Introduction

Abstract

AbstractIn her 1987 presidential address to the Society of Biblical Literature, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza called for a rhetorical‐ethical turn in biblical studies and asked biblical scholars to take account of their public responsibility. Drawing from the insights of feminism, she emphasized that biblical scholarship never happens in a political vacuum and instead is always shaped by specific values and interests and by the socio‐political context in which scholars are positioned. This chapter introduces the themes and concerns of this book as an attempt to follow Schüssler Fiorenza's call for an ethics of accountability by showing that New Testament parable scholars during the last five decades worked not in a political vacuum but in situations shaped by Holocaust memory.