The Inheritors and The Nature of a Crime

This volume offers scholars the first authoritative text of two works produced collaboratively by two of the most important modern British novelists. Long hard to obtain and frequently neglected by critics, each can now be appreciated both in its own right and as part of the two authors' individual oeuvres. This scholarly edition situates both works in the context of the writers' meeting and ongoing collaboration, providing illuminating literary and historical references and detailing the works' composition history and reception in the UK and America. As well as establishing definitive texts of both works and of the authors' prefaces written for the 1924 republication of The Nature of a Crime, this edition also includes Ford's own 1924 account of his collaboration with Conrad on The Inheritors, as well as the text of Ford's 'The Old Story', a hitherto unpublished early draft of the basic plot of The Nature of a Crime.

Proverbs

Wisdom can be taught and learned, as the instructions in Proverbs 1–9 make clear, and when utilized as strategies for dealing with typical and recurring situations in life, such as those suggested in Proverbs 10–31, they ensure both moral integrity and material prosperity. The motivation for obedience to proverbial truth is the transcendent authority of God, who is the source and substance of the knowledge towards which wisdom aspires. The most important lesson to be learned is itself therefore reducible to a single certainty that informs all of the wisdom sayings in Proverbs: “The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord; the knowledge of the holy one is understanding” (Prov 9:10; cf. 1:7). This essay addresses five major interpretive issues in Proverbs: (1) composition history, (2) literary forms, (3) socio-political context, (4) moral reasoning and ethical conduct, and (5) thematic coherence.

Bibliographical Approaches to D.H. Lawrence’s “Odour of Chrysanthemums”: Archive Fever for the Text-In-Process

This article engages with the theoretical concerns of contemporary textual criticism depicted by Jerome McGann, Peter Shillingsburg, and Paul Eggert through a case study of text-critical approaches to D.H. Lawrence’s short story, “Odour of Chrysanthemums”. I argue that text-critical readings of Lawrence’s tale lend themselves to a Derridean critique of archive fever, where the rigorous archivization of the historical text-document can be read as an unsuccessful attempt to unearth the ontological origins of the text-in-process, a univocal chronology of the author’s intentions over time. A Derridean critique of archive fever in Lawrence criticism poses productive questions to the distinctions contemporary textual criticism draws between, first, text and document, and, second, ideal text and the text-in-process. I show that a bibliographical study of the text-in-process — the close tracking of documentary changes over time — does not actually distance textual critics from the false but alluring notion that the document and the author’s intentions exist in a single state. The text-document, as I refer to it throughout, exists in multiple states over the span of its composition history, but the textual critic performs such a rigorous mapping of its documentary changes that the text-document, in its very multiplicity, takes on a singular form as historical or bibliographical narrative, where singularity is based not on the author’s original or final intentions but on a univocal mapping of the author’s intentions over time.

The Book of Isaiah: Its Composition History

This chapter discusses the complex literary growth (Redaktionsgeschichte) that lies behind Isa 1–66, with special focus on history of research. The most important contribution can be attributed to Bernhard Duhm, who proposed the three-part division of Isaiah into Proto-Isaiah, Deutero-Isaiah, and Trito-Isaiah. He had several forerunners in the eighteenth century. The great success of the idea of a tripartite authorship stems from Duhm’s conception of the prophet—the prophet was a rhetorical and religious genius. The second part of the chapter deals with the “Rediscovery of the Essential Unity of the Book.” One can speak of a paradigm shift, when the person of the prophet has been replaced by an interest in the book as a literary. There are two basic models for understanding the origin of the book. In the first model, Isa 1–39 and 40–55 are traced back to two, initially independently transmitted, literary works. According to the second model, Isa 40–55 is a literary continuation of Isa 1–39, making it necessary to dismiss the notion of an autonomous Deutero-Isaiah. Two conclusions can be drawn from the history of research: (a) the person of the prophet can no longer serve as an appropriate point of departure for analysis, and (b) redaction-critical analysis of Isa 1–39 must always proceed with attention to the whole book of Isaiah.

Book of Daniel

The Book of Daniel contains the only apocalypse in the Hebrew Bible. It is comprised of twelve chapters: 1–6, which are a series of six court tales describing the life of Daniel and his three friends, Judean exiles to the Babylonian court in the 6th century bce, and 7–12, which are a series of four apocalyptic visions, purportedly by this same Daniel. Despite the book’s 6th-century setting, it was probably only finalized during the Maccabean period, perhaps by 164 bce. The stories seem to be earlier than the visions, which reflect anguish under the persecution of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Seleucid king who oppressed Judea from 168–164 bce. Especially the last chapters employ the coded language of apocalyptic literature and thus interpret historical figures symbolically without giving their actual names. Combined, the court tales and the apocalyptic vision narratives seem to function as both encouragement and resistance literature. The book was written in both Hebrew and Aramaic. The Greek editions of Daniel include additional material: a prayer and a hymn inserted into Dan 3, and two extra stories, Susanna and Bel and the Serpent. Daniel was placed in the Writings section of the Hebrew Bible but is located among the Prophets in the Septuagint as well as Catholic and Orthodox Christian Bibles. Among the Qumran Dead Sea Scrolls, there are at least eight copies of the Book of Daniel, as well as parabiblical literature either focused on a character named “Daniel” or otherwise related to the biblical book. Daniel’s main themes center mostly on its apocalyptic and eschatological features, such as the periodization of history, chronological predictions of end times, the sovereignty of God over earthly empires, martyrdom, and resurrection. These themes have influenced both Jewish and Christian views of eschatology. Within Christianity, the book is frequently read together with the Revelation or Apocalypse of John, an apocalyptic book in the New Testament that was greatly influenced by Daniel. Current research on the Book of Daniel not only utilizes some new approaches and methodologies but also continues to advance our understanding in these main areas: the relationship between the main texts of Daniel (the Hebrew-Aramaic as well as the Greek editions), Daniel’s composition history, its social setting and political theology, and its Ancient Near Eastern influences.

Reading Jeremiah 52 in Exile: Purpose in the Composition of Jeremiah

Jeremiah 52 is valued among scholars for the insight it provides into the composition history of the larger book and its relationship to 2 Kings. Beyond the text-critical clues it provides, however, little is said about the relationship of Jeremiah 52 to the rest of the book. The chapter has been added to Jeremiah from its original position in 2 Kings 24–5 (or a common source), but it has been edited in the process. What follows is an exploration of a possible motivation for the addition of Jeremiah 52 to the larger book. Using the characters of Jehoiachin and Zedekiah as representatives of those who did and did not listen to the exhortation of the prophet, the editor uses the material of Jeremiah 52 to indicate that any future for the nation of Israel was located in—and would come out of—Babylon.