This article brings Kwok Pui-Lan’s postcolonial imagination to the blurred boundaries of the Book of Jonah. Identifying Nineveh as a marginalised character, we read with Nineveh, to see that the characteristics of the text do not align neatly with many of the assumptions brought to bear on Nineveh’s identity. Fixed identity is problematized, as are the dichotomies between centre and periphery, good and evil. Seeking the gaps and fractures opens up new interpretive possibilities in the continuing dialogue of the Jonah story.
{"title":"Overthrowing Nineveh: Revisiting the city with postcolonial imagination","authors":"R. Lindsay","doi":"10.2104/BCT.V12I1.638","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2104/BCT.V12I1.638","url":null,"abstract":"This article brings Kwok Pui-Lan’s postcolonial imagination to the blurred boundaries of the Book of Jonah. Identifying Nineveh as a marginalised character, we read with Nineveh, to see that the characteristics of the text do not align neatly with many of the assumptions brought to bear on Nineveh’s identity. Fixed identity is problematized, as are the dichotomies between centre and periphery, good and evil. Seeking the gaps and fractures opens up new interpretive possibilities in the continuing dialogue of the Jonah story.","PeriodicalId":53382,"journal":{"name":"The Bible and Critical Theory","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67577538","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Word for word, Jonah has plummeted into the whitewash of more methodological waves than has any of the other prophets (biblical or otherwise). Waves of socalled traditional, mainline, experimental and minoritized approaches have over the years encircled Jonah. And each time, Jonah has surfaced unto a wavering “afterlife” (to borrow Yvonne Sherwood’s image). In this issue of Bible and Critical Theory Jonah is again tossed, into another sea of readings. Splash!
{"title":"Tossing Jonah again: Sea of Readings","authors":"Jione Havea","doi":"10.2104/BCT.V12I1.633","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2104/BCT.V12I1.633","url":null,"abstract":"Word for word, Jonah has plummeted into the whitewash of more methodological waves than has any of the other prophets (biblical or otherwise). Waves of socalled traditional, mainline, experimental and minoritized approaches have over the years encircled Jonah. And each time, Jonah has surfaced unto a wavering “afterlife” (to borrow Yvonne Sherwood’s image). In this issue of Bible and Critical Theory Jonah is again tossed, into another sea of readings. Splash!","PeriodicalId":53382,"journal":{"name":"The Bible and Critical Theory","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67577449","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The Book of Jonah is replete with narrative gaps and textual silences, silences which invite the audience to read into the indeterminacy of meaning. Too often, however, the book is interpreted as an object lesson for its intended audience, a tale designed to show the true meaning of God’s mercy and justice, warning against false nationalism or against the perils of disobeying God. Such readings read against Jonah and Jonah’s community, functioning to both silence and, we suggest, wound an already wounded community. Against the dominant trend, this paper draws on trauma theory to argue that the silences in the book can be read anew. The silences enact and speak into the traumatic memories of a community whose identity was shaped by the experiences of the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and the exile, and who continued to live under the oppression of the Persian Empire.
{"title":"“Whispered in the Sound of Silence”: Traumatising the Book of Jonah","authors":"Elizabeth Boase, S. Agnew","doi":"10.2104/BCT.V12I1.634","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2104/BCT.V12I1.634","url":null,"abstract":"The Book of Jonah is replete with narrative gaps and textual silences, silences which invite the audience to read into the indeterminacy of meaning. Too often, however, the book is interpreted as an object lesson for its intended audience, a tale designed to show the true meaning of God’s mercy and justice, warning against false nationalism or against the perils of disobeying God. Such readings read against Jonah and Jonah’s community, functioning to both silence and, we suggest, wound an already wounded community. Against the dominant trend, this paper draws on trauma theory to argue that the silences in the book can be read anew. The silences enact and speak into the traumatic memories of a community whose identity was shaped by the experiences of the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and the exile, and who continued to live under the oppression of the Persian Empire.","PeriodicalId":53382,"journal":{"name":"The Bible and Critical Theory","volume":"12 1","pages":"4-22"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67577458","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The plot of the book of Jonah combines the motifs of a hero swallowed by a sea-monster with a hero rescued by a fish. The hero has to cross and survive the sea (as sphere of danger and death). In this article it is argued that the Book of Jonah belongs to a certain type of adventure stories, in which the hero not only survives his adventures but also experiences an intensive encounter with God.
