Defamiliarizing the popular image of the bible in some contemporary rewritings in english

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Ewa Rychter
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Status ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Popular Image ◽  
Fervent Believer

Abstract This paper focuses on the ways some recent British and Irish rewritings of the Bible estrange what has become the publicly accepted and dominant image of the biblical text. Recently, the Bible has been given the status of “home scripture” (Sherwood, Yvonne. 2012. Biblical Blaspheming: Trials of the Sacred for a Secular Age. Cambridge: CUP) and become a domesticated and conservative text, a rather placid cultural/literary monument, an important foundation of democracy, a venerable religious document judged more tolerant and liberal than other scriptures. Though the Bible used to be perceived as an explosive text, peppered with potentially offensive passages, today its enmity is neutralised either by linking the Bible with ancient times or by relating it to people’s religious beliefs and by entrenching its more scandalous parts within the discourse of tolerance. It is such an anodyne image of the Bible that the biblical rewritings of Roberts, Winterson, Barnes, Crace, Pullman, Tóibin, Alderman, Diski defamiliarize. By showing biblical events through the eyes of various non-standard focalizers, those novels disrupt the formulaic patterns of the contemporary perception of the Bible. It is through these strange perspectives that we observe the critical moment when the overall meaning and the role of the biblical text is established and the biblical story is actually written down. Importantly, it is also the moment when somebody moulds the scripture according to their ideas and glosses over all the complexities, violence and immorality related to the events the biblical text describes. Also, contemporary biblical rewritings defamiliarize the currently popular image of the Bible – that of a whitewashed text which inculcates morality, conserves social order and teaches love and tolerance, by employing images of disintegration, dirt and contagion as well as by constructing a figure of a fervent believer in the Bible and its ideas.

CODEX B 19A: STAGES OF LEGITIMATION OF THE MASORET BIBLE ANCIENT EXAMPLE

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-42
Author(s):  
Sergey V. GRIGORISHIN ◽  
Ekaterina V. NOVOKRESHCHENNYKH
Keyword(s):  
Research Methodology ◽  
Textual Criticism ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Philosophical Hermeneutics ◽  
Effect Relationship ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Status ◽  
Rabbinical Literature ◽  
Single Standard ◽  
The Moment

This article examines the cultural and historical circumstances of the appearance and introduction into the scientific circulation of the oldest manuscript code of the Hebrew Bible — the Leningrad Code B 19A. The authors of the article make an attempt to restore the contextual connections of the Code with Jewish philosophy and biblical textology. The concept of the research is built on the basis of genealogical analysis, which opened up the opportunity to first analyze the stages of legitimation of Codex B 19A that are closest to the present, and then move into the depth of chronology, right up to the moment of creation of the studied text. The result of the study was the identification and explication of internal links between the Codex B 19A, Masoretic schools, Rabbanites, Karaites and, finally, medieval critics of the biblical text. The research methodology is based on the principles of philosophical hermeneutics, the comparative historical approach of the genealogical method as applied to textual criticism. Revealing the cause-and-effect relationship in the legitimization of the Masoretic Bible showed that the need to create a single standard for the sacred text arose already by the middle of the 8th century, the time of the emergence of the Karaite movement. The refusal of the Karaites to submit to the authority of classical rabbinical literature led to a rethinking of the biblical text. Together with the status of the main sacred book, the Bible turned out to be a text around which philological, philosophical and theological discussions became possible. Awareness of the fact that the biblical text has different interpretations led the Rabbanites and Karaites to the conclusion that it was necessary to create a philological standard for the Bible. For this reason, the authority of the Masoretes as specialists in the vocalization of the text, the direct creators of the vocalization system, has sharply increased. The Ben Asher family of Tiberias emerged as the main Masoretic school, and its last representative, Aaron Ben Asher, became the most authoritative Masoretic. Aaron Ben Asher owns the Masorah system introduced in the Aleppo Codex and copied in the Leningrad Codex B 19A. Maimonides was the first among Jewish philosophers to appreciate the textual achievements of Aaron Ben Asher, which significantly raised the authority of the Masoret in rabbinic and Karaite intellectual circles.

Scripturalizing and the Second Amendment

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosamond C. Rodman
Keyword(s):  
White Women ◽  
White Children ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Second Amendment ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Status ◽  
Us Constitution ◽  
Half Decade

Expanding beyond the text of the Bible, this chapter explores instead a piece of political scripture, namely the Second Amendment of the US Constitution. Over the last half-decade, the Second Amendment has come to enjoy the status of a kind of scripture-within-scripture. Vaulted to a much more prominent status than it had held in the first 150 years or so of its existence, and having undergone a remarkable shift in what most Americans think it means, the Second Amendment provides an opportunity to examine the linguistic, racial, and gendered modes by which these changes were effected, paying particular attention to the ways in which white children and white women were conscripted into the role of the masculine, frontier-defending US citizen.

