One would assume nothing new under the sun could be written on the great Jonathan Edwards. Yet, in Jonathan Edwards and Scripture, David Barshinger and Douglas Sweeney have managed to compile a collection of essays offering a gateway into largely unchartered territory in the study of the so-called Father of the American Great Awakening. The anthology brings together the crème de la crème of international scholars in Jonathan Edwards studies and early American evangelicalism in a quest to distill the role of scripture in the work and thought of Edwards—who never published a biblical commentary—from his vast unpublished sources such as private notes and sermon manuscripts.

Thirteen case studies offer approaches to the study of Edwards's exegetical work against the backdrop of his cultural, intellectual, and social environment in eighteenth-century New England. Kenneth Minkema opens the collection with a fantastic introduction to the strategies that Edwards employed in arranging biblical texts and notes as thematical clusters, offering insight into the role of scripture in Edwards's drafting of his theological texts and sermons. Many of the contributors such as Mark Noll, Jan Stievermann, Ryan Hoselton, and Robert Brown place Edwards in comparison with earlier, contemporary, and later Christian exegetes and evangelical figures, most prominently seventeenth-century Puritan minister and exegetical powerhouse Cotton Mather, to elucidate his role in the broader theological and exegetical discourse of the early modern protestant Atlantic. For instance, Ava Chamberlain, the only female contributor to this volume, juxtaposes Mather's and Edwards's interpretations of the biblical book of Jonah to nuance and compare their response to the rise of historical biblical criticism and defense of the authority of scripture.

Unfortunately, none of volume's case studies thoroughly investigate how Edwards's use of scripture informed and relate to his constructions of gender and race, which would have benefitted the book's conversation with the larger state of the field of American religious history. This missed opportunity aside, the collection opens opportunities into further research on Edwards's exegetical interpretations and offers valuable methodological models to scholars interested in studying historical actors’ biblical interpretations from textual sources outside of published commentaries.