Poaching on Zion: Biblical Theology as Signifying Practice A. K. M. Adam Seabury-Western Theological Seminary Inaugural Lecture in the series of Winslow Lectures April 21, 2005 I must begin this lecture by offering a small handbasket overflowing with thanksgivings: to my children and parents, who have accommodated my busyness and abstractedness over many years; to friends, who have put up with my limitations and opened for me a path toward greater wisdom; to my students, who teach me more every time I dare stand up before them; to the schools and foundations that have supported and encouraged my studies; to Margaret, in every way my better half; and this afternoon, particularly, the congregations in which it has been my privilege to serve. All of you have played a decisive role in the my understanding of ministry, of biblical theology, and of how much we stand to benefit from allowing these two activities to shape one another more actively and deliberately. 1 From its beginnings, the discourse concerning biblical theology has been marked by a sense of loss, of lack: Sometimes the lack was deliberate, as when biblical theologians deliberately excluded dogmatic considerations from their interpretations of biblical texts; at other times, however, they bemoaned the lack of richness, strength, and vigor for which theologians and their readers sought, when they turned to biblical theology. Some scholars make that lament their explicit theme; others pursue their deliberations in the silent shadow of the wound of biblical theology, aiming to revive, to mend, what has been missed. The problems that beset biblical theology are many-faceted, and only a fool would attempt to resolve all aspects of them at once. One element to these problems, however, derives from the linguistic captivity of biblical interpretation, the constricted understanding of semiotics that takes “language” as its paradigm. This narrow approach to theological meaning effects a restriction of interpretation to a model that lends itself to polemics and exclusion, to the enclosure of a realm of expression in which meaning’s abundance can be restricted to authorized, legitimized expressions. The reflections that follow will propose a hermeneutic that opens the Scriptures to interpretations that are not authorized in advance 1 I owe more specific thanks also to Lynette Sweet, Laura Jackson, and Michelle Warriner-Bolt, who engaged in a seminar on Meaning and Ministry with me in the Michaelmas Term of 2004; to Laura and Micah Jackson, for help in attaining perspective on the argument at which this lecture aims; to Nathaniel Adam, for conversa- tion about musical improvisation and textuality; and to Prof. David Aune and the Colloquium on Christian and Jewish Antiquity at the University of Notre Dame, for a generous invitation to talk through some of these issues beforehand.