Although overtly poetic interaction with biblical material has often been deemed beyond the pale in critical biblical scholarship, much work in reception history now positions such literature as part of the afterlife of a biblical text. While this is a welcome turn, this article argues that acts of poetic biblical retelling and recycling are more disruptive, troubling the ways in which critical scholarship operates. Utilising Timothy Beal’s thinking around the ‘cultural history of scripture’ and analysing Roland Boer’s sceptical attitude toward reception-historical practices, the first section teases out the nuances of how certain modes of biblical interpretation are deemed primary (and thus more legitimate) and others secondary (and thus anachronistic).
As such, the second section introduces poetic retellings of biblical material that foreground how poetry is a literary space where knowledge is articulated in particularly performative idioms. Reading poems from Kei Miller and Michael Symmons Roberts that appropriate biblical material, this analysis demonstrates that the poetic retelling of biblical material is an act of writing that refuses secondary status and cannot be simplistically yoked to traditional modes of exegesis. In this way, poetry problematizes the originary-secondary binary in reception-historical interpretation and, at the same time, recasts historical-critical exegesis as another form of ‘supplemental’ writing. This opens up the discipline to rethink some of its most protected interpretative paradigms and engage more fully with other forms of biblical ‘supplement’ across the disciplines.
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D. Attridge, ‘Performing Metaphors: The Singularity of Literary Figuration’, Paragraph 28, no. 2 (July 2005), pp. 18–34.
J. Z. Smith, ‘Religion and Bible’, Journal of Biblical Literature 128, no. 1 (Spring 2009), pp. 5–27.
R. A. Kraft, ‘Para-mania: Beside, Before and Beyond Bible Studies’, Journal of Biblical Literature 126, no. 1 (Spring 2007), pp. 5–27. As Kraft explains, ‘Our evolving perceptions of the “parabiblical” (or as I now prefer, “parascriptural”) are really less a subcategorization than an awareness of that large body of material (both text and tradition, as well as artwork and stones and buildings) that was respected and taken seriously by the people and cultures we study’ (27). Although Kraft is concerned with historic ‘parascriptural material’, I believe his framing of this term has contemporary resonance and application.
J. Roberts and C. Rowland, ‘Introduction’, Journal for the Study of the New Testament 33, no. 2 (2010), pp. 131–36 (132).
R. A. Kraft, ‘Para-mania’, p. 17. Kraft makes the point, often forgotten or elided in reception histories, that we import modern ideas of what constitutes ‘scripture’ into our studies of ancient literatures. He introduces the term ‘parascriptural’ to makes sense of material before (antecedent materials) and beside (alternate tellings) the eventually canonized material that has come down to us. He also identifies ‘the “beyond”, the continued development (or metamorphosis) of our identified “scriptures” into other versions, by way of translation, or expansion and incorporation, or through excerpting and summarizing, and the like’ (p. 18).
T. Beal, ‘Reception History and Beyond’, p. 368. Beal also acknowledges that this ideal of finalization is further constrained by assuming that ‘the Bible’ refers to a Christian canon of scriptures (p. 368).
T. Beal, ‘Reception History and Beyond’, p. 368. Beal also acknowledges that this ideal of finalization is further constrained by assuming that ‘the Bible’ refers to a Christian canon of scriptures (p. 368).
W. J. Lyons, ‘Hope for a Troubled Discipline? Contributions to New Testament Stu-dies from Reception History’, Journal for the Study of the New Testament 33, no. 2 (2010), pp. 207–220 (215).
R. Boer, ‘Against ‘Reception History’, The Bible and Interpretation (May 2011), http://www.bibleinterp.com/opeds/boe358008.shtml (emphasis original). Accessed 18 June 2011.
R. Boer, ‘Against ‘Reception History’, The Bible and Interpretation (May 2011), http://www.bibleinterp.com/opeds/boe358008.shtml (emphasis original). Accessed 18 June 2011.
C. Heard, ‘In Defense of Reception History’, Blackwell Bible Commentaries Website, http://bbibcomm.net/2011/06/in-defense-of-reception-history/#more-216. Accessed 12 January 2012.
