Literary modernism and biblical hermeneutics : the Bible as literature?

Zelechow Bernard: Literary modernism and biblical hermeneutics : the Bible as literature? In: Papers in English and American studies : Tomus IV. - Literary theory and biblical hermeneutics : proceedings of the International Conference: "Reading Scripture - Literary Criticism and Biblical Hermeneutics", Pannonhalma, 4-6 July, 1991, (4). pp. 45-54. (1992)

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Abstract

Modern consciousness contributes both to the devaluation of and paradoxically to the revaluation of the biblical texts in contemporary culture in relation to art. Literary modernism leads to an appropriate hermeneutical secularism that transforms the Hebrew Bible specifically, and biblical texts in general, into analogues of modernist literary products. The modernist critics include Robert Alter, Gabriel Josepovichi, Harold Bloom offer hermeneutical insight that are provocative and penetrating. However, these theorists have failed to explore the underlying presuppositions which ground the literary hermeneutical theory. This paper will examine the implicit intellectual cultural underpinnings that incorporates the biblical texts into the literary corpus of Western culture. The literary critic asks, can the Bible be read in light of modernist literature? The answer for these thinkers is, yes. For these writers the values imbedded in the biblical texts. Implicitly these writers assert that we turn to literature for indights into the meaning of life in the way our ancestors read the Bible. As a benefit to both biblical study and literature a biblical hermeneutics and a theology of art should reverse the contemporary question. The new question is: can a work of literature be read meaningfully in the absence of the biblical framework? The question implies the necessity to examine the nature and function of art in Western culture, the meaning of a biblical platform in a secular world, the nature of biblical critique and the aesthetic unmasking tradition, the biblical conception of the paradox of freedom, the nature of human action and the biblical structure of redemtion and sanctification at its relation to the aesthetic concept of transformation. The underlying argument behind the reversal of the question of the relationship of art to the Bible is the premise that the implicit and unacknowledged grounds of modernity is biblical. In other words the Bible is the archetype of all speech and discourse. The praxis of biblical interpretation is the grounds of all reading and therefore of all theory. Concommitantly a theology of art requires the illumination of the relationship between critique an hope, social description and personal transformation. Finally this paper will sketch the ways in which art that is not grounded implicitly falls into nihilism and self-contradiction. Conversely this paper will explore the way in which biblical presuppositions potentially redems explicitly unredeemable works of art.

Item Type:	Book Section
Journal or Publication Title:	Papers in English and American studies : Tomus IV. - Literary theory and biblical hermeneutics : proceedings of the International Conference: "Reading Scripture - Literary Criticism and Biblical Hermeneutics", Pannonhalma, 4-6 July, 1991
Date:	1992
Volume:	4
ISSN:	0230-2780
Page Range:	pp. 45-54
Series Name:	Acta Universitatis Szegediensis de Attila József nominatae : papers in english and american studies
Language:	English
Related URLs:	https://acta.bibl.u-szeged.hu/68570/
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Biblia, Hermeneutika - bibliai
Additional Information:	Bibliogr. a lábjegyzetekben ; összefoglalás angol nyelven
Subjects:	06. Humanities 06. Humanities > 06.02. Languages and Literature 06. Humanities > 06.03. Philosophy, ethics and religion
Date Deposited:	2025. Jan. 21. 14:05
Last Modified:	2025. Jan. 24. 10:38
URI:	http://acta.bibl.u-szeged.hu/id/eprint/68652

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