eye to specific political, economic, and even military goals. This session invites paper proposals that address how such groups attempt to claim and redefine the boundaries of biblical studies in different ways. Proposal topics might include: the use of biblical texts for justifying international military conflicts, methodologically questionable approaches to archaeology in Israel and elsewhere, the stigmatizing of theories that challenge status-quo approaches to research methods, and the privileging of theological axioms in institutional settings involving the examination of biblical traditions. Paper proposals that address any of the goals and interests of the program unit will also be considered.

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