Introduction: A Prologue to Wandering

Lee, Bernon

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-55095-4_1

Bernon Lee⁴

Part of the book series: Postcolonialism and Religions ((PCR))

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Abstract

In the introduction to the volume, Lee casts a foundation for the work through a brief exposé of Wolfgang Iser’s notion of a ‘wandering viewpoint,’ an aspect of reading that draws on a repertoire of norms and strategies in combining segments of text. The imputed ‘meaning’ to a ‘combination,’ Lee postulates, is always in tension with a range of options. So conceived, interpretation is an exercise of volition. It is responsive to location and always tentative, ever vulnerable to alternative suggestions. This forms the premise for the intertextual exploration that undergirds the proposed work. A brief layout of the volume and its location within studies of biblical law and ritual is included in this chapter.

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Notes

1.
Cheryl B. Anderson, Ancient Laws and Contemporary Controversies: The Need for Inclusive Biblical Interpretation (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 3–4.
2.
Ibid., 4–5.
3.
Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 107–34. The specifics of Iser’s theory of reading most relevant to my thesis shall be matter for attention later in this chapter.
4.
In reference is my slightly revised dissertation Between Law and Narrative: The Method and Function of Abstraction (Gorgias Biblical Studies 51; Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2010).
5.
Daniel Boyarin, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990), 24. The last two statements in quotes are from Boyarin’s citation of an essay by Stefan Morawski on the use of quotation.
6.
Among others, see Jacob Milgrom, Numbers (New York: Jewish Publication Society, 1990), 355. The correspondence was noted, already, in rabbinic commentary (see Sifre[Numbers] to Num 6:6–8, and Numbers Rabbah 10:11).
7.
Mary Douglas, Leviticus as Literature (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 13–40.
8.
Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 122.
9.
Ibid., 159.
10.
See, for example, Angela R. Roskop, The Wilderness Itineraries: Genre, Geography, and the Growth of Torah (History, Archaeology, and Culture of the Levant 3; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2011), 14–49; William K. Gilders, Blood Ritual in the Hebrew Bible: Meaning and Power (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 10–11.
11.
Iser, The Act of Reading, 21–22; idem., ‘The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach,’ in Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism (ed., Jane P. Tompkins; Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), 50–51.
12.
Iser, The Act of Reading, 21.
13.
Ibid., 22. My emphasis.
14.
Wolfgang Iser, The Range of Interpretation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 5–7.
15.
Ibid., 6.
16.
Ibid., 6.
17.
Ibid., 6–7, 20–21, 31–32.
18.
Iser, The Act of Reading, 108–18.
19.
Iser, ‘The Reading Process,’ 60.
20.
Ibid., 60.
21.
Iser, The Act of Reading, 109.
22.
Ibid., 111.
23.
Ibid., 115–16.
24.
Ibid., 149.
25.
Ibid., 118; Iser, ‘The Reading Process,’ 58–60.
26.
Iser, The Act of Reading, 119. My emphasis.
27.
Ibid., 121.
28.
Ibid., 143. Emphasis is mine.
29.
Iser, ‘The Reading Process,’ 59.
30.
Ibid., 57.
31.
Iser, The Act of Reading, 126. Iser’s analysis of Friedrich Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics makes the same point (The Range of Interpretation, 48–49).
32.
Iser, The Act of Reading, 127–28.
33.
Ibid., 182.
34.
Ibid., 186.
35.
Ibid., 184, 195–96.
36.
Ibid., 167–69. Where ‘blanks’ and ‘gaps’ are distinct categories here, Iser combines both under the latter term with general reference to all indeterminacies of the lexical order: see, for example, ‘The Reading Process,’ 54–57; The Range of Interpretation, 24.
37.
Iser, ‘The Reading Process,’ 55.
38.
Frank Kermode, The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1979), 7.
39.
Ibid., 9, 51–52.
40.
Iser, The Act of Reading, 69.
41.
Iser, ‘The Reading Process,’ 62–63.
42.
Roland Barthes, S/Z: An Essay (trans. Richard Miller; New York: Hill and Wang, 1974), 10.
43.
Roland Barthes, The Rustle of Language (trans. Richard Howard; New York: Hill and Wang, 1986), 54.
44.
Ibid., 54. Emphasis in original.
45.
Ibid., 63.
46.
Iser, The Act of Reading, 186–89.
47.
Ibid., 189.
48.
Ibid., 198.
49.
Ibid., 184, 197–98.
50.
Ibid., 201.
51.
Ibid., 134, 189.
52.
Iser, The Range of Interpretation, 47–48.
53.
Iser, The Act of Reading, 189.
54.
Iser, ‘The Reading Process,’ 63.
55.
Bernard M. Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Jeffrey Stackert, Rewriting the Torah: Literary Revision in Deuteronomy and the Holiness Legislation (Forschungen zum Alten Testament 52; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007).
56.
Reinhard Achenbach, ‘The Pentateuch, the Prophets, and the Torah in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries B.C.E.,’ in Judah and the Judeans in the Fourth Century B.C.E. (ed. Oded Lipschits, Gary N. Knoppers and Rainer Albertz; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007), 257, 260–61.
57.
Israel Knohl, The Sanctuary of Silence: The Priestly Torah and the Holiness School (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 180–86, 204–212.
58.
Bernard M. Levinson, ‘The Right Chorale: From the Poetics to the Hermeneutics of the Hebrew Bible,’ in ‘Not in Heaven’: Coherence and Complexity in Biblical Narrative (ed. Jason P. Rosenblatt and Joseph C. Sitterson, Jr.; Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991), 132.
59.
Jewish Antiquities, 1–5.

References

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Bethel University, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA
Bernon Lee

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Lee, B. (2017). Introduction: A Prologue to Wandering . In: Marginal(ized) Prospects through Biblical Ritual and Law. Postcolonialism and Religions. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55095-4_1

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55095-4_1
Published: 30 May 2017
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-55094-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-55095-4
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