In this examination of the bible in the social sciences the contributors explore a wide range of broadly social-scientific disciplines and discourses - cultural anthropology, sociology, archaeology, political science, the New Historicism, forced migration studies, gender studies - and provide multiple examples of the ways in which diverse methods and theories, if intentionally chosen for their fitness for a given interpreter's inquiry, can shed new and often fascinating light on the ancient texts, light that a single preferred meta-theory might not consistently be able to give. Professional biblical scholars have been adapting concepts and theories from the social sciences, and most especially social and cultural anthropology, throughout the last several decades in order to cast new light on ancient biblical writings, early Jewish and Christian texts that circulated with the Scriptures, and the various contexts in which these literatures were produced and first received.
The present volume of essays, written by scholars from the United Kingdom (Manchester, Sheffield, and Derby) and Switzerland (Lausanne), belongs to that development in the history of biblical research but also transforms it in several important ways.