Marxism, Religion and the Taiping Revolution

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Boer
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Revolutionary Movement ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The World ◽  
Specific Interpretation ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Revolution

This study offers a specific interpretation of the Taiping Revolution in China in the mid-nineteenth century. It was not only the largest revolutionary movement in the world at the time, but also one that was inspired by Christianity. Indeed, it marks the moment when the revolutionary religious tradition arrived in China. My account of the revolution stresses the role of the Bible, its radical reinterpretation by the Taiping revolutionaries, and the role it played in their revolutionary acts and reconstruction of economic and social relations. After providing this account, I raise a number of implications for Marxist approaches to religion. These involve the revolutionary religious tradition, first identified by Engels and established by Karl Kautsky, the question of political ambivalence of a religion like Christianity, and the distinction between ontological and temporal transcendence.

Religion, Reconciliation, and Modern Society: The Shifting Conclusions of Hegel'sLectures on the Philosophy of Religion

2013 ◽  
Vol 106 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-60
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
The Status ◽  
Religious Reasons ◽  
Role Of Religion

G. W. F. Hegel's greatest contributions regarding religion and politics stem from his abiding concern with social cohesion. While Hegel was interested in now classic questions regarding the role of religion in government, the focal point of his engagement with religion and politics lay in his view of religion's role in binding together a complex society in which a more traditional social order had been fragmented by interrelated economic, social, political, and intellectual transformations. He was less concerned with the role of religious reasons and language in policy debates or elections than with politics in a broader sense—specifically, the way that religion enables the population as a whole to identify with the society's defining social and political institutions, including the family, the economic order, and other legal institutions. In this image, religion reconciles the population with the existing practices and institutions. Without significant degrees of such identification and reconciliation, even the best of laws will be insufficient to sustain a polity. Though reconciliation is one of Hegel's principal terms for this relationship, it in no sense implies “making do,” settling for, or simply accepting the status quo because it happens to exist. Rather, he is ultimately concerned with religion's ability—or inability—to enable us to find ourselves at home in a just and rational social order that promotes freedom.

scholarly journals The leading ornamental motif koshkar muyiz in Kazakh ornamentation: in search of the primordi

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-110
Author(s):  
S. K. Suraganov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Semantic Content ◽  
Traditional Art ◽  
William Hogarth ◽  
The Status ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
The Bronze Age

The ornamental motif of Koshkar Muyiz – the legacy of the Ancient times – remains key in the traditional art of felt craft. The horn-shaped figures of the Kazakhs had been a centerpiece of scholarly discourses of Kazakh, Russian and Soviet science over the entire 20th century. The first attempts to find their meaning were made by the German ethnologist R. Karutz (1911), the Russian researchers S. Dudin (1928), B. Kuftin (1926), E. Schneider (1927), and others. The horn-shaped motif had been reviewed in the works of archaeologists, art historians and ethnographers since the second half of the 20th century. Scientists determined the time of its origin, its geography, and attempted to translate its semantic content. It was found that the curvilinear motif had not appeared earlier than the New Stone Age, but in the Bronze Age, it had developed in the form of various styled designs. This motif obviously played a key role in the ornamental complex of the Turkic-Mongol peoples. Based on the interdisciplinary approach, the author offers a number of reasons to explain its viability, including the internal form of the word - name of the ornamental motif, which is epic in nature since it can cause a special aesthetic reaction in viewers. The ornamental motif seems to play the role of a “figure of memories” and have the status of a “substantiative past”. It is preserved as a linguistic objectification (name) in an extra-linguistic format as well, in the form of an Iconic Model of a transcultural anagram that reproduces the ancient ideological content with symbolic and magical scope. Acting as a canon, the Koshkar Muyiz motif is a sort of a “Signature of the Era” with its artistic charm and is constructively based on the line called the “Line of Beauty” by William Hogarth.

On the Eve of Spinoza

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk van Miert
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Textual Criticism ◽  
Linguistic Analysis ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
The Status ◽  
Historical Contextualization ◽  
Radical Ideas

Chapter 8 demonstrates how biblical scholarship became part of normal public discourse in the course of the 1650s and 1660s. Discussions on the Sabbath, on usury, on long hair, on vernacular translations, on chronology, on the Septuagint all conspired to normalize textual criticism, linguistic analysis, and historical contextualization as ways of approaching the Bible, in juxtaposition with theological and dogmatic readings. Meanwhile, such theological discussions raged particularly in the 1660s, with pamphlet wars over newly voiced radical ideas. Together, all such disputes made very fertile ground for Spinoza’s radical biblical scholarship, which took its lead from precisely the philology developed and was made popular by Scaliger, the translators of the States’ Translation, Gomarus, Heinsius, Grotius, Saumaise, La Peyrère, Isaac Vossius, and a host of other participants in what had become a highly charged public debate over the status of the biblical text.

scholarly journals King Yima — Jam — Jamshid: From Mythological Hero to Literary Image