{"title":"Jonah, Robinsons and Unlimited Gods: Re-reading Jonah as a Sea Adventure Story","authors":"Andreas Kunz-Lübcke","doi":"10.2104/bct.v12i1.639","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2104/bct.v12i1.639","url":null,"abstract":"The plot of the book of Jonah combines the motifs of a hero swallowed by a sea-monster with a hero rescued by a fish. The hero has to cross and survive the sea (as sphere of danger and death). In this article it is argued that the Book of Jonah belongs to a certain type of adventure stories, in which the hero not only survives his adventures but also experiences an intensive encounter with God.","PeriodicalId":53382,"journal":{"name":"The Bible and Critical Theory","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67577553","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Australian poet Peter Porter collaborated with artist Arthur Boyd to produce their collection Jonah (1973) based on the biblical book. Porter writes of the style of the sequence of poems as “complex anachronism,” bringing together biblical resonances with contemporary social, ecological, and political themes. The contemporary context of anthropogenic climate change invites complex questions concerning relations between humans, other species, climate, and the divine. There are no easy correspondences between the biblical Jonah narrative and the contemporary challenges of climate change. But my reading of Jonah 2:1-11 in conversation with Porter’s poetic retelling of Jonah’s sojourn in the whale and Shakespeare’s Caliban, is suggestive for reimagining our own complex hybrid agencies and their implications for divine-human relationships as humans face the contemporary tempests of, and accompanying, anthropogenic climate change.
{"title":"Complex Anachronism: Peter Porter's Jonah, Otherkind, Ancient and Contemporary Tempests, and the Divine","authors":"A. Elvey","doi":"10.2104/BCT.V12I1.640","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2104/BCT.V12I1.640","url":null,"abstract":"Australian poet Peter Porter collaborated with artist Arthur Boyd to produce their collection Jonah (1973) based on the biblical book. Porter writes of the style of the sequence of poems as “complex anachronism,” bringing together biblical resonances with contemporary social, ecological, and political themes. The contemporary context of anthropogenic climate change invites complex questions concerning relations between humans, other species, climate, and the divine. There are no easy correspondences between the biblical Jonah narrative and the contemporary challenges of climate change. But my reading of Jonah 2:1-11 in conversation with Porter’s poetic retelling of Jonah’s sojourn in the whale and Shakespeare’s Caliban, is suggestive for reimagining our own complex hybrid agencies and their implications for divine-human relationships as humans face the contemporary tempests of, and accompanying, anthropogenic climate change.","PeriodicalId":53382,"journal":{"name":"The Bible and Critical Theory","volume":"12 1","pages":"79-93"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67577587","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article offers a reading of the Jonah narrative using the spatial nomenclature of Edward Soja as an interpretive lens. Particular attention is given to the use of directional markers, in particular, the repeated uses of “up” and “down” with Jonah as subject. These terms carry greater significance than their simplest meanings indicate and create a way of understanding the text which goes beyond naive ideas about the fish and judgement on Nineveh.
{"title":"Getting Up and Going Down Towards a Spatial Poetics of Jonah","authors":"Anthony L. Rees","doi":"10.2104/BCT.V12I1.637","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2104/BCT.V12I1.637","url":null,"abstract":"This article offers a reading of the Jonah narrative using the spatial nomenclature of Edward Soja as an interpretive lens. Particular attention is given to the use of directional markers, in particular, the repeated uses of “up” and “down” with Jonah as subject. These terms carry greater significance than their simplest meanings indicate and create a way of understanding the text which goes beyond naive ideas about the fish and judgement on Nineveh.","PeriodicalId":53382,"journal":{"name":"The Bible and Critical Theory","volume":"12 1","pages":"40-48"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67577508","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
According to the late Radical Feminist thinker Andrea Dworkin, in her notorious book Intercourse (1987), women’s second-class status is attributable to the socially constructed definition of our bodies as lacking in physical integrity during intercourse. As a strictly materialist analysis of intercourse, of intercourse as an institutional practice distinct from intercourse as an unmediated individual experience, Dworkin’s focus is on those discourses (literary, philosophical, religious, legal) that have effectively constructed the political meaning of intercourse. Her analysis concerns the broader and complicated contextual relations of power within which the act takes place. It is this socially constructed determination of intercourse as “a means or the means of physiologically making a woman inferior” that underwrites all violence against women, indeed what naturalizes it, according to Dworkin. In this essay, I shall explore Dworkin’s discussions concerning the role of Genesis 2:4b-4:1 and the sodomy laws in Leviticus in the institutionalization of intercourse.
