The Bible and the Literary Critic
by Amos N. Wilder
Category: Religion

This last of Amos Wilder's published works in the field of religion and literature collects twelve previously published or unpublished essays written, with a single exception, in the 1980s. Found here is the record of his views of postmodernism and the work of such contemporary figures as Paul Ricoeur, George Steiner, Frank Kermode, and the late Norman Perrin. As background, Wilder also includes two pieces that fill in the story of his own encounter with biblical scholarship dating back to meeting Albert Schweitzer at Oxford in 1922. In 1961 John Dominic Crossan authored Wilder's intellectual biography for the Society of Biblical Literature's series on biblical scholarship in North America (A Fragile Craft: The Work of Amos Niven Wilder). The chapter "Wilder on Crossan on Wilder" offers an enticing dividend of this overview of New Testament studies in the twentieth century by a scholar whose active career spanned more than six decades.