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 348-367
Author(s):  
Marina L. Reisner ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Persian Literature ◽  
The World ◽  
Classical Poetry ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
Middle Persian ◽  
Cultural Hero

The article is devoted to the evolution of the mythological personage, ancient king, and cultural hero Yima in Persian literature of the Muslim period. With the help of translations of the Avesta as well as commentary and theological texts of Middle Persian literature, the work depicts Yima’s main creative functions as the keeper and protector of living beings, ruler of the world in the “Golden Age,” grantor of corporeal immortality, upholder of the cosmic and social order, and savior of the world from a natural catastrophe. These functions are opposed by the role of Yima as the first sinner, through whose fault the “Golden Age” was lost. The rudiments of the complex of mythological legends that have developed around Yima are reflected in Shahnama, the great epos that continued the Iranian narrative tradition of ancient times and the early Middle Ages. All the motifs based on Jam-Jamshid’s legends in different genres of lyric and lyric-epic poetry of XI–XIV centuries can be divided into three groups and they reflect the dual attitude towards this hero. The choice of a motif of a certain group in Persian classical poetry directly depended on genre context (panegyric, didactic, mysticallegoric, anacreontic). In lyric-epic and lyric poetry (qasida and qhazal), the circle of motifs connected with Jam-Jamshid are concentrated around Jamshid’s Throne and Jamshid’s Cup. Some similarities of Jamshid and Suleiman stories led to a merging of the two heroes in the Iranian tradition and even to a contamination of their roles and attributes. Sufi poets often used the motif Jamshid’s Cup showing the entire Universe (jam-i giti-nama) as a symbol of mystical knowledge.

Burning Bush

2007 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-108
Author(s):  
Ken Stone
Keyword(s):  
Bush Administration ◽  
Gay Marriage ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
The Bible ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Point Of Departure

George W. Bush links the call of Moses at the burning bush (Exod. 3) to his decision to run for US President. This article uses Bush’s appeal to Moses as a point of departure for reflection on the role of biblical rhetoric in and against the Bush Administration. Much attention has been given to the importance of religion in Bush’s 2004 reelection. However, Bush’s appeal to Moses provides openings for potentially subversive readings. Although the politics of marriage (especially as refracted through the “gay marriage” debates) played a role in Bush’s re-election, Moses’ own marriage is a source of contention in the biblical text; and matters of sex and gender create moments of potential instability at several points in the Moses traditions. The claims made about “Bible” by Bush and his supporters are performative rather than constative statements. Like the phrase “Burning Bush” itself, Bush’s Bible therefore remains open for resignification by those who read the Bible for very different purposes.

The Bible, Its Status and African Christian Theologies: Foundational Document or Stumbling Block?

1998 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 265-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Punt
Keyword(s):  
Vantage Point ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Human Suffering ◽  
African Theology ◽  
History Of Interpretation ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThe relationship between the Bible and Christianity, including Christian theology, is traditionally strong and undisputed; however, in Christian theology in Africa, as elsewhere, the status of the biblical texts is contested. A brief consideration of the Bible as 'canon' leads to a broader discussion of how the Bible has to a certain extent become a 'problem' in African theology also, both because of theological claims made about its status, and - and in conjunction with - its perceived complicity in justifying human suffering and hardship. The legacy of the Bible as legitimating agent is dealt with from the vantage point of the history of interpretation; but the latter also provides for a 'rehumanising' of Scripture. In the end, this article is also an attempt to explain some of the different views of the Bible's status in Africa, and to address and mediate the resulting conflict by attending to proposals to view the biblical canon as 'historical prototype', foundational document' - as scripture. A number of important aspects regarding the continuing role of the Bible in African theologies in particular, conclude the essay.

Ritual, Identity, and Emotion

2018 ◽  
pp. 54-73
Author(s):  
Douglas J. Davies
Keyword(s):  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Rites Of Passage ◽  
Faith Community ◽  
Identity Status ◽  
Theoretical Discussion ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Status ◽  
Basic Concepts ◽  
Sociological Approaches

This chapter is grounded in its own theoretical proposition that ideas become values if and when pervaded by emotions; that such values become beliefs if they confer a sense of identity upon a person or group, and that such beliefs become religious beliefs if they frame identity with a sense of destiny. It then analyses a variety of familiar and less familiar anthropological and sociological approaches to the role of emotions in ritual practices, including Mol’s theoretical discussion of how forms of identity may be sacralized, a perspective applicable to early Christian ideas of Jesus and of the status-enhancing faith-community. The notion of identity is also explored through the concept of dividual rather than individual personhood. One hypothetical application highlights the idea of betrayal as a frame for Paul’s identity status as an apostle, and of grace interpreted technically as a ‘substance-code’ of participation in the early Christian spirit-grounded sect. While also covering basic concepts of reciprocity, habitus, and rites of passage, the chapter is alert to existential aspects of ceremonial behaviour and remains appropriately cautious of any overly reified notion of ‘ritual’.

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