English 806.00

Biblical Narratology

Professor David Richter

Tuesday, 4:15 to 6:15

"Biblical Narratology" is an oxymoron. Contemporary narrative theory was created to operate on the complexities of works like Absalom, Absalom! rather than Samuel, on works that are wholes rather than totals, written by identifiable authors whose lives and attitudes we can discover by research. It was designed to work on established texts, rather than ones where additions, omissions, and transpositions imposed by later redactors may have warped them almost beyond recognition. It presumes that we understand in at least a rough and ready way the system of genres within which a given narrative has its place, and can intuit whether a given narrative is intended to be read as fiction or fact or an intricate combination of the two. None of this is true of biblical narrative. Yet given the massive importance within Western culture of the narratives of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, we are driven to try to unlock their secrets with whatever tools are at our disposal.

This course will introduce Biblical narrative, its special characteristics, and some of the various theoretical methods that have been used to interpret it recently, primarily from the two main camps of contemporary narrative theory, the structuralist/semiotic school associated with Gérard Genette and the rhetorical/formalist school associated with Wayne Booth. But we will also be looking into feminist, queer, Marxist, and yes, postcolonial readings. Our principal narrative texts will be those in Genesis, Exodus, Judges, Ruth, Samuel, Jonah, Mark, and Luke. The literary critics and narrative theorists whose ideas we will be trying out will start with Erich Auerbach, and include, among others, Frank Kermode, Roland Barthes, Mieke Bal, Phyllis Trible, Esther Fuchs, Terry Eagleton, Meir Sternberg, Robert Alter, and Theodore Jennings; the chief whipping boys will be Harold Bloom and Northrop Frye.

Those who need, or would enjoy, a fast-and-dirty account of contemporary narrative theory may want to have a look at Manfred Jahn’s summary at http://www.uni-koeln.de/~ame02/pppn.htm . Professor Jahn, from the University of Cologne, uses the “continental” structuralist/semiotic approach, which will offset the prejudices of your humble servant, in the other rhetorical camp. Some new books in narrative theory will be on the reserve list, and some are being purchased for the library.

The books with the critical readings are even now on reserve, and I’m going to see if Marilyn can do some copying for us.

Which Bible to use. Interesting question. The ideal Bible would have the Hebrew or Greek on one page and the English in a fairly literal translation on a facing page, along with some textual notes about variants in the versions and indications of intertextual relations (Matthew quoting Isaiah, or an episode in Judges replaying a scene in Genesis). Of course, there’s no such thing available. The closest thing is the Oxford Study Bible, which has a few notes and a number of mealymouthed essays, but does not, of course, have the original languages. There are several different manifestations of the OSB, one using the old AV (King James Version), one using the RSV, one using the NRSV, one using the NEB. Some include the apocrypha (i.e., the deuterocanonical texts), some don’t. I resist assigning a translation because that will in the long run make us less conscious that we are reading a translation. You can indeed do this course with a Bible lifted from a hotel room (it will undoubtedly be the Gideon Society’s AV, the translation most of the English and American poets knew), especially with some of the internet tools below. If all this tergiversating is irritating you and you want a suggestion, try the generally available Oxford Study Bible : Revised English Bible With Apocrypha, ed. Jack Suggs, which is available at www bookstores for $20 or less.

Class plan: Each week has critical readings and biblical readings for theory and practice. Students who are doing oral reports will lead discussion on the readings of the week, having perhaps gotten further into the particular writers than the rest of the class. Having looked into the particular critic(s) and their methods of analysis, we will then move to a text they don’t talk about and try out this method on the new text. (That’s in general, there may have to be variants.)

Week I: Introduction to the course.

A few elementary questions.   1.  What is the bible?  2.  Differences between the Hebrew Bible, the Catholic Bible and the Protestant Bible. What texts were canonized, when, and why? 3. Problems of transmission. Where does the “text” of the Bible come from, how did it get to us, and what is likely to have happened to it along the way?  4. Problems of translation.   5. Problems of historical dating and the relationship between the text and the events purportedly narrated. 6. Differences between the Bible and other ancient literatures on account of the cultural uses that have been made of scripture.

Week II: Source Studies and Documentary Criticism. Sources of Genesis and the Synoptic Problem in the New Testament.

