Philological-historical critics try to look behind the text, while formalist critics try to look inside it. Their eyes are focused to miss what is happening in front of the text -- their own encounter with the text in the act of reading. Since biblical critics have lacked the vocabulary necessary to talk about their own reading experience (that is, the biblical-critical guild has not promoted the use of such language), such talk as there is among biblical critics about readers and reading is fortuitous and unreflective. Reader-response criticism promotes self-reflective reading and gives us words with which to talk about what we have always experienced, but unawares, and always talked about, but haphazardly. It challenges the biblical-critical guild to face up to its approved (and disapproved) reading practices. 

The works of reader-response criticism that biblical scholars have produced surely must appear strange to secular literary critics because of the predominance of historical concerns. As Stanley E. Porter rightly points out: "Reader-response criticism privileges the present reader, not the past. If the historical question as traditionally posed in Biblical studies is not bracketed, if only temporarily, reader-response criticism will never have a genuine opportunity to contribute to New Testament studies, but will be reader-response criticism virtually in name only."  The most important point to be made about reader-response criticism in biblical studies, then, is that it has so far stayed within the theoretical boundaries of a philologically oriented historical criticism. 

Biblical reader-response criticism, then, is almost an oxymoron because biblical scholars are still in what Tompkins refers to as the beginning stage in the theoretical development of reader-response criticism: a fixation upon the text as an object. In Tompkins's view the status of the text has been a quintessential issue in the entire development of reader-response criticism. Ironically, biblical reader-response critics routinely list Tompkins's anthology in their bibliographies without acknowledging its governing premise, namely, that "the objectivity of the text is the concept that these essays, whether they intended it or not, eventually destroy." 

If biblical reader-response critics did take seriously the collapse of their dichotomous text-reader model, then critical attention could shift from the textual objects to how readers make meaning within a set of particular reading conventions. Furthermore, once reading practices are viewed as the site of the construction of reality and are questioned self-reflexively, then this could open up the question of the ethics and politics of reading that has surfaced so forcefully in other guilds. The call for a "second stage" of reflection is already explicit in Tompkins's anthology: "As emphasis on the reader tends first to erode and then destroy the objective text, there is an increasing effort on the part of reader-oriented critics to redefine the aims and methods of literary study. The change in theoretical assumptions forces a change in the kinds of moral claims critics can make for what they do." The potential for such reflection is already at work within the discursive practices of biblical scholarship; it just has not been appropriated. It remains to be seen whether or not biblical scholars will move in the direction of acute self-reflexiveness about the text-reader dichotomy, much less to a second-level reflection about the politics and morality of reading. Such self-reflexivity is clearly the most difficult kind of theorizing for theorists of reading to do. 

See, e.g., Aichele, 1989; Burnett, 1990b; Schüssler Fiorenza, 1988; D.H. Fisher; Fowler, 1989, 1991; Jobling, 1990; Moore, 1989b, 1989c; Phillips, 1990a, 1990b.

If the major concern of biblical reader-response critics continues to be the hermeneutical one of reproducing the implied (original) reader for their dominant constituencies, then that concern may never be broadened to include constituencies such as black exegetes, feminist and womanist exegetes, liberationist exegetes, and readers in popular culture. In point of fact, whether or not biblical critics are aware of it, they are already involved politically with these constituencies. And until they admit candidly that the "reader" in biblical reader-response criticism is still primarily the white North American critic, the excluded "others" cannot accomplish their rightful roles in the reconstruction of biblical scholarship. 

Darr, John A. On Character Building: The Reader and the Rhetoric of Characterization in Luke-Acts. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992.
BS2589. D37 1992

Harner, Philip.  Relation Analysis of the Fourth Gospel:  A Study in Reader-Response Criticism.  Lewiston, NY:  Mellen Biblical Press, 1993.
BS2615.2 .H363 1993

Haynes, Stephen R. and McKenzie, Steven L. (Editors). To Each Its Own Meaning: An Introduction to Biblical Criticisms and Its Application.  Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993.
BS 511.2 .T64 1993

Lodge, John G.  Romans 9-11:  A Reader-Response Analysis.  Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1996.
BS2665.2 .L63 1996

Roth, S. John. The Blind, the Lame, and the Poor.  An Audience-Oriented, Sequential Analysis of a Group of Character Types in Luke-Acts (Thesis). Vanderbilt University, 1994.
BS2589 .R684 1994

Moore, Stephen.  Literary Criticism and the Gospels:  The Theoretical Challenge.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989.
The most comprehensive survey and analysis of gospel narrative criticism and the development of biblical reader-response criticism.  Includes a comprehensive bibliography.
BS 2555.5 .M585 1989

Staley, Jeffrey Lloyd. Reading with a Passion:  Rhetoric, Autobiography, and The American West in the Gospel of John.  New York: Continuum, 1995.
BS2615.2 .S722 1995

Suleiman, Susan and Crosman, Inge.  The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation.  Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980.
A judicious selection of sixteen essays that covers all the major approaches to reader-response and audience-oriented criticisms.  Includes a helpful introductory essay and annotated bibliography.
PN 83 .R4

Tompkins, Jane, ed. Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism.  Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1980.
An anthology of eleven seminal essays.  Includes an essay by Tompkins that gives an incisive theoretical assessment of reader-response criticism. Includes detailed annotated bibliography. Book cover image from Barnes and Noble.
PN 98 .R38 R4

Webber, Randall C. Reader Response Analysis of the Epistle of James. San Francisco: International Scholars Publications, 1996.
BS2785.2 .W43 1996