Midrash is expansive Jewish Biblical exegesis using a rabbinic mode of interpretation prominent in the Talmud. The word itself means "textual interpretation", "study", or "exegesis", derived from the root verb darash (דָּרַשׁ), which means "resort to, seek, seek with care, enquire, require", forms of which appear frequently in the Hebrew Bible.
Biblical criticism is the use of critical analysis to understand and explain the Bible. During the eighteenth century, when it began as historical-biblical criticism, it was based on two distinguishing characteristics: (1) the scientific concern to avoid dogma and bias by applying a neutral, non-sectarian, reason-based judgment to the study of the Bible, and (2) the belief that the reconstruction of the historical events behind the texts, as well as the history of how the texts themselves developed, would lead to a correct understanding of the Bible. This sets it apart from earlier, pre-critical methods; from the anti-critical methods of those who oppose criticism-based study; from later post-critical orientation, and from the many different types of criticism which biblical criticism transformed into in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
Pesher, from the Hebrew root meaning "interpretation," is a group of interpretive commentaries on scripture. The pesharim commentaries became known from the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The pesharim give a theory of scriptural interpretation of a number of biblical texts from the Hebrew Bible, such as Habakkuk and Psalms.
Biblical hermeneutics is the study of the principles of interpretation concerning the books of the Bible. It is part of the broader field of hermeneutics, which involves the study of principles of interpretation, both theory and methodology, for all forms of communication, nonverbal and verbal.
John Barton is a British Anglican priest and biblical scholar. From 1991 to 2014, he was the Oriel and Laing Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Oriel College. In addition to his academic career, he has been an ordained and serving priest in the Church of England since 1973.
Hector Avalos was a professor of Religious Studies at Iowa State University, cultural anthropologist, and the author of several books on religion. Avalos was an atheist and advocate of secular humanist ethics.
Elaine Mary Wainwright was Richard Maclaurin Goodfellow Professor in Theology at the University of Auckland. She retired at the end of 2014. She is known for her feminist scholarship in Matthew's gospel, and work on gender and healing within the Graeco-Roman world. Some of her recent publications are The Bible in/and Popular Culture: A Creative Encounter, Women Healing/Healing Women: the Genderisation of Healing in Early Christianity, and Shall We Look for Another: A Feminist Re-reading of the Matthean Jesus. Wainwright initially studied at the University of Queensland and then obtained a master's degree at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago and a PhD at the École Biblique in Jerusalem.
Craig G. Bartholomew is the director of the Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology. Formerly, he was senior research fellow at the University of Gloucestershire and recently the H. Evan Runner Professor of philosophy at Redeemer University College.
Pheme Perkins is a Professor of Theology at Boston College, where she has been teaching since 1972. She is a nationally recognized expert on the Greco-Roman cultural setting of early Christianity, as well as the Pauline Epistles and Gnosticism.
Mark E. Biddle is the Russell T. Cherry Professor of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament at the Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond in Richmond, Virginia. He is editor of the Review & Expositor journal.
Jo Cheryl Exum is a feminist biblical scholar. She is currently Emeritus Professor at the University of Sheffield.
David John Alfred Clines was a biblical scholar. He served as professor at the University of Sheffield.
Phyllis Trible is a feminist biblical scholar from Richmond, Virginia, United States. Trible's scholarship focuses on the Hebrew Bible and she is noted for her prominent influence on feminist biblical interpretation. Trible has written a multitude of books on interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, and has lectured around the world, including the United States, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Canada, and a number of countries in Europe.
The Hebrew Bible contains a number of references to rape and other forms of sexual violence, both in the Law of Moses, its historical narratives and its prophetic poetry.
Andrew T. Lincoln is a British New Testament scholar who serves as Emeritus Professor of New Testament at the University of Gloucestershire.
James Washington Watts is an American professor of religion at Syracuse University. His research focuses on the rhetoric of Leviticus. His publications also compare the Bible with other religious scriptures, especially in their ritual performances, social functions, and material symbolism.
Willem A. VanGemeren is Professor Emeritus of Old Testament and Semitic Languages at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He is the author of a number of books, including Interpreting the Prophetic Word (Zondervan) and a commentary on Psalms in the Expositor's Bible Commentary series (Zondervan). He was a senior editor of the five-volume work The New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis in which ten essays have been compiled to thoroughly explain proper hermeneutics and Biblical interpretation. He is a member of the Society of Biblical Literature, the Evangelical Theological Society, and the Institute for Biblical Research.
Jacqueline E. Lapsley serves as Dean and Vice President of Academic Affairs and Professor of Old Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary. She earned an M.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an M.Div. from Princeton Seminary, and a Ph.D. from Emory University.
Mary Ann Beavis is a Professor Emerita, St. Thomas More College, the University of Saskatchewan. She co-founded the peer-reviewed academic journal, S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies, together with Helen Hye-Sook Hwang in 2021.
Elizabeth Boase is an Australian biblical scholar and the inaugural Dean of the School of Graduate Research at the University of Divinity in Melbourne. Boase uses a range of hermeneutical approaches in her work but is particularly known for her use of trauma theory as an hermeneutical lens to interpret the Bible. She also publishes in the areas of Hebrew Bible, the Book of Lamentations, the Book of Jeremiah, Biblical Hermeneutics, Bakhtin and the Bible, and Ecological Hermeneutics.
