Reading with the Grain of Scripture

“All these essays illustrate, in one way or another, how I have sought to carry out scholarly work as an aspect of discipleship—as a process of faith seeking exegetical clarity.” — from the introduction 

Richard Hays has been a giant in the field of New Testament studies since the 1989 publication of his Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul. Now, his most significant essays of the past twenty-five years are collected here, representing the full fruition of major themes from his body of work: 

• the importance of narrative as the “glue” that holds the Bible together
• the figural coherence between the Old and New Testaments
• the centrality of the resurrection of Jesus
• the hope for New Creation and God’s eschatological transformation of the world
• the importance of standing in trusting humility before the text
• the significance of reading Scripture within and for the community of faith

Readers will find themselves guided toward Hays’s “hermeneutic of trust” rather than the “hermeneutic of suspicion” that has loomed large in recent biblical studies.