Reading the Bible Intertextually

The present collection of essays gathers together presentations delivered on the occasion of the interdisciplinary and international conference “Die Bibel im Dialog der Schriften.” Under the direction of Stefan Alkier, in cooperation with Richard B. Hays, the conference took place 4-6 November 2004 within the department of Protestant Theology at Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universitat, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, as a research seminar of the university’s international doctoral program, Religion im Dialog, supported by the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation). This program has been operated since 2001 with great success by the departments of Protestant Theology and Catholic Theology in cooperation with other departments and institutes of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universitat. The work of the Religion im Dialog program now ranks among the chief areas of research of the entire university and thus contributes considerably not only to the profile of both of Frankfurt’s theological faculties but also to the profile of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universitat as a whole. We thank all our colleagues within the program, whose cooperation made the execution and also the financing of the conference possible.

 

As open as our seminar’s theme of “The Bible in Dialogue” may sound, what we have in view with the formulation of this theme is rather concrete. The Bible is a book of books that consists not only of two parts but also of a number of writings that point to limitless connections among each other within the framework of the present boundaries of the canon as well as to other Christian and non-Christian writings outside the canon. With the formulation of the theme of the seminar, which is indebted to Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of dialogicality, we take our leave from biblical-theological conceptions that would attempt to reconstruct a center of meaning as a dogmatic doctrinal unity formulated and closed for all time. On the contrary, we understand the Bible as a book opened up by attention to the phenomenon of dialogicality it necessitates the dialogue of different, opposing, and also partially irreconcilable standpoints and perspectives. The Bible provides no center of meaning to which the differences of its writings could be removed. Rather, it opens up vast spaces between texts that generate a plurality of effects of meaning when read together. This plurality need not leave the impression that the biblical writings are nothing more than discrete, unconnected parts, however, for a narrative coherence unites them, the context of a story that encompasses the creative, elective, liberating, justifying, loving, and redeeming action of God from the world’s beginning to its end. The Christian reader encounters in these stories of the Old and New Testaments the saving truth of the God of Israel.

 

Richard B. Hays, Stefan Alkier, Leroy A. Huizenga, Editors. – Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2009. – 358 p.

ISBN 978-1-60258-180-7

 

Foreword to the German Edition. Stefan Alkier and Richard B. Hays

Foreword to the English Edition. Richard B. Hays

Part I. Introduction

Part II. Intertextual Interpretation of Biblical Texts

Part III. Intertextual Interpretation outside the Boundaries of the Canon

Part IV. Semiotics, Intertextuality, and New Testament Studies

Notes

Scripture Index

Index of Subjects and Authors