David Jobling

David Jobling (born 1941) is a Canadian Old Testament scholar. He was professor of Old Testament language and literature at St. Andrew's College, Saskatoon.

Jobling was a "mediating critic" between the schools of structuralism and the New Criticism in biblical studies.^[1] He also combined deconstruction with both liberation theology and feminist theology.^[2] Norman K. Gottwald notes that Jobling "has been a leader of literary analysis of the Hebrew Bible", and has "made a great impact in his use of ideological criticism and his engagement with feminist criticism."^[3]

Jobling wrote two volumes of The Sense of Biblical Narrative: Structural Analyses in the Hebrew Bible (1978 and 1986). He also wrote a commentary on 1 Samuel in the Berit Olam series (1998). He was President of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies in 1992–93.^[4]

In 2006, a Festschrift was published in his honor. Voyages in Uncharted Waters: Essays on the Theory and Practice of Biblical Interpretation in Honor of David Jobling included contributions from Norman K. Gottwald, David M. Gunn, and Norman Habel.