God’s Signature: Understanding Paul Beauchamp on Creation in the First Testament

This book consists of a theological hermeneutical reading of the meaning

of creation in the First Testament as found in the writings of the

Jesuit biblical scholar Paul Beauchamp. Out of his engagement in the

contemporary dialogue between modern science and theology, Pambrun

explores how a community’s experience of creation, as expressed in the

classical creation texts, represents a work of meaning that configures

the Scriptures as a Book. This study examines how Beauchamp’s

methodological approach to the Law, the Prophets, and Wisdom as distinct

classes of writings, each obedient to its own set of operations, permits

an encounter to take place among the diverse creation texts. The result

is an enriched understanding of the meaning of creation, a meaning

governed at its core by a language of hope that, in a world scarred by

suffering and violence, attests to the engendering of a new humanity.