Includes indexes.

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Reading Scripture as a coherent story -- Are we still missing the elephant? C. S. Lewis's fernseed and elephants : half a century on -- Contemporary Western culture : a biblical-Christian critique -- The Bible and globalization -- Freedom and belonging -- Humans, animals, and the environment in genesis 1-3 -- The story of the earth according to Paul -- Ecological hope in crisis? -- Creation, divine and human : an Old Testament theological perspective -- God's embrace of suffering -- The Christian way as losing and finding self -- The fulfillment of messianic prophecy -- Where is wisdom to be found? Christ and wisdom in Colossians -- What is truth?

A crucial responsibility for Christian interpreters of Scripture today, Richard Bauckham insists, is to seek to understand our contemporary context and to explore the Bible's relevance to it in ways that reflect serious critical engagement with that context. In The Bible in the Contemporary World Bauckham models how this task can be carried out. Bauckham calls for our reading of Scripture to lead us into increased engagement with the important issues of today's world, including globalization, environmental degradation, and widespread poverty. He works to bring biblical texts into relationship with these contemporary realities by means of the Bible's metanarrative of God and the world, in which God's purpose takes effect in the salvation and fulfillment of the world as his cherished creation.