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DAVID J. CHALCRAFT (ed.), Social-Scientific Old Testament Criticism (Biblical Seminar 47; Sheffield: Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997). Pp. 395. Paper L14.95, $19.95.
This Sheffield reader assembles eighteen essays from the Journal for the Study of the Old Testament which illustrate a variety of approaches to the OT falling in some way into the category of "social-scientific criticism" as it has been conceived by biblical scholars over the past twenty years. In the introductory essay Chalcraft distinguishes social science by "its conceptual precision, its comparative methodology and its desire to continually revise and expand its theories of societies in general" (p. 16). These same themes define the underlying goal of the reader with respect to its subject matter: to present the diversity of concepts, methodologies, and theories which have characterized injections of the "sociological imagination" into OT studies.
The essays in this reader are David J. Chalcraft, "Introduction" (pp. 13-19); Cyril S. Rodd, "On Applying a Sociological Theory to Biblical Studies" (pp. 22-33); David Jobling, "Sociological and Literary Approaches to the Bible: How Shall the Twain Meet?" (pp. 34-42); David Fiensy,...