In 11 essays, scholars of history and religion from North America, Australia, and Britain explore how the Bible was read in Christian communities that included or had contact with Jews, Muslims, or dissident Christians. Their goal is to provide insights into how a community's reading of the Bible shapes the ways it thinks about outsiders, and how interacting with another religious community may well shape the ways in which the Bible is read. They see reading as a partly active and partly passive, and influenced by the texts people read, the material format in which those texts appear, and the ways that people actually read those texts. Among the topics are God's name as shield and weapon in the Acts of the Christian Martyrs , Jewish and Christian interpretation of the prophetic books, William of Auvergne and the law of the Jews and the Muslims, and challenging the Protestant paradigm. Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)