ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book offers discussions, which give examples of interpretations of biblical texts independent of any assumption of their historicity. It focuses on aspects of the text which reconnect modern exegesis with pre-modern interpretations. The book deals with the Hellenistic context of the Bible and its Greek connections, and the growing interest in Septuagint studies. It offers a detailed, archaeologically oriented argument, calling quite insistently for a significant revision of the chronology for the deposition of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the caves. A radical change in date for the deposits has substantial implications for interpretation. Flemming Nielsen explores the flexibility of biblical narrative's fictional qualities, by drawing them into the context of political nation building in Greenland. New children of Abraham have been raised from the rocks of Greenland in the wake of the arrival of a certain Norwegian missionary in 1721.