{"title":"The institution of intercourse: Andrea Dworkin on the Biblical foundations of violence against women","authors":"Julie Kelso","doi":"10.2104/BCT.V12I2.661","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2104/BCT.V12I2.661","url":null,"abstract":"According to the late Radical Feminist thinker Andrea Dworkin, in her notorious book Intercourse (1987), women’s second-class status is attributable to the socially constructed definition of our bodies as lacking in physical integrity during intercourse. As a strictly materialist analysis of intercourse, of intercourse as an institutional practice distinct from intercourse as an unmediated individual experience, Dworkin’s focus is on those discourses (literary, philosophical, religious, legal) that have effectively constructed the political meaning of intercourse. Her analysis concerns the broader and complicated contextual relations of power within which the act takes place. It is this socially constructed determination of intercourse as “a means or the means of physiologically making a woman inferior” that underwrites all violence against women, indeed what naturalizes it, according to Dworkin. In this essay, I shall explore Dworkin’s discussions concerning the role of Genesis 2:4b-4:1 and the sodomy laws in Leviticus in the institutionalization of intercourse.","PeriodicalId":53382,"journal":{"name":"The Bible and Critical Theory","volume":"12 1","pages":"24-40"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67577988","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
“Do you ever think about the term ‘Homeland Security’? I mean really think about it?” asks Larry of Brad in Todd Field’s 2006 film Little Children, based on Tom Perrotta’s 2004 novel of the same title (Perrotta co-authored the screenplay of the film). Larry is a former police officer, forced into retirement due to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder after mistakenly shooting a teenager in a shopping mall. He is now spending his time persecuting a convicted sex offender, Ronnie McGorvey, who, having recently been released from prison, has moved in with his mother in the quiet suburb in which Larry and his family live. Larry justifies his attacks on Ronnie by appeal to a supposedly unimpeachable moral claim with an implicit grounding in a transcendent but unspecified authority which justifies an exception to the law: “Protect the children!” This particular appeal to an exception is fuelled by a fear of dangerous sexuality that Larry shares with a group of middle-class mothers who gather each day with their children at a local playground, their own fears managed and assuaged by a combination of their own highly regimented sexual lives, regulated within the framework of the patriarchal, heteronormative nuclear family, their outspoken desire for the sexual predator in their midst to be violently emasculated, and their coy fascination with “the Prom king” Brad—named Todd in the novel—a mesmerisingly handsome young father who visits the playground each day with his son. Underlying their unspoken fears are the fissures and fractures within the emotional and sexual lives of each of these characters: the unhappy marriages of the three young mothers (Mary Ann’s in particular, in the novel) and of Sarah (the fourth and odd-one-out among the mothers at the playground who resists her companions’ vitriol against Ronnie), the gender instabilities of Brad’s marriage to Kathy, who is the family breadwinner, and Brad’s secret fear that Larry is sexually attracted to him. In the background, perhaps more clearly in the film than the novel, are tensions around private and public space driven by tacit assumptions
{"title":"Scripturalization, the Production of the Biblical Israel, and the Gay Antichrist","authors":"J. Harding","doi":"10.2104/BCT.V11I2.628","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2104/BCT.V11I2.628","url":null,"abstract":"“Do you ever think about the term ‘Homeland Security’? I mean really think about it?” asks Larry of Brad in Todd Field’s 2006 film Little Children, based on Tom Perrotta’s 2004 novel of the same title (Perrotta co-authored the screenplay of the film). Larry is a former police officer, forced into retirement due to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder after mistakenly shooting a teenager in a shopping mall. He is now spending his time persecuting a convicted sex offender, Ronnie McGorvey, who, having recently been released from prison, has moved in with his mother in the quiet suburb in which Larry and his family live. Larry justifies his attacks on Ronnie by appeal to a supposedly unimpeachable moral claim with an implicit grounding in a transcendent but unspecified authority which justifies an exception to the law: “Protect the children!” This particular appeal to an exception is fuelled by a fear of dangerous sexuality that Larry shares with a group of middle-class mothers who gather each day with their children at a local playground, their own fears managed and assuaged by a combination of their own highly regimented sexual lives, regulated within the framework of the patriarchal, heteronormative nuclear family, their outspoken desire for the sexual predator in their midst to be violently emasculated, and their coy fascination with “the Prom king” Brad—named Todd in the novel—a mesmerisingly handsome young father who visits the playground each day with his son. Underlying their unspoken fears are the fissures and fractures within the emotional and sexual lives of each of these characters: the unhappy marriages of the three young mothers (Mary Ann’s in particular, in the novel) and of Sarah (the fourth and odd-one-out among the mothers at the playground who resists her companions’ vitriol against Ronnie), the gender instabilities of Brad’s marriage to Kathy, who is the family breadwinner, and Brad’s secret fear that Larry is sexually attracted to him. In the background, perhaps more clearly in the film than the novel, are tensions around private and public space driven by tacit assumptions","PeriodicalId":53382,"journal":{"name":"The Bible and Critical Theory","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67577401","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