Critical Reading: Selections from Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Israel (1879). “The Synoptic Problem” from Donald H. Akenson: Surpassing Wonder: The Invention of the Bible and the Talmuds
Biblical Reading: Genesis, Gospels: Use this hotlink for Genesis Source Files

Week III: Special Characteristics of Biblical Narrative.

Critical readings: Erich Auerbach: "Odysseus's Scar" from Mimesis. Robert Alter, “The Literary Character of the Bible” from The World of Biblical Literature.

Oral Report by Jason Riffaterre.
Biblical Text: Genesis

Week IV: Interpreting Figural Narrative: Hermeneutics and Semiosis

Critical Readings: Chapters 2 and 3 from Frank Kermode, The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative. Oral Report by Helena Ribeiro.

Biblical Text: Mark

Week V: Archetypal Criticism:
Critical Reading: Northrop Frye: The Great Code, chapter 5: “Typology II”;

Michael Fishbane: "The Sacred Center: The Symbolic Structure of the Bible."

Oral Report by Lizzie Harris.
Critical Background: Northrop Frye: "The Archetypes of Literature"
Biblical Text: Bible as a whole.

Week VI: Who Wrote the Bible: Authorial Criticism

Critical Reading: Harold Bloom: The Book of J;

Randal Helms: “Who Wrote Luke/Acts and Why Did She Do It?” from Who Wrote the Gospels
Biblical Text: Genesis, Luke

Week VII: Structuralist Criticism

Critical Readings: Roland Barthes: "The Struggle with the Angel: Textual Analysis of Genesis 32."

Oral Report by Laura Ryan.

Jan Fokkelman: section on The Tower of Babel from Narrative Art in Genesis: Specimens of Stylistic and Structural Analysis.

Oral Report by Carrie Shanafelt.

Recommended: Roland Barthes: “Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative.”

Biblical Reading: Genesis

Week VIII: Structuralist Criticism II:

Critical Readings: Mieke Bal: Death and Dissymmetry: The Politics of Coherence in the Book of Judges;

Oral Report by Jeff Drouin.

Recommended: Mieke Bal: Narratology

Biblical Text: Judges

Week IX: The Bible as Social Text

Critical Reading: Terry Eagleton, “J.L. Austin and the Book of Jonah” in The Book and the Text: The Bible and Literary Theory, ed. Regina Schwartz;

R.S. Sugirtharajah: “Coding and Decoding” Chapter 3 of Postcolonial Criticism and Biblical Interpretation.

Oral Report by Michael Polesny.
Recommended: Norman K. Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of Liberated Israel.
Biblical Text: Jonah, Samuel

Week X: Phenomenological Reader-Oriented Criticism
Critical Reading: Meir Sternberg: The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading, chapters 4, 6, and 8.

Oral Report by Michael Cotto.

Recommended: Wolfgang Iser: "The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach"
Biblical Text: Genesis, 2 Samuel; Jonah

Week XI: Feminist Analysis
Critical Texts: selections from the following: Phyllis Trible: “A Human Comedy” from God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality; Esther Fuchs, Sexual Politics in Biblical Narrative; Mieke Bal: Chapter 3 from Lethal Loves: Feminist Literary Readings of Biblical Love Stories.

Oral Report by Jennie Rosenfeld.
Biblical Text: Ruth

Week XII: Queer Theory and the Bible

Critical Texts: Theodore W. Jennings, Jr., “YHWH as Erastes” from Ken Stone ed., Queer Commentary and the Hebrew Bible.

Oral Report by Louise Geddes.

Stephen Moore, Chapter 1 from God’s Gym: Divine Male Bodies of the Bible.

Oral Report by Claudia Pisano.

Homosexual Panic and the Rabbis—reading from the Talmud.

Biblical Texts: Samuel, Genesis, Gospels

Talmudic Text: Bava Metzia 83B-84B

Week XIII:

Difficulty and Indeterminacy in Biblical Narrative

Critical Texts: David Richter, "Farewell, My Concubine: The Difficult, the Stubborn, and the Outrage of Gibeah"
and “Genre, Repetition, Temporal Ordering” (both on website)

Oral Report by Kathy Ryan.

