Exegeting Orality

“What difference does it make if the Exodus story is read from a page or performed on a stage? Is reading a Gospel like attending a Passion Play? Are authors and scribes the same as performers? Are readers and audiences more alike than they are different? Nick Acker distills the insights of two generations of scholarship on such questions and explores their importance for Christians today who approach the Bible as the word of God. Read this book, then hear anew the old, old stories.”


—Rafael Rodriguez, professor of New Testament, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary





“The study of orality is making us think about the Bible in new ways reflecting its original social contexts from each Testament. Exegeting Orality is a worthwhile read because it surveys well where orality studies currently stand and proposes a series of suggestions about how the move to text interacted with oral tradition, not in opposition to it but alongside it. This book will help you get situated in a discussion that is becoming more prominent in biblical studies.”


—Darrell L. Bock, senior research professor of New Testament studies, Dallas Theological Seminary





“Critical to faith are the ways in which human beings express the foundations of their belief, and even though not all readers of Nick Acker’s book may share his particular faith, we can applaud his appreciation for the oral traditional qualities of Scripture and the implications of those qualities for cultural communities and their identities. Acker is to be commended for his bibliographic thoroughness and for his thoughtful review of the history of relevant scholarship in context.”


—Susan Niditch, professor of religion, Amherst College





“It’s obvious to modern people that the Bible is a book that we read (silently). Yet over the centuries, most people listened to it read by someone else, and the people who wrote the Bible expected that most people would hear it read in that way. So in their oral culture they wrote it with that expectation. So it’s useful to have this book from which you will learn a lot about scholarly theories concerning orality.”


—John Goldingay, senior professor of Old Testament, Fuller Seminary





“The Bible we study is a written text whether we read it in the original languages or in a modern translation. Nick Acker reminds us that these texts originated in an ancient oral culture and warns us about an uncritical application of modern textual assumptions as we interpret it. I recommend Exegeting Orality to all serious students of the Bible. This book will get you thinking through some of the most important issues of biblical interpretation.”


—Tremper Longman III, professor emeritus of biblical studies, Westmont College