(4) Theological exegesis attends to the literary wholeness of the individual scriptural witnesses. This, I would propose, is one of the signature contributions of biblical studies over the past fifty years to the task of theology. The Bible must be read neither as an anthology of disconnected theological sound bites nor, on the other hand, as a single undifferentiated story. Nor can its message be adequately grasped only through excerpts encountered in the church’s liturgy. Rather, the Bible contains
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