AU Professor Joins Editors of Bible Encyclopedia

AURORA, Ill.—Martin Forward, an Aurora University religion professor, has been named an area editor for the Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception, a 10-year project encompassing 30 volumes of 500 pages each by a 34-member editorial board, authors worldwide and an online edition.

Forward, an Aurora resident, is professor of religious studies at AU and executive director of the Wackerlin Center for Faith and Action.

One of eight area editors, Forward has been named to edit the “ The Bible in Other Religions and in Current Religious Movements” area. “ Other religions” refers to any religions other than Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Commissioned articles in this area include "Buddhism, the reception of the Bible in," "Baha'i, Reception of the Bible among," and "Branch Davidians, reception of the Bible by."

Forward said, “The open-endedness of this area will make it one of the most exciting and innovative aspects of this encyclopedia. No other dictionary or encyclopedia of the Bible covers the reception of the Bible beyond the Jewish and Christian traditions.”

According to Forward, the encyclopedia pursues a twofold task: comprehensively rendering the current state of knowledge on the origins and development of the Bible according to its different canonic forms in Judaism and Christianity; and documenting the history of the Bible's reception not only in the Christian churches and the Jewish Diaspora but also in literature, art, music, and film, as well as Islam and other religious traditions and current religious movements.

He said the encyclopedia is edited by an international team of scholars representing a wide variety of religious, denominational, and disciplinary perspectives.

The work is produced in English to facilitate global compilation and reception. The encyclopedia is to be published in installments by 2018 by Verlag Walter de Gruyter of Berlin, Germany.

The work covers five main domains: “Hebrew Bible/Old Testament,” “New Testament,” “Jewish History, Literature and Religion,” “Ecclesiastical History/History of Exegesis,” and “History of Reception.”

Each domain has a main editor, and divides into a number of areas, each with an editor.

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