Sacred Texts and Sacred Meanings

John Sawyer has been known for over 40 years as one of the finestBritish biblical scholars, always alert to new perspectives in biblicalcriticism and a pioneer in fruitful applications of new, ofteninterdisciplinary, research methods. He has been an inspiring teacherto generations of students in Glasgow (1964-65), Newcastle uponTyne (1965-94), Lancaster (1994-2002) and Oxford (2005-2008).From the very beginning he saw the need to apply sound linguistictheory to the study of the Bible, with the fundamental insight that alltexts can have, and very often have had, more than one meaning.No one meaning can claim priority over the others, he argues. The'original meaning', more or less convincingly reconstructed bymodern scholarship, can claim chronological priority, but that is all.What the text has meant to its Jewish and Christian readers down thecenturies should be as much the subject of scholarly attention as any'original' meaning.This is the unifying strand in the whole of his work, from his groundbreakingSemantics in Biblical Research: New Methods of DefiningHebrew Words for Salvation (1972) and his From Moses to Patmos:New Perspectives in Old Testament Study (1977) to his fascinating TheFifth Gospel: Isaiah in the History of Christianity (1996) and hisSacred Languages and Sacred Texts (1999). Among his most recentmajor contributions in this area have been his co-editorship of theBlackwell Bible Commentary Series, his edited BlackwellCompanion to the Bible and Culture (2006) and his own ConciseDictionary of the Bible and its Reception (2009).In 2011 John Sawyer was elected President of the Society for OldTestament Study, and to celebrate that appointment Sheffield PhoenixPress is honoured to present this representative selection of 46 of hispapers, some previously unpublished and some originally published inrather obscure places.