In the 50 chapters of these two volumes, David J. A. Clines presents a series of discourses, spanning three decades, from an increasingly postmodern perspective. Rather than using only methods of deconstruction, he combines traditional methods with postmodern ideas of analysis, resulting in a substantial reading of the Hebrew Bible.

Clines's selected sequence of articles and papers-ten of them not previously published-displays a golden thread of a scholar's journey in biblical interpretation. Some of the papers, like 'The Evidence for an Autumnal New Year in Pre-exilic Israel Reconsidered', are far from postmodern in their outlook, and sit in intriguing juxtaposition with others such as 'The Postmodern Adventure in Biblical Studies'.

The essays are organized in eight sections;

- Method, Literature, History (Vol. I.),

- Theology, Language, Psalms, Job, and, entertainingly, Divertimenti (Vol. II). They include 'Reading Esther from Left to Right', 'Beyond Synchronic Diachronic', 'Story and Poem: The Old Testament as Literature and as Scripture', 'In Search of the Indian Job', and 'Philology and Power'.

Further items in this first volume to highlight are:

• Possibilities and Priorities of Biblical Interpretation in an International Perspective
• What Has (and Has Not) Happened at SBL International Meetings
• The Force of the Text: A Response to Tamara C. Eskenazi
• In Quest of the Historical Mordecai

This volume is a reprint of the original 1998 edition.