scholarly journals Accuracy and Reception: On Theological and Aesthetic Novelty in Two Novels by Teodora Dimova

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ewelina Drzewiecka
Keyword(s):  
Modern Literature ◽  
Individual Experience ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
Biblical Story ◽  
The Bible

Accuracy and Reception: On Theological and Aesthetic Novelty in Two Novels by Teodora DimovaThis article raises the question of functioning of the Biblical narrative in modern literature in the context of the local/individual experience of faith and the epistemological and existential question of truth. The focus is on two novels by the Bulgarian writer Teodora Dimova (born in 1960): Марма Мариам [Marma, Mariam, 2010] and Първият рожден ден [The First Birthday, 2016]. This case is particularly interesting because the Biblical story about Jesus has not been used here in order to create a parody or blasphemy, which could be expected as far as the postmodern de-contextualisation and re-evaluation of tradition are  concerned, but to offer both an aesthetically original and theologically orthodox vision of the Christian God. So how to paraphrase the Biblical story and remain orthodox? How to actualize the existential potential of the Bible and achieve novelty? The analysis is conducted in the perspective of Paul Ricoeur’s existential hermeneutics and phenomenology of memory, especially his concepts of testimony and mimesis, with regard to the question of the reception of Biblical paraphrases in (Bulgarian) modern culture.Zgodność i recepcja. O teologicznej i estetycznej nowości w dwóch powieściach Teodory DimowejW artykule została poruszona kwestia funkcjonowania narracji biblijnej w literaturze nowoczesnej w kontekście lokalnego i indywidualnego doświadczenia wiary oraz epistemologicznego i egzystencjalnego pytania o prawdę. Autorka koncentruje się na dwóch powieściach bułgarskiej pisarki Teodory Dimowej (ur. 1960): Марма Мариам [Marma, Mariam, 2010] i Първият рожден ден [Pierwsze urodziny, 2016]. Przypadek ten jest szczególnie interesujący, ponieważ biblijna opowieść o Jezusie nie została tu wykorzystana w celu stworzenia parodii lub bluźnierstwa, czego można by oczekiwać w kontekście ponowoczesnych dekontekstualizacji i przewartościowań, ale aby zaproponować wizję chrześcijańskiego Boga, która jest zarówno estetycznie oryginalna, jak i teologicznie prawowierna. Jak więc sparafrazować historię biblijną i pozostać ortodoksyjnym? Jak urzeczywistnić egzystencjalny potencjał Biblii i stworzyć oryginalne dzieło? W analizie autorka odwołuje się do hermeneutyki egzystencjalnej i fenomenologii pamięci Paula Ricoeura, zwłaszcza jego koncepcjiświadectwa oraz mimesis, w odniesieniu do kwestii recepcji parafraz biblijnych w (bułgarskiej) kulturze nowoczesnej. 

Global Thefts of Biblical Narrative

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald West
Keyword(s):  
Third World ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
Biblical Story ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Narratives ◽  
African Experience ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Family Resemblances ◽  
African Perspective ◽  
The Subject

This chapter takes its starting point from the African experience, across a range of African contexts, of Africa as both the subject and object of biblical narrative. When the Bible came to Africa, it came with well-established colonial metanarratives, constructed in part from biblical narratives. These colonial metanarratives were in turn partly reconstructed by the engagement with African others, from both a European and an African perspective along two diverging trajectories, with biblical narrative making a contribution to both. This chapter focuses on the capacity of biblical narrative, biblical story, to be both incorporated into “local” metanarratives and to shape these metanarratives. The contexts that are the focus of this chapter are largely “third world” contexts, across which there are significant family resemblances and important contextual differences.

The Artist as Reader of the Bible. Visual Exegesis and the Adoration of the Magi

2005 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 337-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin O'Kane
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
Biblical Story ◽  
Image Viewer ◽  
The Bible ◽  
History Of ◽  
Entire History ◽  
Visual Exegesis ◽  
Textual Meaning

AbstractThe article explores the processes at work in a painting's engagement of its viewer in biblical subject matter. It accentuates the role of the artist as an active reader of the Bible and not merely an illustrator of biblical scenes, the dynamic that occurs in the text-reader process as paradigmatic for the image-viewer relationship and the important role of the developing tradition that felt the need to change or rewrite the biblical story. The processes are explored in terms of hermeneutics and exegesis: hermeneutics defined as 'the interweaving of language and life within the horizon of the text and within the horizons of traditions and the modern reader' (Gadamer) and exegesis as 'the dialectic between textual meaning and the reader's existence' (Berdini). Applied to the visualization of biblical subject matter, the approaches of Gadamer and Berdini illumine the key role given to the viewer in the visual hermeneutical process. The biblical story of the adoration of the Magi (Matt. 2: 1-12), the first public and universal seeing of Christ and one of the most frequently depicted themes in the entire history of biblical art, is used to illustrate their approach. The emphasis in the biblical narrative on revealing the Christ child to the reader parallels a key concept in Gadamer's hermeneutical aesthetics, namely Darstellung, the way in which a painting facilitates its subject matter in coming forth, in becoming an existential event in the life of the viewer.

Ancient Israel's Neighbors

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian R. Doak
Keyword(s):  
Nearest Neighbors ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Social ◽  
Family Level ◽  
The Face ◽  
Social Turmoil

The purpose of this book is to tell the story of Israel’s nearest neighbors—not only discovering what the Bible has to say about them but also what we can know from archaeology, ancient inscriptions, and other sources. The Bible itself presents these neighbors in nuanced and conflicting ways; sometimes they are friends or even related to Israel at a family level, and sometimes they are enemies, spoken of as though they must die in order for Israel to live. We are left wondering how the biblical portrayal might have affected our thinking about these people as historical groups, on their own terms. How would an Aramaean have described her own religion? How would an Edomite have described conflict with Israel? This book explores both the biblical portrayal of the smaller groups surrounding Israel and what people can know about these groups through their own literature, archaeology, and other sources. By uncovering the identity of the Philistines as settlers along the coast at the same time that early Israel carved out their place in the land, for example, one can better understand the social turmoil and political maneuvering that lies just beneath the surface of the biblical narrative, and can see more clearly just how the authors of the Bible saw themselves in the face of others.

