John Sawyer has been known for over 40 years as one of the finest
British biblical scholars, always alert to new perspectives in biblical
criticism and a pioneer in fruitful applications of new, often
interdisciplinary, research methods. He has been an inspiring teacher
to generations of students in Glasgow (1964-65), Newcastle upon
Tyne (1965-94), Lancaster (1994-2002) and Oxford (2005-2008).
From the very beginning he saw the need to apply sound linguistic
theory to the study of the Bible, with the fundamental insight that all
texts 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 by
modern scholarship, can claim chronological priority, but that is all.
What the text has meant to its Jewish and Christian readers down the
centuries 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 groundbreaking
Semantics in Biblical Research: New Methods of Defining
Hebrew Words for Salvation (1972) and his From Moses to Patmos:
New Perspectives in Old Testament Study (1977) to his fascinating The
Fifth Gospel: Isaiah in the History of Christianity (1996) and his
Sacred Languages and Sacred Texts (1999). Among his most recent
major contributions in this area have been his co-editorship of the
Blackwell Bible Commentary Series, his edited Blackwell
Companion to the Bible and Culture (2006) and his own Concise
Dictionary of the Bible and its Reception (2009).
In 2011 John Sawyer was elected President of the Society for Old
Testament Study, and to celebrate that appointment Sheffield Phoenix
Press is honoured to present this representative selection of 46 of his
papers, some previously unpublished and some originally published in
rather obscure places.