Louise J. Lawrence is Associate Professor in New Testament Studies at the University of Exeter, UK. She is the author of, among other works, Sense and Stigma in the Gospels: Depictions of Sensory-Disabled Characters (2013) and Reading with Anthropology: Exhibiting Aspects of New Testament Religion (2005).

The latest work from the prolific pen of Lawrence constitutes scholarship of the highest caliber. Her study is well conceived, carefully argued, and provocative in the best sense of the term ... It will be of particular attraction to those with interdisciplinary research interests, including those whose work focuses on disability, gender, postcolonialism, and reception history.

• PrefaceIntroduction: Bible and Bedlam1. Ivory Towers and the Banishment of Bedlam: Reason, Right Minds and Sane Privilege in Biblical Studies 2. The Curious Incident of a Jew in the Night-Time: Autistry and An Encounter with Nicodemus 3. ‘Ex-Centric Women’: Intersecting Marginalities and the Madness Narratives of Bessie Head, a Canaanite Woman and Pythian Slave Girl 4. Gatekeeping the Madness of Jesus and Paul: Negotiating Mythologies of Madness in An Age of Neoliberalism 5. Madness, the Affect Alien and the Gospel of Mark: Critically Probing a Happiness Turn in Biblical Studies 6. Conclusion: Beyond Bedlam? Keeping Open[ing] Minds in Biblical InterpretationBibliographyIndex