Dialogues of the Word

Following Bakhtin's theory of language as dialogue, Reed shows how the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament dramatize a set of verbal encounters between God and his people. His analysis of dialogic patterns in Genesis, Job and Revelation frames extensive discussion of law, prophecy, wisdom and gospel as models of divine-human communication. Reed thus situates the literary coherence of the Bible between the conflicting claims of historical diversity and theological unity.