Houses of the Interpreter

These essays are vintage Jeffrey--lively, literate, and learned, rich in wit and wisdom, ranging from ancient epic to medieval literature and art to postmodern parody, distinguished by a passionate erudition that attends with single-minded, open-hearted illumination to the interpretation of Scripture across cultures. Above all Jeffrey's writing enacts the kind of intertextual theological resourcement that our own houses of culture so desperately need: building up the Christian literary imagination through the scriptural education of our loves. Jeffrey brilliantly displays the virtues he holds up as characteristic of the exemplary reader: the rigorous analytic disciplines of the pilgrim mind, and the generosities of an open-hearted imagination.

~Travis Kroekers, McMaster University, Ontario

This absorbing book presents David Jeffrey at his best. An astute literary critic, Jeffrey constantly reminds readers of the intersection of scripture and culture. Jeffrey's call for the reconnection of criticism and theory with the scriptural understanding that has been the tradition of the Church carries with it radical implications for the Christian reader, who is called upon to exhibit humility before the text, to read with caritas, and to be alert to the dangerous shifts of authority in the contemporary language of worship and scripture translation. Jeffrey's is a compelling and elegant argument.

~Jill Pelez Baumgaertner, Dean of Humanities and Theological Studies, Wheaton College

This wide-ranging collection of essays, dealing with important subjects in biblical, medieval, and modern literature and theology, is in a double sense a major work of Christian scholarship. From the purely scholarly point of view it deals confidently and with finesse with disparate phases of the rich and variegated history of Christian thought; but it is also refreshed and animated by an authorial faith-perspective shared by great humanists from Augustine through Erasmus and More to Toynbee and R. W. Southern.

~John V. Fleming, Princeton University

...this collection will likely appeal to scholars, teachers, and students who share the author's interest in contemporary Christian thought and its implications for scriptural understanding in the modern age... Recommended.

~CHOICE