From the Scalpel to the Loom: Reclaiming the Art of Biblical Composition

Session Submission Type: Seminar

Abstract

The suspicion that the “higher criticism” of the Pentateuch was really a Christian “higher antisemitism” was not just scholars’ recognition of literary difference in the Torah but how it appeared to work like a scalpel. Indeed, Jean Astruc, the first to identify sources stitched together in the Torah, was literally a surgeon. The result was an aesthetic *effect of disassembly* on scholarly and popular audiences in which source critics dissect a document into incompatible pieces by working along its seams.

An influential response was the concept of “inner-biblical exegesis,” the idea that, more than something stitched from incompatible parts, the Hebrew Bible is the result of commentary, not surgery. It is a self-aware, dialogic document whose different layers represent theologically profound responses to the legacy of their predecessors. However, 21st-century scholarship has raised issues with this image, including anachronism (Zahn 2016)--the assumption that a stable Bible existed centuries before its first documented appearance, and the assumption of essential continuity in method between the Iron Age cultures represented in early biblical texts and the Jewish cultures of late antiquity.

But as much as the Hebrew Bible has been seen as a SOURCE of world literature, we may also have much to learn from seeing it as an EXAMPLE of it. For the Torah and Deuteronomistic history may be the clearest instances of a cross-culturally pervasive image for literary creativity: the TEXTILE mode of production. Rather than the medical metaphor of a scalpel, cultures from Babylon to Europe used the image of weaving, intertwining, or knotting words together to form a text. Helle (2019) has argued for this as a productive “middle ground” between pure ex nihilo originality and pure convention, a text as entirely a function of its history and environment.

Rather than a problem to be solved, the emphatically woven qualities of ancient Hebrew literature may offer a uniquely illuminating view into ancient ideals and practices of literary production. This seminar seeks to explore the heuristic value of seeing its composition through textile and other global compositional metaphors, highlighting its distinctive qualities as world literature.

Sanders will discuss how the model of authorship as textile labor is ubiquitous in literary history, from Latin TEXTUS, “woven thing,” to Greek RHAPSŌDOS, “stitcher of songs,” to the Babylonian medical collection said to be made by “fastening” its sources “into a new weave,” and show how the Pentateuch may be the richest ancient example of this phenomenon.

Driver will discuss the strengths and limitations of surgical metaphors for biblical criticism, among other paradigmatic metaphors, and then consider ways a textile model could serve as a heuristic for reading pentateuchal literature aesthetically in light of, rather than in contradiction to, signs of its compositional history.

Shectman will provide a case study in the aesthetics and gender politics of biblical composition: the existence of a distinct “promise to the mothers” in contrast to the “promise to the fathers” in ancient Hebrew literature, visible from a compositional reading of Genesis, and how the canonical text’s creators wove these threads together, tending to erase the maternal promise in its new larger picture.

Tobolowsky will discuss the idea of aspects of Israelite historical memory and identity in the Hebrew Bible as threads waiting to be woven into tapestry after tapestry. Focusing on visions of the twelve tribes of Israel - and on how segmented genealogical traditions generally provide loose threads to hold on to for interested parties - he will discuss how different authors wove and rewove what they received into something new.

Mroczek will ask about the consequences of a new compositional model for the pre-biblical literary imagination: did the Torah’s weavers consider its threads inspired or divine?

White will contrast the early Hebrew textile model with two later Jewish theories of the nature of Genesis, showing how the early Aramaic retelling of Genesis and the Midrashic collection of Genesis Rabbah at once assume the text’s literary fragmentation and metaphysical unity.

Sub Unit

• Bible and the History of Biblical Interpretation

Discussants

• Sarah Shectman, The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization

• Seth Larkin Sanders, Dalhousie University

• Eva Mroczek, Dalhousie University

• Daniel Driver, Atlantic School of Theology

• Andrew Tobolowsky, College of William and Mary

Zoom Host

• Zoom Host 03