C. Heard, ‘In Defense of Reception History’, Blackwell Bible Commentaries Website, http://bbibcomm.net/2011/06/in-defense-of-reception-history/#more-216. Accessed 12 January 2012.
J. F. A. Sawyer, ‘The Role of Reception Theory, Reader-Response Criticism and/or Impact History in the Study of the Bible: Definition and Evaluation’, Blackwell Bible Commentaries Website, http://bbibcomm.net/files/sawyer2004.pdf. Accessed 8 August 2011.
S. M. Langston, Exodus Through the Centuries (Blackwell Bible Commentaries; Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), p. 2.
J. Roberts and C. Rowland, ‘Introduction’, p. 132; my emphasis.
C. Rowland, ‘Re-Imagining Biblical Exegesis’, p. 144; my emphasis.
J. Derrida and E. Prenowitz, ‘Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression’, Diacritics 25, no. 2 (1995), pp. 9–63 (9).
T. Beal, ‘Reception History and Beyond’, p. 364; emphasis original.
T. Beal, ‘Reception History and Beyond’, p. 369; emphasis original.
G. L. Bruns, On the Anarchy of Poetry and Philosophy: A Guide for the Unruly, (Perspectives in Continental Philosophy; New York: Fordham University Press, 2006), p. 157; emphasis original.
G. L. Bruns, On the Anarchy of Poetry and Philosophy: A Guide for the Unruly, (Perspectives in Continental Philosophy; New York: Fordham University Press, 2006), p. 156.
D. Attridge, Peculiar Language: Literature as Difference from the Renaissance to James Joyce (London: Methuen, 1988), p. 130.
K. Miller, ‘Speaking in Tongues’, in There Is an Anger That Moves (Manchester: Carcanet, 2007), p. 33.
K. Miller, ‘Speaking in Tongues’, in There Is an Anger That Moves (Manchester: Carcanet, 2007), p. 33.
K. Miller, ‘Speaking in Tongues’, in There Is an Anger That Moves (Manchester: Carcanet, 2007), p. 33.; my emphasis.
K. Miller, ‘Speaking in Tongues’, in There Is an Anger That Moves (Manchester: Carcanet, 2007), p. 33.
K. Miller, ‘Psalm 151’, in Kingdom of Empty Bellies (Coventry: Heaventree Press, 2005), p. 54.
P. Valéry and C. Guenther, ‘Poetry and Abstract Thought’, The Kenyon Review 16, no. 2 (Spring 1954), pp. 208–233 (214; emphasis original).
R. Barthes, ‘The Grain of the Voice’, in Image, Music, Text (London: Fontana Press, 1987), p. 181; emphasis original.
Ibid., p. 182; emphasis original.
D. Attridge, ‘Performing Metaphors’, pp. 20–21; emphasis original.
M. Symmons Roberts, ‘Choreography’, in Corpus (London: Jonathan Cape, 2004), p. 25.
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Although overtly poetic interaction with biblical material has often been deemed beyond the pale in critical biblical scholarship, much work in reception history now positions such literature as part of the afterlife of a biblical text. While this is a welcome turn, this article argues that acts of poetic biblical retelling and recycling are more disruptive, troubling the ways in which critical scholarship operates. Utilising Timothy Beal’s thinking around the ‘cultural history of scripture’ and analysing Roland Boer’s sceptical attitude toward reception-historical practices, the first section teases out the nuances of how certain modes of biblical interpretation are deemed primary (and thus more legitimate) and others secondary (and thus anachronistic).
As such, the second section introduces poetic retellings of biblical material that foreground how poetry is a literary space where knowledge is articulated in particularly performative idioms. Reading poems from Kei Miller and Michael Symmons Roberts that appropriate biblical material, this analysis demonstrates that the poetic retelling of biblical material is an act of writing that refuses secondary status and cannot be simplistically yoked to traditional modes of exegesis. In this way, poetry problematizes the originary-secondary binary in reception-historical interpretation and, at the same time, recasts historical-critical exegesis as another form of ‘supplemental’ writing. This opens up the discipline to rethink some of its most protected interpretative paradigms and engage more fully with other forms of biblical ‘supplement’ across the disciplines.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 330 | 30 | 6 |
Full Text Views | 169 | 0 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 49 | 2 | 0 |