In Search of True Wisdom: Essays in Old Testament Interpretation in Honour of Ronals E. Clements

by Edward Ball

The distinguished authors whose essays appear in this volume (marking the seventieth birthday of Ronald Clements, who until his retirement, was the Samuel Davidson Professor of Old Testament Studies, King's College London) include John Barton, Walter Brueggemann, Brevard Childs, John Rogerson, Rolf Rendtorff, Hugh Williamson, the late Norman Whybray, Graeme Auld, Richard Coggins. The theme of the volume reflects Clements's recent interest in 'wisdom' as an interpretative framework, and the essays address the role of theology and hermeneutics in biblical exegesis, through an examination of methods and approaches as well as by application to specific Old Testament writings. While the volume ranges through issues of canon, biblical theology and literary criticism, with several essays on the prophetic books, it maintains a clear focus on the numerous issues and challenges facing the contemporary interpreter of the scriptures.>

292 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1999

About the author

Edward Ball was born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1958, grew up in South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana. He finished high school in New Orleans and attended Brown University, graduating in 1982 with a B.A. in Semiotics.

He received a Master of Arts degree from the University of Iowa in 1984, and afterwards moved to New York City, where he worked as a freelance art critic, writing about film, art, architecture, and books for several magazines. For several years, he wrote for The Village Voice, a weekly with a circulation of 450,000.

In 1993, he began to research his family legacy as slave owners in South Carolina, an investigation that resulted in a half-hour National Public Radio documentary, "The Other History," which was awarded, in 1994, Best Radio Feature by the Society of Professional Journalists. He looked deeper into his family's story, documented in several archives, and, after three years, published his first book, Slaves in the Family, about his family's plantations and his search for black Americans whose ancestors the writer's family had once enslaved. Slaves in the Family was a New York Times bestseller and won the National Book Award for nonfiction.

Edward Ball's other books comprise biography, history, and memoir. He has taught at Yale University, and he lives in New Haven, Connecticut.