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Rating: 
Summary: Poetic Interpretation & License
Review: The student of literary invention will enjoy this "mini" interpretation of the Hebrew Bible. The author invokes a sense of "texture" from the text which is all for the good. Certainly many scholars of the text sense the hand of many authors and editors brushing a canvas, as it were, with poetic flights and imaginative constructions. The author almost surpasses the original editors with his efforts. For example, early on the author tells us a portion of the text "...is a product of language in its creative vitality." Reference is later made to "...cosmogonic combat imagery..." which "...discloses a profound inner-biblical dialectic between the mythicization of history and historicization of myth." The author's creative vitality is piled upon that of the underlying text for all to see. But what does it all mean? How do we really get at the "...deepest levels of literary and religious coherence..." in the text? Is the text really "...religious teaching, recording moments of meeting between God and man...?" Are there really such levels and coherence? Have this author's relections in fact "rescued speech" of the "meeting"? As the original textual autographs are lost to history, the reader will wish to bear in mind that the author's broad and specific philological analysis and interpretation of literary types and cycles may add layers of texture without fully addressing problems of meaning and authenticity. One cannot be assured of the quality of any work, including this, when or if the author boasts the translations are his. What we have is one more interpretation of the text most of which "come and go." As celebration and exposition of the traditional text with its "...self referential world of meaning..." people of faith will see the author's affirmations. This review cannot better conclude than with a quote from the author: "For to the extent that biblical historical descriptions are rhetorically transposed by the infusion of paradigmatic mythic structures,the result of which is the very transvaluation of the events so described, it is equally significant that the biblical reuse of cosmogonic combat imagery does not simply serve to describe primordial events, but primarily underpins those whose locus is historical existence." psb 6-20-2002
Rating:
Summary: Poetic Interpretation & License
Review: The student of literary invention will enjoy this "mini" interpretation of the Hebrew Bible. The author invokes a sense of "texture" from the text which is all for the good. Certainly many scholars of the text sense the hand of many authors and editors brushing a canvas, as it were, with poetic flights and imaginative constructions. The author almost surpasses the original editors with his efforts. For example, early on the author tells us a portion of the text "...is a product of language in its creative vitality." Reference is later made to "...cosmogonic combat imagery..." which "...discloses a profound inner-biblical dialectic between the mythicization of history and historicization of myth." The author's creative vitality is piled upon that of the underlying text for all to see. But what does it all mean? How do we really get at the "...deepest levels of literary and religious coherence..." in the text? Is the text really "...religious teaching, recording moments of meeting between God and man...?" Are there really such levels and coherence? Have this author's relections in fact "rescued speech" of the "meeting"? As the original textual autographs are lost to history, the reader will wish to bear in mind that the author's broad and specific philological analysis and interpretation of literary types and cycles may add layers of texture without fully addressing problems of meaning and authenticity. One cannot be assured of the quality of any work, including this, when or if the author boasts the translations are his. What we have is one more interpretation of the text most of which "come and go." As celebration and exposition of the traditional text with its "...self referential world of meaning..." people of faith will see the author's affirmations. This review cannot better conclude than with a quote from the author: "For to the extent that biblical historical descriptions are rhetorically transposed by the infusion of paradigmatic mythic structures,the result of which is the very transvaluation of the events so described, it is equally significant that the biblical reuse of cosmogonic combat imagery does not simply serve to describe primordial events, but primarily underpins those whose locus is historical existence." psb 6-20-2002
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