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Reading Green: Tactical Considerations for Reading the Bible Ecologically operates on the premise that the Bible itself does not directly address the current ecological crisis and that expecting it to do so is anachronistic, for there was no ecological crisis on the agendas of biblical authors as they penned their works. The true challenge in the field is engaging biblical texts that do not present a positive ecological message (e.g., the stories of the flood and the plagues), or that seem to focus their messages so narrowly on human subjects and their interests that they marginalize or ignore the concerns of the other-than-human creation. To address this issue, this book provides a series of reading strategies which begin with the current ecological crisis. Present areas of interest, such as environmental racism and justice, film criticism, and reception history and exegesis, are employed to construct various approaches to mine the Bible for its contribution in addressing the current ecological crisis.
List of contents
Editor's Preface - Acknowledgments - Introduction - Noah (2014) as Paradigm for Reading the Bible Ecologically - Earth, the Poor, and the Bible: The Criteria of Ecological Hermeneutics Re-Visioned - I Love to Tell the Story: The Narrative Subversion of the Bible's Ecologically "Grey" Texts - Just Who Is the Lorax? Cli-Fi, Reception Exegesis, and Reading the Bible Ecologically - Creation as Judge: The Plagues, the Ecological Crisis, and the Book of Wisdom - What When Jesus Isn't Green? Addressing the Concern - Conclusion - Index of Names - Index of Ancient Sources.
About the author
Jeffrey S. Lamp (Ph.D., Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) is Professor at Oral Roberts University. He is the author of First Corinthians 1¿4 in Light of Jewish Wisdom Traditions and The Greening of Hebrews?: Ecological Readings in the Letter to the Hebrews, co-editor of The Theological Vision of N. T. Wright: A Pentecostal Engagement, and a translator and editor for the Modern English Version of the Bible. He has presented numerous papers at academic conferences and has published several articles in journals, dictionaries, and volumes of collected essays. His current research interests include ecological hermeneutics and ecotheology.
Summary
Reading Green: Tactical Considerations for Reading the Bible Ecologically operates on the premise that the Bible itself does not directly address the current ecological crisis and that expecting it to do so is anachronistic, for there was no ecological crisis on the agendas of biblical authors as they penned their works.
Report
"It was good. And it still is. Increasingly, the need to engage the sacred Scriptures through the experience of the contemporary ecological crisis continues to present itself like an unsolved puzzle. The lurking danger with all biblical studies is that we are unable (or unwilling) to read Scripture in light of what is actually going on in our world. We have become excellent at answering eighteenth-century questions. This book is a game-changer. Within, Jeffrey S. Lamp actually helps us deal with twenty-first-century issues with eternal and biblical voices that draw us to the eternal. This is a much-needed volume. I wish I had it years ago."-A. J. Swoboda, Pastor, Professor, and Author of Introducing Evangelical Ecotheology
