Back when I was in graduate school at Trinity Western University, I wrote my master’s thesis on the book of Jonah. There was one chapter of it, though, that I ended up having to cut out of my thesis. It was a chapter in which I discussed “Jonah-themes” in modern literature and movies. My undergraduate degree was in English literature, so seeing how any given literary work might relate to another has always fascinated me. Needless to say, when it comes to the Bible, not only do I love seeing how, for example, the book of Revelation picks up on various themes and images from Genesis, or how themes of Creation and Exodus permeates the entire New Testament, I also love seeing how we can see biblical themes in modern literature and film.
That being said, over the next few posts, I will share what I wrote in that discarded chapter to my Old Testament master’s thesis on Jonah. Enjoy.
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Intertextuality plays a vital role when it comes to understanding and interpreting any given biblical text. One cannot even begin to fully appreciate the many layers of meaning in a book like Jonah, for example, unless one first understands the various other biblical texts to which Jonah alludes and refers. Jonah, as well as every book of the Hebrew Bible, uses common themes and images found elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, and crafts them into his own story in order to speak to his current cultural situation. The gospel writers used Jonah in this way within their respective works. What we find in the New Testament is that the gospel writers, like the Old Testament writers before them, re-interpreted and re-fashioned older works and themes into their own gospels in order to illuminate and explain the revelation of Jesus.
For most biblical scholarship, though, it is at this point where things usually end. Yet one of the underlying principles in the biblical use of intertextuality is neglected. The author of Jonah used older biblical material, and refashioned it in light of the circumstances of the returning exiles, to speak to the concerns of post-exilic Israel. In a similar way, the gospel writers used older Old Testament material, and refashioned it in light of the revelation of Jesus Christ, to speak to the concerns of first-century world they lived in. In both cases, previous biblical material was re-fashioned to speak to present issues and concerns. So how do today’s scholars and clergymen use the Bible to speak to the post-modern culture in which we live?
Unfortunately, the knock on much of historical-critical biblical scholarship today is that it often ends up being completely irrelevant and useless to the Church as a whole. At the same time, many biblical scholars who focus on the literary quality of the biblical text fall into a similar trap. Just as historical biblical scholars can get caught up in historical minutiae that add nothing to an understanding of the biblical text itself, literary biblical scholars can get caught up in literary dissection, and the resulting literary criticism can end up reading much like Dr. Pritchard’s essay on poetry in the movie Dead Poets Society. Mr. Keating responded by having his students rip out the essay from their books, and said, “We’re not laying pipe! We’re reading poetry!” The poet Rainer Maria Rilke also shared his disdain for much of what passes for criticism:
“Let me ask you right here to read as little as possible of aesthetic critiques. They are either prejudiced views that have become petrified and senseless in their hardened lifeless state, or they are clever word games. Their views gain approval today but not tomorrow. Works of art can be described as having an essence of eternal solitude and an understanding that is attainable least of all by critique. Only love can grasp and hold them and can judge them fairly.”
[Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, 25]
The point of all this is that I believe the major weakness in biblical scholarship today is that, whether under the title of “historical” or “literary” biblical scholarship, both tend to devolve into a solely scientific analysis of an artistic work. Both tend to treat the Bible as something to be dissected and analyzed, rather than as a revelation and window to the human experience of which we all are a part. The Christian biblical scholar must not only ask the question “What did the text originally say?” but also the question, “What does the text say to us today?” The Bible itself is a witness to the fact that although facts and theories and doctrines can be stated clearly in essays and sermons, the living revelation of God comes in the form of art and literature, for the Bible is literature.
Consequently, if Christian biblical scholars wish to build a bridge between academic biblical scholarship and today’s world, they should incorporate into their work consideration of modern culture, be it world events, literature, or cinema. Some of the most “biblical” movies in recent years have been produced by non-Christians who understand something that most Christians fail to recognize: namely that truth is best conveyed in art and literature, and not in science and doctrines.
In my next few posts, I will look at how biblical intertextuality can be seen in our modern culture. Specifically, I will look at the intertextual links that four artistic works have with the book of Jonah: the novel Moby Dick, and the movies Pinnochio, The Matrix, and A.I. Essentially, I will ask the question, “What impact does the story of Jonah have on our modern society? How is it understood? Is the modern understanding of Jonah, as seen in our literature and cinema, faithful to the original message?”
