Overview and theoretical perspectives
Books:
Breed, Brennan W. Nomadic Text: A Theory of Biblical Reception History. Indiana Series in Biblical Literature. Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2014.
Smith, Wilfred Cantwell. What is Scripture? A Comparative Approach. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1993.
Selected book chapters from:
Levering, Miriam, ed. Rethinking Scripture: Essays From a Comparative Perspective. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1989 (Introduction, Chapters 1, 5 and 7).
Articles/chapters (Library/PDF)
Fish, Stanley. “Normal Circumstances, Literal Language, Direct Speech Acts, the Ordinary, the Everyday, the Obvious, What Goes without Saying, and Other Special Cases.” Critical Inquiry 4.4 (1978): 625–44.
–. “What Makes an Interpretation Acceptable?” Pages 338–55 in Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980.
David Ford. “An Interfaith Wisdom: Scriptural Reasoning between Jews, Christians and Muslims.” In D. Ford and C.C. Pecknoll (eds): The Promise of Scriptural Reasoning. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006, pp. 1-22.
Elster, Charles A. “Authority, Performance, and Interpretation in Religious Reading: Critical Issues of Intercultural Communication and Multiple Literacies.” Journal of Literacy Research 35:1 (2003): 663–92.
Hidayatullah, Aysha A.: “Initial Conclusions,” in Feminist Edges of the Qur’an. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 125-145.
Kartzow, Marianne Bjelland. “Introduction: Re-Forgetting the Margins? Pp. 1-27 in Destabilizing the Margins: An Intersectional Approach to Early Christian Memory. Eugene, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2012
Lamptey, Jerusha. ?Thinking Differently about Difference: Muslima Theology and Religious Pluralism?, inThe Journal of Interreligious Studies, Issue 30, 2014, pp. 34-43 (https://irstudies.org/index.php/jirs/article/view/183)
Leirvik, Oddbj?rn: "Aw qala: 'Li-jarihi'. Some Observations on Brotherhood and Neighborly Love in Islamic Tradition". Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 4: 2010, pp. 357-372.
---- “Interreligious hermeneutics and the ethical critique of the Scriptures”. In David Cheetham, Ulrich Winkler, Oddbj?rn Leirvik og Judith Gruber (red.): Interreligious Hermeneutics in Pluralistic Europe. Between Texts and People. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi 2011, s.333-353.
---------- "Wahy and tanzil: Modern Islamic approaches to divine inspiration, progressive revelation, and human text." Studia Theologica 2: 2015, pp. 101-125.
Lundhaug, Hugo. “Canon and Interpretation: A Cognitive Perspective.” Pages 67–90 in Canon and Canonicity: The Formation and Use of Scripture. Edited by Einar Thomassen. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2010.
Ramadan, Tariq: “Knowledge and Hermeneutics in Islam Today. Which Reform?” In Mehran Kamrava (ed.): Innovation in Islam. Traditions and Contributions. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press 2011, pp. 23-38
Saeed, Abdullah: “Fazlur Rahman: A framework for interpreting the ethico-legal content of the Qur’an,” in Suha Taji-Farouki (ed.): Modern Muslim Intellectuals and the Qur’an. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2004, pp. 37-67.
