what Paul Ricoeur called the “desert of criticism,” unable to find spiritual nourishment in speculations about likely historical backgrounds, sources of composition, or etymological footnotes. The recovery of theological interpretation of Scripture is about emerging from the desert to settle in and inhabit the promised land. Theological interpreters want to inhabit the text, but even more they want to dig. Perhaps the better analogy, then, would be the 1848 California gold rush. News spread slowly