Joel Green et al. on Scripture and Ethics

Joel B. Green et al. (eds.), Dictionary of Scripture and Ethics (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), xix + 889pp., ISBN 9780801034060.

My copy of this dictionary arrived earlier in the week, and I’ve been dipping in and out of it, reading some of the entries. It’s been very good so far. The contributors look to be a good mixture of the usual suspects in Scripture and ethics along with a considerable number of names that are new to me.

After Joel Green’s Introduction, there are three fairly substantial opening essays, but the vast bulk of the volume is made up of the A-Z entries, including articles on every biblical book.

I’ve been asked to do a talk on violence in the Old Testament, and so I have been looking at the entries on ‘Ban’, ‘Conquest’, ‘Genocide’, ‘Joshua’, ‘Holy War’, ‘Killing’, ‘Torture’, and ‘Violence’. Between them, they’ve helped to articulate many of the issues involved and pointed me to other reading.

There is a substantial pdf excerpt of volume here, containing the Introduction (by Joel Green), and the opening three essays (by Allen Verhey, Charles H. Cosgrove, and Bruce C. Birch), as well as the entries on the As (from ‘Abortion’ to ‘Autonomy’).