Readerly questions are raised when readers are explicitly and programmatically brought into the process of interpreting texts. Traditionally, the reader and readerly interest and identities have been screened out when we have set about interpreting texts, and we have set our sights on attaining an interpretation that should be as objective as possible.

Things are rather different now. Not only is quest for objective interpretation seen as chimera, but the rewards of unabashed readerly interpretations that foreground the process of reading and the context of the reader have now been shown to be very well worth seeking. That reader-response approach characterizes this collection of six essays, prefaced by an introduction to reader-response criticism.

The essays for the most part read in their original form to meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature, are: What Does Eve Do To Help? and other Irredeemably Androcentric Orientations in Genesis 1-3; What Happens in Genesis; The Ancestor in Danger: But Not the Same Danger; The Old Testament Histories: A Reader's Guide; Deconstructing the Book of Job; and Nehemiah Memoir: The perils of Autobiography.