The Meanings We Choose is an engagement with responsible bible reading-Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and New Testament texts-for the past as well as for the present and future. Its stated perspectives are multi-denominational Christian but the implications of such readings go far beyond a specific confessional framework. In the present political climate the aware, responsible personal is meaningful for any community, confessedly religious as well as otherwise. While the articles collected in this volume, broadly speaking, can and perhaps should be compartmentalized as ideological criticism, their significance for reading ideologies different from their own is more than considerable.