There are several reasons why Erin Runions’ new book is important. For what it might be worth, I find myself in strong agreement with her anarchic reflections on authority, power and radical equality. In terms of the field, The Babylon Complex is a model of what biblical studies can be: it is both unashamedly from biblical studies but it also shows how biblical studies can contribute seriously to wider debates in the humanities, cultural studies and politics. In terms of the frame of reference, it is a significant contribution to the growth area of the role of the Bible in contemporary political discourses. Runions convincingly shows how the fluid and often ambiguous image of Babylon in American politics and culture is pervasive and is found in present debates about national sovereignty, hierarchy, wars, free markets, (theo-)democracy, family values, sexuality, biopolitics, and so on. What was particularly striking to me was that her general results about the Bible in American politics and culture are similar to what has been happening in my own area of research: the Bible in English politics and culture (Crossley 2014; 2015). Some emphases are obviously more prominent and polemical in American mainstream political discourses than British or English ones (e.g. explicit fears about sexuality). Nevertheless, the idea that the Bible functions as a higher authority is, as we will see, precisely what has been happening contemporaneously in English politics. One particularly important insight, which almost inevitably cuts across both contexts like a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, is the idea that transcendence functions as sovereign authority in the absence of such authority when the market is prioritized. In particular, Runions shows how this effectively has to be the case “if the United States wants to continue to lay an ideological claim to world power, and if lines of privilege are to be protected against the tyranny of too much equality (i.e. revolt).” Runions adds:
艾琳•罗斯的新书之所以重要，有几个原因。不管它是否值得，我发现自己非常赞同她对权威、权力和激进平等的无政府主义思考。就这个领域而言，《巴比伦情结》是圣经研究的典范:它既毫不羞耻地来自圣经研究，又表明圣经研究如何能对人文、文化研究和政治领域的广泛辩论做出重大贡献。就参考框架而言，它对圣经在当代政治话语中角色的增长领域做出了重大贡献。《联合》令人信服地表明，在美国政治和文化中，流动的、往往模棱两可的巴比伦形象是如何普遍存在的，在当前关于国家主权、等级制度、战争、自由市场、(西)民主、家庭价值观、性、生命政治等问题的辩论中也能找到这种形象。尤其令我吃惊的是，她关于圣经在美国政治和文化中的作用的总体研究结果与我自己的研究领域——英国政治和文化中的圣经——所发生的情况相似(克罗斯利，2014;2015)。在美国主流政治话语中，有些重点显然比英国或英国的主流政治话语更突出，更有争议性(例如，对性的明确恐惧)。然而，《圣经》作为一种更高权威的观点，正如我们将看到的，正是当时英国政治中所发生的。一个特别重要的洞见几乎不可避免地贯穿了《跨大西洋贸易与投资伙伴关系协定》(Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership)等两种背景，即当市场处于优先地位时，在缺乏这种权威的情况下，超越作为主权权威发挥作用。特别是，《联盟》表明，“如果美国想继续对世界强国提出意识形态上的要求，如果特权线要受到保护，免受过度平等的暴政(即反抗)，”这种情况是如何有效地实现的。Runions补充道:
{"title":"We Don't Do Babylon: Erin Runions in English Political Discourse","authors":"J. Crossley","doi":"10.2104/BCT.V11I2.623","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2104/BCT.V11I2.623","url":null,"abstract":"There are several reasons why Erin Runions’ new book is important. For what it might be worth, I find myself in strong agreement with her anarchic reflections on authority, power and radical equality. In terms of the field, The Babylon Complex is a model of what biblical studies can be: it is both unashamedly from biblical studies but it also shows how biblical studies can contribute seriously to wider debates in the humanities, cultural studies and politics. In terms of the frame of reference, it is a significant contribution to the growth area of the role of the Bible in contemporary political discourses. Runions convincingly shows how the fluid and often ambiguous image of Babylon in American politics and culture is pervasive and is found in present debates about national sovereignty, hierarchy, wars, free markets, (theo-)democracy, family values, sexuality, biopolitics, and so on. What was particularly striking to me was that her general results about the Bible in American politics and culture are similar to what has been happening in my own area of research: the Bible in English politics and culture (Crossley 2014; 2015). Some emphases are obviously more prominent and polemical in American mainstream political discourses than British or English ones (e.g. explicit fears about sexuality). Nevertheless, the idea that the Bible functions as a higher authority is, as we will see, precisely what has been happening contemporaneously in English politics. One particularly important insight, which almost inevitably cuts across both contexts like a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, is the idea that transcendence functions as sovereign authority in the absence of such authority when the market is prioritized. In particular, Runions shows how this effectively has to be the case “if the United States wants to continue to lay an ideological claim to world power, and if lines of privilege are to be protected against the tyranny of too much equality (i.e. revolt).” Runions adds:","PeriodicalId":53382,"journal":{"name":"The Bible and Critical Theory","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67577262","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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