Sustenance and Survival in Biblical Narrative

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer L. Koosed
Keyword(s):  
Religious Identity ◽  
Food Production ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
Early Judaism ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
Class Status ◽  
Cultural Code ◽  
Shape Characterization

Food is a comprehensive cultural code. In ancient Israel and early Judaism, food production and preparation structured lives; what one did in the process was determined by gender and class status and sometimes even marked by ethnic and religious identity. Food also serves to structure narrative, shape characterization, and add layers of symbolic signification to story. In the Bible, the drama of the first few chapters revolves around proper versus improper eating, and the final book portrays God as a lamb sacrificed for the Passover meal. Between picking and tasting the forbidden fruit, and slaughtering and eating God, a whole host of food-related plots, characters, and images proliferate, many of which revolve around the most important of foodstuffs: bread. This chapter explores the centrality of bread in the story of Adam and Eve, the book of Ruth, and the gospels of Jesus.

Modern Midrash: The Biblical Canon and Modern Literature

AJS Review ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gershon Shaked
Keyword(s):  
Song Of Songs ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
Literary Value ◽  
Pressure Groups ◽  
The Bible

Canonization of the Bible resulted from a consensus of those to whom it was addressed and a ruling group of religious elites that established its sanctity. They declared that “Torah was given to Moses at Sinai” and valued it above and beyond its literary value. The process of canonization was not a simple one. Several books were included only after struggles among various pressure groups. For example: “At first, Proverbs, Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes were considered non-canonical because they consisted of parables, but later the men of the Great Assembly interpreted them.” (ءAvot dءRabbi Natan, 1). Further: “The sages wished to exclude Ecclesiastes because it contained inconsistencies, but they included it because it begins and ends with teachings of Torah” (Shabbat, 30:b).

scholarly journals The strange biography of Samson

2003 ◽  
Vol 24 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 19-36
Author(s):  
Yair Zakovitch
Keyword(s):  
World View ◽  
Biblical Story ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Book Of Samuel ◽  
Book Of Judges ◽  
Story Elements

The biblical story of the life of Samson hides much from the reader&&the Book of Judges has deleted from the story elements that were deemed improper for the book’s placement among the Holy Scriptures. In this article, the author shows how the Bible transforms Samson from a mythological hero, the son of a god, to a mere mortal whose extraordinary strength came through the spirit of God that rested with him so long as he kept his Nazirite vows. The biblical storyteller could not prevent the story of Samson from entering into the biblical corpus since it was a tale of tremendous popularity. He thus told it in such a way as to bring it closer to his monotheistic beliefs and world-view. In its ‘biblical’ form the story does not bring honor to the figure of Samson, and so his placement as the last of the judges in the Book of Judges prepares the reader for the establishment of the institution of kingship, in the Book of Samuel.

Biblical Israel in the Ninth Century?

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
PHILIP R. DAVIES
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Critical History ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
United Monarchy ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Crucial Part

Most archaeologists of ancient Israel still operate with a pro-biblical ideology, while the role that archaeology has played in Zionist nation building is extensively documented. Terms such as ‘ninth century’ and ‘Iron Age’ represent an improvement on ‘United Monarchy’ and ‘Divided Monarchy’, but these latter terms remain implanted mentally as part of a larger portrait that may be called ‘biblical Israel’. This chapter argues that the question of ‘biblical Israel’ must be regarded as distinct from the kingdoms of Israel and Judah as a major historical problem rather than a given datum. ‘Biblical Israel’ can never be the subject of a modern critical history, but is rather a crucial part of that history, a ‘memory’, no doubt historically conditioned, that became crucial in creating Judaism. This realization will enable us not only to write a decent critical history of Iron Age central Palestine but also to bring that history and the biblical narrative into the kind of critical engagement that will lead to a better understanding of the Bible itself.

Introduction

Black Samson ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Nyasha Junior ◽  
Jeremy Schipper
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
American Literature ◽  
African Descent ◽  
American Art ◽  
Biblical Story ◽  
Court Records ◽  
White American ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Popular Subject

Samson is a popular subject in biblical scholarship on the use of the Bible in art, literature, and popular culture, although this scholarship tends to focus on Samson in White European and White American art and literature. The introduction explains how Samson becomes identified with people of African descent in American literature. It discusses the biblical story of Samson and the lack of physical descriptions of Samson in the Bible. It provides examples of the racialized uses of Samson in poetry, sermons, speeches, narratives by enslaved persons, court records, and newspapers. It offers some possible reasons why the biblical story of Samson may have become associated with African Americans.

On the Aquedah in Modern Philosophy

2007 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-108
Author(s):  
Ze'ev Levy
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Final Conclusion ◽  
Biblical Story ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Fear And Trembling ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Do So

AbstractThe story of the Aquedah represents one of the most moving stories of the Bible. Most modern discussions on it take their point of departure from Soren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling. I shall do so too in this essay, which focuses on the relations between ethics and religious belief and tries to show that Kierkegaard misinterpreted the story. The inquiry analyzes philosophical responses to the Aquedah from Philo and Jewish and non-Jewish philosophers until the present. It underscores its paradoxical implications, including a structuralist analysis and comparison of the Aquedah with the biblical story of Yephta's daughter. The final conclusion asserts that what Kierkegaard extolled, Judaism condemns as sacrilege.

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