The Moving Text: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on David Brown and the Bible, edited by Garrick Allen, Christopher R. Brewer, and Dennis F. Kinlaw, is the published result of a 2015 colloquium for biblical and interdisciplinary scholars that comprises a third volume of responses to David Brown’s work, specifically his 1999 monograph Tradition and Imagination: Revelation and Change (Oxford University Press). This volume pays particular attention to Brown’s theological aesthetics in regard to three areas: the Bible, the arts, and literature, with an appendix, which includes a response from Brown and four of his sermons.
The editor’s introduction, by Brewer, defines “the moving text” to include scriptural and interpretative canons, a “shifting real text whose actual content at any particular moment could only be determined by careful analysis of its social setting” (Introduction, xii.) In part 1, “The Biblical Text,” Allen, in the discipline of text criticism, notes a shift away from one original text in that the fluid transmission of New Testament manuscript copies, especially those of Revelation, situates them within, not apart from, “the broader stream of Christian tradition” (p.13). Next, Ian Boxall, illustrating that “the biblical text is not the final word,” (p.31) considers various interpretations of Pilate’s wife in the reception history of Matthew’s Gospel: she is a recipient of divine revelation through a dream, she suffers “on account of him,” (p.32) and she is a righteous gentile alongside others in the gospel. He notes along the way that the verb “she sent [word] to” (p.20) her husband usually refers to actions of Jesus or God. All these responses convey religious veracities other than the historical. Imaginative fiction preserves gentile truths about Jesus.
Stephen Barton starts with an appraisal of Tradition and Imagination (T&I), noting Brown’s central emphasis on the role of tradition in Christian religion, effectively expanding understanding of the scope of God’s revelation over against biblicist tendencies. There is “an equal right of later tradition to critique Scripture” (T&I, 111). Barton proposes that the “moving text” of the cleansing of the temple in John’s Gospel, at the outset of Jesus’ ministry, indicates that John’s narrative in light of Jesus’ death and exaltation privileges revelation and redemption over time and narrative. Finally, Robert MacSwain compares interpretations of Abraham, Job, Mary Magdalene, and Mary of Bethany proposed by Brown’s hermeneutical philosophical tradition, emphasizing imagination, over against the analytical philosophical tradition of Eleonore Stump, emphasizing neuroscience.
In the first essay of part 2, “The Visual Imagination,” Taylor Worley interprets the paintings They Know That I Know (1992) by Kerry James Marshall and Afronirvana (2002) by Chris Ofili to rewrite through black aesthetics of Afrofuturism a “corrective to racist myths” (p.74: the mark of Cain and the curse of Ham) and to reimagine an African Adam and Eve as paradise reclaimed, thereby displacing the white male gaze. Aaron Rosen then proposes that renderings of Genesis 22 by modern artists enrich even primary “revelation beyond the borders of Christianity” (p.93). Preferring to indict a young Isaac for “his meek compliance,” modern art makes Abraham the agent in art and interpretations of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This requires the attention of all three traditions.
In renditions of Jacob’s dream (Genesis 28) by modern artists, Brewer sees signals of transcendence where the divine invades material order, thus transforming the biblical story for modern participants. Natasha O’Hear proposes that the academy needs a deep engagement in visual biblical reception history. In response to Brown’s early description of Revelation as “narrow-minded, unimaginative, and overly literal,” O’Hear argues that, for example, the Apocalypse Panel of Memling and Albrecht Dürer’s apocalyptic series offer “a much deeper understanding of the visionary experience that purports to be the source of the text, than the text itself.” William Hyland proposes that the stained glass Biblia Pauperum (a late medieval illustrated book showing typological biblical scenes) windows of Steinfield Abbey, made between 1522 and 1558, are not just representations of scriptural texts but also innovative personal and corporate stories of the monastic community and its patrons.
In part 3, “The Literary Imagination,” Thomas Rist considers literary presentations of the Virgin Mary in post-reformation England after 1518, when veneration of Mary was outlawed in Protestant practice, in order to broaden Brown’s notion of discipleship. Jon Greenaway juxtaposes the customarily excluded Gothic novel Frankenstein (Penguin Classics: London, 2012) with John Milton and Genesis, arguing that the creature is made, not created, monstrous, in the way that “we are all morally responsible and morally compromised” by means of acting in the world. Finally, Kinlaw proposes that David Foster Wallace’s fiction writings imaginatively recontextualize religious tradition and spiritual truths in ways Brown describes.
Engaging with this collection of essays, a dialogue of academics with the work of an esteemed academic, is well worth the exertion. To a newcomer, Brown’s work is eye-opening, even life-changing. Digitization of biblical manuscripts has for some time enabled biblical scholars such as Parker to explore new avenues for interdisciplinary work on literary connections visible in their arrangement and plan. Biblical manuscripts do not witness only to prior texts, but can in their very transmission witness to new interpretations of those texts. Study of manuscripts now includes paratexts, namely, all the material accompanying the text, such as introductions, chapter titles, and marginal signs, thus taking acts of writing and reading as ends in themselves rather than a means to discovering an original text.
Accordingly, I would have liked another section of The Moving Text in addition to Bible, art, and literature—namely, politics. Art, literature, and biblical interpretation are not politically neutral tasks. In our time they are not conducted in a vacuum. The political environment can provide engagement in, and give access to a moving text. Taking the political environment into account would substantially enrich this discussion.
Deirdre J. Good is a faculty member of the Stevenson School of Ministry in the Diocese of Central PA.
Deirdre J. Good
Date Of Review:
November 28, 2021