Week XIV:

The Bible's Interpretive Communities: The World of Midrash
Critical Reading: James Kugel, “The Assembly of Ladies” from In Potiphar’s House, Emmanuel Levinas: "And God Created Woman" from Nine Talmudic Readings; David Richter, "Midrash and Mashal in the Blessing of Esau" (on website).
Biblical and Midrashic Texts: Genesis; Selections from Genesis Rabbah.

Oral Reports by Jake Marmer and Noam Scheindlin.

Week XV:

Summing It Up

Some Highly Useful Weblinks:

The Bible, Literature, & Literary Criticism (http://www.lib.umd.edu/MCK/GUIDES/bible.html#ATLASE)
University of Maryland "gateway" site helpfully leading students to sources of many different kinds dealing with the relationship between the Bible and English/American Literature

The Blue Letter Bible (http://www.blueletterbible.org/index.html)
An amazingly detailed site containing a variety of modules, some very useful for our purposes and some not. One module assists close reading. When you enter a Bible verse (or chapter), it will spit out the King James Version in English along with five or six clickable buttons in the left margin. The most useful is button "C" (for concordance) which will take you to the Hebrew or Greek original, with each word parsed for grammar. You can then check out all the other uses of that word in Biblical contexts--in other words, use the site as an electronic concordance--by clicking on the "Strong Number" of the word. For the Hebrew Bible it will also show the Septuagint version of the verse (though it will not translate the Greek, which is often very different from the Hebrew).

Button "L" will list some public domain Biblical commentaries on the verse, some much better than others. Button "V" will take you to NINE different translations of the verse, eight English versions and the Latin Vulgate. Button "D" will take you to several biblical dictionaries. Button "K" will take you to the "Treasury of Scriptural Knowledge" notes, which connect up one verse with its possible allusions elsewhere. There are also other modules taking you to Bible illustrations, and further afield, including modules that will save your soul, bring you a new life in Jesus, and other matters that are not of primary academic interest.

Dead Sea Scrolls (http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/deadsea.scrolls.exhibit/intro.html)
The Library of Congress exhibit on the Dead Sea Scrolls. A quick and dirty introduction to the Qumran texts and community.

iTanakh (http://www.itanakh.org/)
A rich and complex website hosted by R. Christopher Heard of Pepperdine University functioning as a "gateway" site to information about the Hebrew Bible (called "Tanakh" in Hebrew). Links to information on history, archeology, languages, and much else, including many full-text versions of scholarly articles.

New Testament Gateway (http://www.ntgateway.com/)
Similar to iTanakh for the Greek New Testament

Biblical Typology in Victorian Literature (http://www.victorianweb.org/religion/type/typologyov.html)
This is part of George Landow's Victorian Web, and it focuses on the way Biblical types featured in Victorian poetry and fiction. Interesting for examples of how the Bible gets into English Literature and what happens to it once it gets there.

Christus Rex (http://www.christusrex.org/)
A well-maintained unofficial site, hosted by Michael Olteanu, especially useful for viewing religious imagery such as that contained in the Vatican museums, the Sistine Chapel, and so forth. At the moment Olteanu is primarily interested in displaying papal texts attacking the US war with and occupation of Iraq, but the religious imagery segment of the site continues as before.

The Development of the Canon of the New Testament (http://www.ntcanon.org/)
Scholarly site, particularly useful for understanding New Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigrepha (i.e., works rejected by the Fathers of the Church during the canonization of the New Testament).

Versions of the New Testament (http://www.skypoint.com/~waltzmn/Versions.html#Introduction)
Just as the Hebrew Bible has alternative early versions derived from translations into other languages (Aramaic, Greek, Syriac, etc.), the New Testament has its own set of alternate versions shedding light on the meaning of the New Testament text. This very scholarly site explains the history and contents of these alternate versions.

Biblical Archaeology Review (http://www.bib-arch.org/bar2.html)
The site of the journal BAR, which features popular articles on developments in middle-eastern archeology

The Bible and Interpretation (http://www.bibleinterp.com/)
Journal website with popular/scholarly features particularly useful on archaeology.

Hebrew University's Online Treasury of Talmudic Manuscripts (http://jnul.huji.ac.il/dl/talmud/indexeng.htm)

A site for scholars, which includes a 15th-century manuscript from the Russian State Library, and others from
the Vatican and the British Libraries with digitized images from 20 different versions of the Mishna and the Gemara.