Beginnings

I was very pleased to learn that my friend Peter Bouteneff's most recent book, Beginnings: Ancient Christian Readings of the Biblical Creation Narratives, will be published later this year. No less an authority than Frances Young, author of the classic study, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture, has provided an endorsement:

I hope this remarkable study will be widely read and appreciated. From the start, the reader is obliged to grapple with questions about how a text is to be read when it can be demonstrated that layers of subsequent interpretation have had as much, if not more, influence than the text itself. And what more crucial text is there than Genesis 1-3, which has shaped Christian understanding of both creation and fall in ways that are now controversial, both within the churches and in the public domain? Though not always agreeing with the analyses presented here, I can guarantee that hardly anyone, whatever their starting point, will come away from this book withouthaving found some new insight.

Professor Bouteneff's book can be pre-ordered from Amazon.