Editing the Bible: Assessing the Task, Past and Present, J.S. Kloppenborg & J.H. Newman (Eds.) : book review

Abstract

John Kloppenborg is Professor in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto and Judith Newman is Associate Professor of Old Testament/Hebrew Bible at Emmanuel College, University of Toronto. In this volume of essays they include a select group of scholarly contributors who offer a variety of considered opinions on various issues that concern the "editing" of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures (LXX and NT). Many of the collected ideas and insights offered, which derive from a 2007 Conference on Editorial Problems (University of Toronto), are innovative in the fields of textual criticism and canon composition, and several proposals may also be rather controversial in their claims and implications. However, all of the essays are thought-provoking and helpful for enabling one to better understand some of the salient questions, complexities, and difficulties that confront those who research and write about these subjects. There may be those in the field of biblical studies who tend to take such matters for granted, but that is not a constructive policy if one wishes to delve more deeply into the composition, transmission, and publication of the very Scripture texts that one desires to better understand, analyze, and/or discourse about.