Semeia 18: Genesis 2 and 3, Kaleidoscopic Structural Readings
Overview
Semeia is an experimental journal devoted to the exploration of new and emergent areas and methods of biblical criticism. Studies employing the methods, models, and findings of linguistics, folklore studies, contemporary literary criticism, structuralism, social anthropology, and other such disciplines and approaches, are invited. Although experimental in both form and content, Semeia proposes to publish work that reflects a well defined methodology that is appropriate to the material being interpreted.
- Key perspectives on biblical criticism
- Includes bibliographies and index
Top Highlights
“Yet in and of themselves structural elements are meaningless not because of a ‘lack of meaning’ but rather because of a ‘surplus of meaning’: they have so many potential denotations and connotations that they would be hopelessly ambiguous without the selecting process performed by the network of relations.” (Page 6)
“Certain methods aim at studying various features of the text as part of the communication process, while others aim at studying specific textual systems of signification. The former methods promise more striking exegetical results (dealing as they are with the meaning-effect as a whole) but are methodologically weaker (the theories upon which they are based cannot be really tested). By contrast the latter methods aim at more modest results (the characteristics of a few aspects of the meaning-effect) but have a stronger methodological base (the models upon which they are based can be verified, even though further verifications and refinements are always necessary).” (Pages 11–12)
“‘Inside,’ woman does not exist; ‘outside,’ she exists in pain (childbirth) and inferiority to man (based on sexual desire) (3:16). In the configuration of ‘outside,’ her very existence implies her (sexually related) pain and subjugation. The man also knows pain, where ‘inside’ he knew ease; the transition came through his eating the fruit. The woman cannot parallel this, for she never was ‘inside,’ unless she can be intruded there without essential alteration of the semantics of ‘inside’! Even this will not suffice to explain her inferiority—she must also have done there something worse than the man’s eating of the fruit!” (Pages 45–46)
- Thomas E. Boomershine
- Glendon E. Bryce
- John Dominic Crossan
- Robert C. Culley
- Robert Detweiler
- Arno Hutchinson Jr.
- David Jobling
- Brian Watson Kovacs
- Judson F. Parker
- Daniel Patte
- Gary Philips
- Clarence H. Snelling
- Hugh C. White
- James G. Williams
- Title: Semeia 18: Genesis 2 and 3, Kaleidoscopic Structural Readings
- Editor: Daniel Patte
- Publisher: Society of Biblical Literature
- Publication Date: 1980
- Pages: 164
