Christianity Today Book Award in Biblical Studies (2021)
"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."
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. His most significant essays of the past twenty-five years are now collected in this volume, representing the full fruition of major themes from his body of work:
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.
Richard B. Hays (1948-2025) taught for nearly three decades at Duke Divinity School, where he held the position of George Washington Ivey Professor of New Testament and also served for five years as the divinity school's dean. Hays was internationally known for his work on New Testament ethics, the Gospels, and the letters of Paul. His groundbreaking book The Moral Vision of the New Testament was selected by Christianity Today as one of the 100 most important religious books of the twentieth century. His other publications included Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul, Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels, The Conversion of the Imagination, and Reading with the Grain of Scripture. In 2022, the British Academy awarded him the Burkitt Medal for his work in New Testament studies.
"This fine collection of essays represents the work of an outstanding scholar at the top of his game--intellectually rigorous, wide-ranging, and full of profound reflections that will enrich all those engaged in the theological interpretation of Scripture."
-- John M. G. Barclay
Durham University
"Richard B. Hays opens this volume by modestly invoking Jesus's parable about wheat and weeds growing together. But readers of Reading with the Grain of Scripture--and there will be many--will likely invoke a later line from Matthew 13: the scribe trained for the kingdom of heaven who 'brings out of the treasure both what is new and what is old.' Here we see both the abiding concerns of Hays's career and their recent inflection in a volume that takes us across the canon of the New Testament and into the life of this fine interpreter. A most welcome contribution!"
-- Beverly Roberts Gaventa
Baylor University
"This is a veritable feast for those of us who've followed Richard Hays's work over the years. This collection of wide-ranging essays touches on all the major themes of Richard's exegetical and theological work. A great introduction for those still unfamiliar, a deeper dive for the devoted followers."
-- Gary A. Anderson
University of Notre Dame