This book is edited by a Jew and a Christian who are united by a shared passion for the Bible and a common literary hermeneutic. It joins two biblical scrolls and gathers around them a diverse community of interpreters. It brings together Ruth and the Song of Songs, two seemingly disparate texts of the Hebrew Bible, and reads them through a number of methodological and theological perspectives. Respectful of traditional biblical scholarship, the collection of chapters moves beyond it; alert to contemporary trends, the book returns venerable interpretive tradition to cen ... More

This book is edited by a Jew and a Christian who are united by a shared passion for the Bible and a common literary hermeneutic. It joins two biblical scrolls and gathers around them a diverse community of interpreters. It brings together Ruth and the Song of Songs, two seemingly disparate texts of the Hebrew Bible, and reads them through a number of methodological and theological perspectives. Respectful of traditional biblical scholarship, the collection of chapters moves beyond it; alert to contemporary trends, the book returns venerable interpretive tradition to center stage. Most significantly, it is interfaith. Despite the fact that Jews and Christians share a common text in the Hebrew Scripture, the two communities have read their Bibles in isolation from one another, in ignorance of the richness of the other's traditions of reading. This book brings the two traditions into dialogue, enriching established modes of interpretation with unconventional ones. The result is a book that sets rabbinic, patristic, and medieval readings alongside feminist, psychoanalytic, and autobiographical ones, combining historical, literary, and textual criticism with a variety of artistic reinterpretations—wood cuts and paper cuts, poetry and fiction.