Deuteronomy and the Material Transmission of Tradition

Erscheinungsjahr 2024
ISBN: 978-90-04-69180-3
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 198, 308 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 238 mm, Gewicht: 544 g

Reihe: Vetus Testamentum, Supplements

Deuteronomy and the inscribed texts depicted within it are often called “books.” Moreover, its treatment of writing has earned it a prominent place in historical accounts of the religion of ancient Israel and Judah. Neither Deuteronomy nor its text-artifacts, however, are books in any conventional sense of the term. This interdisciplinary study reorients the analysis of Deuteronomic textuality around the materiality, visuality, and rhetoric of ancient rather than modern media. It argues that the Deuteronomic composition adapts the media aesthetics of ancient treaty tablets and monumental inscriptions to a story that is itself transformed into an artifact of the past.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lester, Mark

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Christentum, Christliche Theologie Christentum/Christliche Theologie Allgemein

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements

List of Figures

List of Tables

Abbreviations

Introduction: Deuteronomy and the Book

1 Trajectories in Book History

2 Media Aesthetics and the Reading Experience

3 Deuteronomic Style and Textuality in Critical Biblical Scholarship

4 Deuteronomic Textuality in Early Modern Europe

5 Textuality, Materiality, and the Deuteronomic Composition

1 From Discourse to Artifact

1 Entextualization

2 Internal Self-Reference and Labeling in the Deuteronomic Composition

3 The Deuteronomic Composition as tôrâ

4 The “Words of tôrâ” as Inscribed Text

5 Enacting Repetition of the tôrâ

6 Deuteronomy 28:58 within and beyond the Deuteronomic Composition

2 Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty as Text and Object

1 Writing a ?uppi adê of Succession

2 Conceptual Whole

3 Component Parts

4 Circulating the Will of Esarhaddon

5 Text-Artifact

6 Media Aesthetics of the EST Tablets

7 Conclusion

3 Monuments and Interaction: The Case of Kulamuwa’s Portal Orthostat

1 Monuments as Interactive Media

2 Kulamuwa’s Orthostat at Iron Age Zincirli

3 Pragmatic Features of Kulamuwa’s Orthostat Composition

4 Media Aesthetics of Kulamuwa’s Orthostat

5 Kulamuwa’s Performance of Kingship

6 Portal Orthostat as Interactive Object

7 Pragmatic Paradigms of Zincirli’s Iron Age Inscriptions

8 Conclusion

4 The Material Imaginary of the Deuteronomic Composition

1 The Tablets of the Covenant (Deut 4:13; 5:22; 9:9–10:5)

2 Adornments of Heart and Home (Deut 6:6–9; 11:18–21)

3 An Anti-Royal Inscription (Deut 17:14–20)

4 A Public Monument (Deut 27:1–8)

5 The Scroll (Deut 31:9–13, 24–26)

6 The Transcribed Song (Deut 31:16–22, 30; 32:1–44)

7 Conclusion

5 Textual Landscapes and the Poetics of Proximity

1 Centralization and the Materiality of Ritual (Deut 12:2–7)

2 Text-Artifacts in the Cultic Landscape (Deut 6:9; 11:20; 31:9–13, 24–26)

3 Text-Artifacts in the Judicial Landscape (Deut 17:2–13)

4 The Aura of Authenticity and the Making of Literature

5 Conclusion

Epilogue: The Deuteronomic Composition and the Movement of Culture

Bibliography

Index of Passages

Index of Modern Authors

Topic Index

Über Autor(innen)

Mark Lester, Ph.D. (2020), Yale University, is currently Instructor in the Department of Theology at Loyola University Chicago.