"This volume draws together contributions from nearly thirty scholars in a tribute to mark Professor John Sawyer's retirement from the Department of Religious Studies in the University of Newcastle. The range of subjects and styles reflects Professor Sawyer's own interests and commitments, from close textual study of the Hebrew scriptures to the broadest issues of the relationship between sacred texts and private and public lives. Central to the book are questions of how the present endlessly reinvents and reinvigorates the past. The strange and sometimes problematical ways in which modern interests and purposes reorient and transform ancient texts supplies the impetus and the justification for this enterprise - Words Remembered, Texts Renewed."--Jacket.