Roland Boer: 9 books

In this provocative and necessary work, Roland Boer, a leading biblical scholar and cultural theorist, develops a political myth for the Left: a powerful narrative to be harnessed in support of progressive policy. Boer focuses on foundational stories in the Hexateuch, the first six books of the Bible,...

The only large-scale critical introduction to Western Marxism for biblical criticism. Roland Boer introduces the core concepts of major figures in the tradition, specifically Althusser, Gramsci, Deleuze and Guattari, Eagleton, Lefebvre, Lukács, Adorno, Bloch, Negri, Jameson, and Jameson. Throughout,...

Economic realities have been increasingly at the center of discussion of the New Testament and early church. Studies have tended to be either apologetic in tone, or haphazard with regard to economic theory, or both‒‒either imagining the ancients as involved in “primitive” economic relationships,...

Roland Boer and Christina Petterson here produce a critical survey showing that the rise of capitalist theory was shaped by the way different economic philosophers—Smith, Hobbes, Grotius, Malthus, Locke––read the Bible. Invoking Jeremiah (14:22) and Adam Smith—who took the title of his Wealth...

This book not only explicates Stalin’s thoughts, but thinks with and especially through Stalin. It argues that Stalin often thought at the intersections between theology and Marxist political philosophy – especially regarding key issues of socialism in power. Careful and sustained attention to...

What is secular biblical criticism? 'Secularism and Biblical Studies' presents a selection of essays that examine the nature of secular biblical studies and its hermeneutical principles. The essays outline and analyse debates within biblical studies over the issue of secularism and explore the interplay...

Class Struggle in the New Testament engages the political and economic realities of the first century to unmask the mediation of class through several New Testament texts and traditions. Essays span a range of subfields, presenting class struggle as the motor force of history by responding to recent...

'Symposia' illuminates the central issues and concerns of biblical studies by presenting a series of stories. The model for the stories is the ancient Greek idea of the symposium, a 'sitting down together for the purpose of drinking'. In Plato's writings, the symposium becomes a genre of writing with...

Knockin' On Heaven's Door offers a critically sophisticated and truly interdisciplinary analysis of the relationship between biblical studies and contemporary culture. Specific biblical texts are examined in the light of cultural criticism and areas of popular culture including pornography, heavy metal music and McDonald's hamburgers in the light of biblical criticism.