Reception Theory, H. R. Jauss and the Formative Power of Scripture

2012 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
pp. 289-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony C. Thiselton
Keyword(s):  
Reader Response ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Reception History ◽  
The Self ◽  
Reception Theory ◽  
1 Corinthians ◽  
Reader Response Theory ◽  
The Bible ◽  
History Of ◽  
Hans Georg Gadamer

AbstractFormation constitutes the key link between reception theory, Jauss and scripture. The Bible shapes readers by showing them what lies beyond the self. Hans Robert Jauss (1921–97) remains the effective founder of reception theory or reception history. He was a literary theorist, who specialised in romance literature. Following Hans-Georg Gadamer, he insisted that texts carry ‘a still unfinished meaning’, and focused on their historical influence. The exposition of how communities or thinkers have received texts includes de-familiarisation; sometimes the ‘completion’ of meaning, as in much reader-response theory; and instances of when a text ‘satisfies, surpasses, disappoints, or refutes the expectations’ of readers. Reception theory can often trace continuity in the reception of texts, as well as disjunctions, reversals and surprises. It offers a more disciplined approach to scripture than most reader-response theories. Clearly horizons of expectation play a major role in the interpretation of biblical texts. I suggest six direct parallels with biblical interpretation. (1) Like Francis Watson and others, Jauss rejects any value-neutral objectivism in interpretation. (2) The readers’ horizon of expectation derives partly from earlier readings of the text. (3) Horizons can move and change, and thus transform readers as these change. (4) Biblical genres display all of Jauss’ accounts of the responses of readers. For example, parables of reversal may surpass what the Christian believer expects, or disappoint the unbeliever. (5) Like Gadamer, Jauss emphasises the importance of formulating constructive questions in approaching texts. (6) Jauss’ ‘levels of reading’ correspond closely with Bakhtin's notion of polyphony. I compare Ormond Rush's work on reception and otherness, and Luther's insistence that the Bible often confronts us as our adversary to judge and to transform us. Finally, we illustrate the history of reception from Ulrich Luz on Matthew, from Childs on Exodus, and from my commentaries on 1 Corinthians and 1 and 2 Thessalonians.

Narratology

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Genevieve Liveley
Keyword(s):  
Reader Response ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Chicago School ◽  
Reception History ◽  
First Century ◽  
Unreliable Narrator ◽  
Affect And Cognition ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ars Poetica

This book explores the extraordinary contribution that classical poetics has made to twentieth- and twenty-first-century theories of narrative. Its aim is not to argue that modern narratologies simply present ‘old wine in new wineskins’, but to identify the diachronic affinities shared between ancient and modern stories about storytelling, recognizing that modern narratologists bring particular expertise to bear upon ancient literary theory and offer valuable insights into the interpretation of some notoriously difficult texts. By interrogating ancient and modern narratologies through the mutually imbricating dynamics of their reception it aims to arrive at a better understanding of both. Each chapter selects a key moment in the history of narratology on which to focus, zooming in from an overview of significant phases to look at core theories and texts—from the Russian formalists, Chicago school neo-Aristotelians, through the prestructuralists, structuralists, and poststructuralists, to the latest unnatural and antimimetic narratologists. The reception history that thus unfolds offers some remarkable plot twists. It unmasks Plato as an unreliable narrator and theorist, and offers a rare glimpse of Aristotle putting narrative theory into practice in the role of storyteller in his work On Poets. In Horace’s Ars Poetica and in the works of ancient scholia critics and commentators it locates a rhetorically conceived poetics and a sophisticated reader-response-based narratology evincing a keen interest in audience affect and cognition—and anticipating the cognitive turn in narratology’s mot recent postclassical phase.

Postcolonial Liberation: Decolonizing Biblical Studies in the South African Postcolony

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald O. West
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
The South ◽  
Biblical Hermeneutics ◽  
The Bible ◽  
African Black ◽  
History Of ◽  
Land Economics ◽  
The 1960S

Liberation biblical interpretation and postcolonial biblical interpretation have a long history of mutual constitution. This essay analyzes a particular context in which these discourses and their praxis have forged a third conversation partner: decolonial biblical interpretation. African and specifically South African biblical hermeneutics are the focus of reflections in this essay. The South African postcolony is a “special type” of postcolony, as the South African Communist Party argued in the 1960s. The essay charts the characteristics of the South African postcolony and locates decolonial biblical interpretation within the intersections of these features. Race, culture, land, economics, and the Bible are forged in new ways by contemporary social movements, such as #FeesMustFall. South African biblical studies continues to draw deeply on the legacy of South African black theology, thus reimagining African biblical studies as decolonial African biblical studies—a hybrid of African liberation and African postcolonial biblical interpretation.

