The World of Biblical Literature. By Robert Alter. London, SPCK, 1992. Pp. xii + 225. £12.99 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Novum Testamentum, 2012
Since Eldon Jay Epp offered his "requiem" for the discipline of New Testament Textual Criticism (at least in America) at the San Francisco Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting in 1977, this field of study has experienced something of a resurrection. New manuscript discoveries have combined with fresh approaches such as Bart Ehrman's study of "Orthodox Corruption" to make the discipline both exciting and inviting. Advances in computer-assisted research have aided in developing new methods in studying the relationships of different manuscripts and reassessing text-types. Chief among these fruits in manuscript study has been the development of the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM) developed by Gerd Mink of the Institut für Neutstamentliche Textforschung at Münster University. The essays in this volume represent the papers delivered at a conference in Münster in August of 2008 to assess the state of the discipline today, with special attention to the CBGM. The longest essay in the book by Gerd Mink is entitled "Contamination, Coherence and Coincidence in Textual Transmission: The Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM) as a Complement and Corrective to Existing Approaches" (pp. 141-216). The essays in this volume engage some of the major issues in contemporary New Testament textual research. The first two contributors treat the questions surrounding the earliest attainable text of the New Testament. D.C. Parker's essay asserts the impossibility of the attempt to recover a single original text, and hence the editor or critic must be content with "the text from which the readings in the extant manuscripts are genealogically descended" (p. 21). This is Parker's definition of the "initial text," and it is the text which the editors of the Editio Critica Maior (ECM) seek to establish as the base text. On the other hand, writes Holger Strutwolf, "The quest for the original text does not as such involve contradictions and logical impossibilities" (p. 41). Nevertheless, he recognizes that this goal is much more problematic due to what Epp dubs the "multivalence of the term 'original text.' " The shorter essays in this volume address a number of issues that have a direct bearing on the text-critical task. David Trobisch writes of "The Need to Discern Distinctive Editions of the New Testament in the Manuscript Tradition." Ulrich Schmid raises issues of "scribal performance," and sharpens the distinction between scribal and nonscribal activities. Michael W. Holmes explores the problems of working with an "open" tradition: one in which the scribes have not simply copied from one exemplar, but are
Introduction to the Special Issue “Current Trends in New Testament Study”
Religions, 2019
This special issue of Religions focuses on seven of the most important formal methods used to interpret the New Testament today. Several of the articles also touch on Old Testament/Hebrew Bible interpretation. In line with the multiplicity of methods for interpretation of texts in the humanities in general, biblical study has never before seen so many different methods. This situation poses both opportunities and challenges for scholars and students alike. This issue contains contributions by a mix of established scholars and younger scholars who have recently demonstrated their expertise in a certain method. Some articles will be easily accessible only to biblical scholars, but most will be accessible and instructive for beginning-and intermediate-level students of the Bible. I hope that the free-access essays offered here will become required reading in many universities and seminaries. The readership statistics displayed with each article, with information about how they have been read since their online publication here, show that they already have a wide appeal. I want to thank these authors for their contribution to this issue and for working so well with me and indirectly with the anonymous peer reviewers. Here, adapted from their abstracts, are brief introductions to their articles. Michele A. Connolly's article, "Antipodean and Biblical Encounter: Postcolonial Vernacular Hermeneutics in Novel Form," gives a post-secular exploration of what the Bible offers to modern-day Australia. She maintains that Australian culture, despite its secularity, has a capacity for spiritual awareness in ways that resonate with the Bible. Connolly employs R. S. Sugirtharajah's concept of "vernacular hermeneutics" to show that a contemporary Australian novel, The Shepherd's Hut by Tim Winton, expresses an Australian spirituality saturated with the images and values of the New Testament, but in a non-religious literary form that needs interpretation for a secular audience. Connolly's creative and fascinating article speaks not only to the Australian context but can serve as a model for the intersection of postcolonial biblical criticism and contemporary literature from many parts of the post-Christian world. "A Deep-Language Mathematical Analysis of Gospels, Acts and Revelation," by Emilio Matricciani and Liberato De Caro, offers a different kind of statistical analysis of the New Testament than scholars may be familiar with. It uses mathematical methods developed for studying what the authors call deep-language parameters of literary texts, for example, the number of words per sentence, the number of characters per word, the number of words between interpunctions (punctuation within sentences), and the number of interpunctions per sentence. Matricciani and De Caro consider, in concert with generally-accepted conclusions of New Testament scholarship, the full texts of the canonical Gospels, Acts and Revelation, then the Gospel passages attributable to the triple tradition (Matthew, Mark and Luke), to the double tradition (Matthew and Luke), to the single tradition in Matthew and Luke, and to the Q source. The results confirm and reinforce some common conclusions about the Gospels, Acts, Revelation, and Q source, but the authors show that they cast some new light on the capacity of the short-term memory of the readers/listeners of these texts. The authors posit that these New Testament writings fit very well in the larger Greek literature of the time. For readers unaccustomed to using