Best Articles in BR Named
Thanks to the generous support of the Leopold and Clara M. Fellner Charitable Foundation, through its trustee, Frederick L. Simmons, we are able to honor the best articles in BR for 1994 and 1995.
In evaluating the articles the judges, Burke O. Long of Bowdoin College and Amy-Jill Levine of Vanderbilt University Divinity School, found immediate unanimity. Independently, they not only nominated the same article for the first prize, they also proposed the same two articles for honorable mention. Levine and Long based their selections on the centrality of the subject matter to biblical interpretation, the article’s potential for advancing debate on controversial issues in a reasoned manner and the clarity of the presentation.
First Prize:
Martin E. Marty
“Literalism vs. Everything Else”
(April 1994)
This article is outstanding for its scope and, in particular, for the fairness with which it treats fundamentalist literalism in its surprising diversity. Marty presents the various positions with a helpful mixture of sympathy and critique as he travels from the desks of Thomas Jefferson and William Jennings Bryan, and from the halls of the University of Chicago where Rainey Harper pioneered the “scientific study of the Bible,” to Princeton’s literalist fundamentalism, associated with A.A. Hodge and B.B. Warfield; from Dwight L. Moody to Ronald Reagan. Given the contentiousness in which the Bible is discussed, as Marty notes “in open encounter, in classrooms, in town halls and school boards, on the floor of denominational conventions—and in the letters column of BR,” perhaps his essay should be required reading.
Honorable Mention:
Paula Fredriksen
“Did Jesus Oppose the Purity Laws?”
(June 1995)
and
Ken Stone
“Sexual Power and Political Prestige”
(August 1994)
The relationship between Jews and Christians, on the one hand, and men and women, on the other, are frequent topics of discussion and debate. Fredriksen and Stone advance the discussion of each, respectively, by combining rigorously applied methods and close textual analysis to their subjects. Their fine articles produce new insights not only into what the Bible says and the social contexts it reflects, but also into what presuppositions readers bring to bear on their interpretations.