Source texts (available in library/online)
Hebrew Bible/Old Testament
- Genesis
- Exodus
New Testament
- Gospel of Luke
- Acts of the Apostles
- The Gospel of Philip (the Nag Hammadi Library)
The Quran
- Surah 1-7
Rabbinic Jewish texts
- Excerpts form Rabbinic texts on Genesis and Exodus (full list given in class)
To the electives (choose only one):
1. The role of the sacred text in a secular age
Read book: Yvonne Sherwood: Biblical Blaspheming: Trials of the Sacred for a Secular Age. Cambridge University Press 2012
2. Jewish slavery in Antiquity
Read book: Hezser, Catherine. Jewish Slavery in Antiquity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
3. Textual fluidity and New Philology
Read (Library/PDF):
Bryant, John. “Witness and Access: The Uses of the Fluid Text.” Textual Cultures 2:1 (2007): 16–42. [27pp]
Cerquiglini, Bernard. In Praise of the Variant: A Critical History of Philology. Translated by Betsy Wing. Parallax: Re-Visions of Culture and Society. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. (chapters 2–3) [32pp]
Czachesz, István. “Rewriting and Textual Fluidity in Antiquity: Exploring the Socio-Cultural and Psychological Context of Earliest Christian Literacy.” Pages 425–41 in Myths, Martyrs, and Modernity. Edited by J. H. F. Dijkstra, J. E. A. Kroesen, and Y. B. Kuiper. Leiden: Brill, 2010. [27pp]
Driscoll, Matthew James. “The Words on the Page: Thoughts on Philology, Old and New.” Pages 87–104 in Creating the Medieval Saga: Versions, Variability, and Editorial Interpretations of Old Norse Saga Literature. Edited by J. Quinn and E. Lethbridge. The Viking Collection 18; Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 2010. [18pp]
Ehrman, Bart D. “The Text as Window: New Testament Manuscripts and the Social History of Early Christianity.” Pages 803–30 in The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research: Essays on the Status Quaestionis. Second ed. Edited by Bart D. Ehrman and Michael W. Holmes. New Testament Tools, Studies and Documents 42. Leiden: Brill, 2013. [28pp]
Knust, Jennifer Wrigth. “Early Christian Re-Writing and the History of the Pericope Adulterae.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 14:4 (2006): 485–536. [52pp]
“In Pursuit of a Singular Text: New Testament Textual Criticism and the Desire for the True Original.” Religion Compass 2:2 (2008): 180–94. [15pp]
Lundhaug, Hugo, and Liv Ingeborg Lied. “Studying Snapshots: On Manuscript Culture, Textual Fluidity, and New Philology.” Pages 1–19 in Snapshots of Evolving Traditions: Jewish and Christian Manuscript Culture, Textual Fluidity, and New Philology. Edited by Liv Ingeborg Lied and Hugo Lundhaug. Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur 175. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2017. [19pp]
Nichols, Stephen G. “The New Philology: Introduction: Philology in a Manuscript Culture.” Speculum 65 (1990): 1–10. [10pp]
–. “Dynamic Reading of Medieval Manuscripts.” Florilegium 32 (2015): 19–57. [39pp]
–. “Mutable Stability, a Medieval Paradox.” Queeste 23:2 (2016): 71–103. [33pp
Parker, David C. The Living Text of the Gospels. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. (chapters 1–3, 12) [58pp]
Rose, Els, and Liedeke Plate. “Rewriting, a Literary Concept for the Study of Cultural Memory: Towards a Transhistorical Approach to Cultural Remembrance.” Neophilologus 97 (2013): 611–25. [15]
Rubenson, Samuel. “Textual Fluidity in Early Monasticism: Sayings, Sermons and Stories.” Pages 178–200 in Snapshots of Evolving Traditions: Jewish and Christian Manuscript Culture, Textual Fluidity, and New Philology. Edited by Liv Ingeborg Lied and Hugo Lundhaug. Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur 175. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2017. [23pp]
4. Islamic Theology of religious pluralism
Read book: Lamptey, Jerusha Tanner Never Wholly Other: A Muslima Theology of Religious Pluralism. Oxford: Oxford Univerity Press, 2014.
5. Inter-religious relations and “scriptures” in Antiquity. Choose a or b
a. The characters of Hagar, Sarah, and their Children in sacred texts
Read book: Trible, Phyllis, and Letty Russel, eds. Hagar, Sarah, and Their Children: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Perspectives. Louisville: Westminster, John Knox Press, 2006.
From the book In the Arms of Biblical Women, Biblical Intersections 13, edited by John T. Greene and Mishael M. Caspi: Gorgias Press, 2013:
Grung, Anne Hege. “Hagar as Bad Mother, Hagar as an Icon of Faith: The Hagar Narratives from the Islamic and the Christian Traditions Discussed Among Muslim and Christian Women in Norway. Pp. 65-78.
Kartzow, Marianne Bjelland. “On Naming and Blaming: Hagar’s God-Talk in Jewish and Early Christian Sources. Pp. 97-119.
b. Mapping materiality
Read book Smith, Eric C. Jewish Glass and Christian Stone: A Materialist Mapping of the "Parting of the Ways." London and New York. Routledge. 2018