The Five Scrolls Texts @ Contexts [Hardcover]

In this collection, scholars from diverse geographical locations revisit a cluster of five biblical texts: Ruth, Song of Songs, Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes), Lamentations and Esther. The volume presents various viewpoints and contexts-geographical, communal, religious, social, economical and ethical. Matching scholarship with social awareness, the contributors keep asking themselves and their readers a dual-faced question: how does our life context influence our scholarly and non-scholarly readings of the Bible, and how does reading the Bible critically influence our life?

To answer this question and to show it at work the contributors employ a range of contextual lenses. Geography is a major factor of the contributors' contexts  with contributors from South Africa, Argentina, Israel, the Pacific Islands  but not the only one to influence their readings. Issues of society, culture and community are at the foreground for all contributors and their reading agendas with specific focus on the AIDs crisis in Africa, issues of migration and asylum, and feminist approaches to biblical texts.

Introduction
Abbreviations
Ruth
1. Ruling From Their Graves? Reading Naomi within the African Religio-Cultural Context - Madipoane Masenya (ngwan'a Mphahlele), University of South Africa, South Africa
2. The Boaz Solution: Reading Ruth in Light of Australian Asylum Seeker Discourse - Anthony Rees, Charles Sturt University, Australia
3. Finding Korean Goose Moms Home: Contextual Re-reading of Ruth - Hyun Woo Kim, Emory University, USA
4. Boaz as 'Sugar Daddy': Re-reading Ruth in the Context of HIV in Southern Africa - Gerald O. West and Beverley G. Haddad, University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa
5. Racial Melancholia and the Book of Ruth - Gale A. Yee, Episcopal Divinity School, USA
6. Poor and Landless Women: An African Reading of Leviticus 25 and Ruth 4 with Latino/a Critical Tools - Ndikho Mtshiselwa, UlÒ