The chapter begins with a section offering highlights from a history of interpretation about Deuteronomy and disability. Especially prevalent among earlier interpretations is the association of disability with exclusion: exclusion from the community, from the tent of meeting, or from the priesthood. The second section maps out an overview of major works that include the study of disability and Deuteronomy. Scholars point out that infertility was considered a disability in ancient times. They also discuss how idols are represented as humans with disabilities while YHWH is portrayed as someone without disabilities. People who violate the covenant can be punished with disabilities. In the third section, the chapter explores how the conversation about disability and Deuteronomy is trending.

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This article provides an overview and analysis of some significant studies on disability in the Hebrew Bible. The discussion of scholarly works proceeds chronologically, from earlier to later publications. Many different methods are applied in these studies, representing various types of biblical criticisms as well as approaches gleaned from disability studies. All have merit, but the most helpful of these combine a working knowledge of disability studies with historical and literary criticisms as practiced by skilled biblical scholars. Some of these authors contend that cultural criticism is the best approach borrowed from disability studies. While this article surveys these analyses holistically, in the case of anthologies, two or more exemplary essays are lifted out for consideration. These serve as examples of the types of investigations that are being done in the field of disability studies and the Bible.

of Virginia Press, 2012. Pp. x + 235. $29.50.Raschke's goals are as ambitious as his arguments are intricate. The primary intention of this book is to revolutionize the field of religious studies by advocating an approach that overcomes the shortcomings of methods that have been predominant for the last century. A semiotic theorizing of religion departs radically from traditional, scientific approaches to the study of religion conceived either according to German Idealism's Religionswissenschaft or Durkheimian sociology of religion. This departure hinges on conceiving a theory of religion that reflects on the question of the relation between signs and singularity. Unloosing signifiers from their referents, postmodernity embarks on "a radical exposition of the sign," resulting in an infinite number of significations, and the endless play or polymodal dance that ensues. Whirl would be king had not singularity taken the place of the referent. Described by Raschke as a "veritable black hole," it designates the generative "event horizon" initiating religious language such that "the religious is the event horizon of the signifying webwork; it is the singularity that exceeds all signs." A host of thinkers bring this complex relation of sign and singularity into view: Spinoza, Nietzsche, Bataille, Derrida, Levinas, Deleuze, Zizek, Badiou, and, theologically, Altizer. Thus, Raschke covers considerable ground, and readers should not be surprised if some areas they consider sacred are tread over lightly or perhaps stomped on, for instance, the association of Religionswissenschaft with "Aryanization" and colonialism. Nonetheless, this disruption of traditional approaches to religious studies is not mere provocation, as Raschke commends an alternate hermeneutic for interpreting the curious turn to religious signs in our postmodern times.

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