(DOWNLOAD) "Allusion, Artifice, And Exile in the Hymn of Tobit." by Journal of Biblical Literature ~ Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Allusion, Artifice, And Exile in the Hymn of Tobit.
- Author : Journal of Biblical Literature
- Release Date : January 22, 1996
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 199 KB
Description
One of the few characteristics shared by virtually every composition within the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha is a pronounced tendency to emulate, evoke, or echo classical biblical literature. This (re)use of biblical form and content--a practice manifest in a broad spectrum of practices ranging from the echoing of individual biblical verses to the emulation of entire biblical genres-has not gone unnoticed by students of the Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha, especially those interested in the history and character of early biblical interpretation. (1) It is only quite recently, however, that students of early postbiblical literature have begun to think systematically about how this literature uses biblical elements for aesthetic or rhetorical purposes, posing many questions that deserve further consideration: How are biblical allusions, citations, and motifs used in compositions from the Second Temple period? Do these compositions exhibit "strategies" in their use of biblical elements? How do these strategies serve the larger literary aims of the compositions that have employed them? And how do we, as readers in the late twentieth century, recover these strategies? (2) The purpose of this study is to shed some light on these questions by examining how a single Second-Temple-period composition, the book of Tobit, uses biblical allusion. (3) My argument in what follows is that the selection of the biblical texts alluded to in Tobit, the relation of each allusion to other allusions within the narrative, and the contribution of these allusions to the overall meaning of the narrative are governed by a strategy of allusion specific to Tobit. To argue this point I will concentrate on a single biblical allusion woven into the hymn performed by Tobit in chap. 13, first demonstrating that this hymn and its narrative introduction allude to the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32, and then showing that the meaning of this allusion has been shaped by a larger allusive strategy that governs Tobit as a whole. By focusing on this specific case, I will illustrate the methodological principle that to understand fully the meaning of any particular biblical allusion within a Second-Temple-period composition, one must consider how it relates to the poetics and communicative objectives of the alluding composition.