A Century in the Making: Receiving the Samaritan Pentecost (Acts 8:4–25) in the Pentecostal and Charismatic Traditions

Pneuma ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-198
Author(s):  
Martin W. Mittelstadt
Keyword(s):  
Family History ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Reception History ◽  
History Of

Abstract In this address, I outline a history of pentecostal/charismatic reception. I explore different ways that pentecostal/charismatic believers have received, appropriated, and used Acts 8 throughout our history. I propose that a reception of more than one hundred years of pentecostal musings over Acts 8 provides a snapshot of our extended pentecostal family. I suggest up front that this family history exposes pentecostal/charismatic notions about the nature of biblical interpretation. I conclude with general observations from my research and suggest further implications for students and scholars interested in reception history.

scholarly journals Reading the Bible with the marginalised: The value/s of contextual Bible reading

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald West
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
The Bible ◽  
History Of ◽  
Interpretive Practices ◽  
Bible Reading

There is a long history of collaboration between “popular” or “contextual” forms of biblical interpretation between Brazil and South Africa, going back into the early 1980’s. Though there are significant differences between these forms of Bible “reading”, there are values and processes that cohere across these contexts, providing an integrity to such forms of Bible reading. This article reflects on the values and processes that may be discerned across the Brazilian and South African interpretive practices after more than thirty years of conversation across these contexts.

Book of Job

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Doak
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Reception History ◽  
Present Form ◽  
Book Of Job ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of

The book of Job is the longest and most thematically and linguistically challenging of the “wisdom books” in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. In the book’s prologue (Job 1–2) the narrator introduces readers to a man named Job (Hebrew ‘iyyōb; etymology unclear). Job’s prosperity extends into all areas of his life, and seems at least potentially linked to his moral status as completely righteous and blameless before God. The earthly scene then gives way to a heavenly setting, where a figure called “the accuser” (literally “the satan”; haśśātān) appears before God. God boasts about Job’s righteousness, but the accuser counters, suggesting that Job’s moral achievement has been merely the byproduct of God’s protection. The accuser and God enter into a bet: Job’s children will be killed, Job’s possessions stripped, and Job’s body afflicted with a painful disease—all to see whether Job will curse God. Job initially responds to the distress with pious statements, affirming God’s authority over his life. In a state of intense suffering, Job is joined by three friends—Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, and then eventually a fourth, Elihu—who offer rounds of speeches debating the reasons for Job’s situation (Job 3–37). Job responds to the friends in turn, alternately lamenting his situation and pleading for a chance to address God directly and argue his case as an innocent man. The friends accuse Job of committing some great sin to deserve his fate; they urge repentance, and defend God as a just ruler. God enters the dispute in a forceful whirlwind (Job 38), and proceeds for several chapters (Job 38–41) to overwhelm Job with resounding statements on creation (38:1–38), animal life (38:39–40:14), and visions of two powerful creatures, Behemoth (40:15–24) and Leviathan (41:1–11). The book ends with Job acknowledging to God the fact that he is overmatched in the face of divine power. God condemns the friends for not speaking “what is right, as my servant Job has” (42:7), and then restores Job’s lost possessions and children (42:10–17). Job has enjoyed a rich reception history in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and, perhaps more than any other book in the Bible except Genesis, as a world literary classic in its own right. Within the Bible, it is the most bracing statement on the problem of suffering, as it presents a situation wherein a clearly righteous person suffers immensely—putting it at odds with more straightforward descriptions of why people suffer in Proverbs, Deuteronomy, and other texts. Scholarly research on Job has focused on the book’s place among other ancient Near Eastern wisdom materials, on questions of language (given the large amount of difficult Hebrew terms in the book), on historical-critical concerns about authorship and the way the book may have come together in its present form, and on the history of the translation of the text into Greek and other ancient languages. In the 21st century, interpreters have increasingly taken up readings of Job that situate it among concerns related to economics, disability, gender, and the history of its reception in many different eras and communities.

scholarly journals Retoriese kritiek en die interpretasie van die Ou Testament

1999 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
H.J.M. Van Deventer
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Rhetorical Criticism ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Short Overview ◽  
The Bible ◽  
History Of ◽  
Basic Approaches ◽  
History Of Biblical Interpretation

Rhetorical criticism and the interpretation of the Old Testament Modern history of Biblical interpretation presents us with two basic approaches to the text of the Bible, viz. historical and literary approaches. This article proposes rhetorical criticism as a process of interpretation that analyses both the historical and literary features of a text. After a short overview of the modern use of the term, especially within the field of Biblical interpretation, this article investigates various “forms” of rhetorical criticism as proposed by scholars working in the fields of general literary theory, a well as Biblical (Old and New Testament) interpretation. The article concludes by proposing a form of rhetorical criticism for interpreting texts from the Old Testament.

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