Tio år senare

Tankar om bibelvetenskapens framtid

Abstract

This “farewell lecture”, held in November 2022, begins with an overview of the current situation for biblical studies at the university level in Sweden. One may speak of a crisis, since the number of academic positions within this field is diminishing. The remainder of the lecture, consisting in three parts, aims at formulating visions for the future. In the first part, “Relevance”, the example of the so-called Uppsala school serves to illustrate one potentially advantageous aspect of biblical studies, namely its inherent cross-disciplinary character. In the second part, “Reception”, the focus lies on biblical reception studies, on a local level represented by a “new Uppsala school”, as a growing and promising multidisciplinary field. Although reception studies offers great possibilities for biblical scholars to demonstrate the societal relevance of their research, this field has certain limitations. It does not foreground the value and usefulness of traditional exegetical expertise. Is there a future also for exegesis, based on philology and textual criticism? This is discussed in the third part, “Renaissance”. I suggest that the field of exegesis needs to be expanded to include the study of a wide range of classical texts that are relevant within religious studies, for instance the Quran. Finally, I discuss the potential of yet another field of interest for biblical scholars, namely translation studies.