Hebrew Scriptures and More . . . .

Intertextuality, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

Biblical scholarship has recently been interested in the use of Mikhail Bakhtin and his version of progressive intertextuality. Since a mastery of Bakhtin is an almost impossible task due to his complexity and the fragmentary nature of his insights that are scattered throughout his writings¹ it is best to present a synopsis of a few areas that have been utilized by biblical scholars. It it Bakhtin’s idea of “dialogism”² that may be most fruit for biblical studies. I will utilize two works by L. Julian Claassens which give several salient points from Bakhtin that can be utilized in biblical exegesis and biblical theology.³

Bakhtin’s core principle of dialogue may be summed up in his often cited statement: “Life by its very nature is dialogic. To live means to participate in dialogue: to ask questions, to heed, to respond, to agree, and so forth.”⁴ As one can easily see dialogism, Bakhtin raises dialogue to the status of an universal principle.

When applied to biblical studies, Claassens has five succinct point:

1. “First, Bakhtin argues that the word or utterance is integrally dialogical in nature. This means that no word or text can be hears or read in isolation. Each word or utterance responds in one form or another to utterances that precede it.”⁵

Bakhtin: “The speaker is not Adam. . . .”⁶

2. “Second, an important question to ask is who the designer of this dialogue is. . . . Bakhtin theorized more about the author than the reader. However, Bakhtin does concede that “authoring” occurs on various levels. Bakhtin argues that besides the author who created the text, “listeners or readers who recreated and in so doing renew the text – participate equally in the creation of the represented world in the text.” Thus, the reader becomes an active participant in the authoring process.”⁷

3. “Third, Bakhtin describes this potential for creating new meaning in terms of the notion of “great time.” Bakhtin defines “great time” as the “infinite and unfinalized dialogue in which no meaning dies.” . . . . Bakhtin argues that “in the process of their posthumous life they are enriched with new meanings, new significance: it is as though these works outgrow what they were in the epoch of their creation.”⁸

Bakhtin: “Nothing is absolutely dead: every meaning will have its homecoming.”⁹

4. “Fourth, central to Bakhtin’s notion of great time is what he calls the concept of “re-accentuation.” Bakhtin argues that within the dialogue where various utterances interact, an open-ended dialogue begins within the image itself. As context changes and as one brings different texts and points of views together, the potential is there to create new meaning and insights by re-accentuating the image. However, Bakhtin argues that this re-accentuation is not a crude violation of the author’s will. This process takes place within the image itself, when changed conditions actualize the potential already embedded in the image.”¹⁰

5. “Fifth, within this re-accentuation, Bakhtin’s notion of the “outsider” plays a crucial role. Bakhtin argues that “a meaning reveals its depths once it has encountered and come into contact with another, foreign meaning.” Bakhtin maintains that within this dialogue, the foreign culture we or unfamiliar text has the function of challenging us to ask new questions, questions we have not thought of raising.”¹¹

So how can “dialogism” be utilized in biblical studies?

1. When there are troubles and disturbances¹² in inter-textual relations dialogism may be helpful. Dialogism allows for multiple perspectives to co-exist without weakening any.

2. In the context of biblical theology, where one is asked to show not only a diachronic development of a biblical trajectory, but to integrate them, dialogism provides at the same time a synchronic reading without rejecting the diachronic elements. This is especially true when deal with intra-testamental themes (OT & NT).

1 Barbara Green, Mikhail Bakhtin and Biblical Scholarship: An Introduction, Semeia Studies 38 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2000), 4-8, notes the difficulties involved.

2 See Michael Holquist, Dialogism: Bakhtin and his World (London: Routledge, 1990), 15, writes that, “Dialogue is an obvious master key to the assumptions that guided Bakhtin’s work throughout his whole career: dialogue is present in one way or another throughout the notebooks he kept from his youth to his death at the age of 80.”

3 L. Juliana Claassens, “Biblical Theology as Dialogue: Continuing the Conversation on Mikhail Bakhtin and Biblical Theology,” JBL 122, no. 1 (2003), 127-44 and L. Juliana Claassens, The God Who Feeds: A Feminist-Theological Analysis of Key Pentateuchal and Intertestamental Texts (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton Theological Seminary, 2001).

4 Mikhail M. Bakhtin, “Toward a Reworking of the Dostoevsky’s Book,” in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, trans. Caryl Emerson, Theory and History of Literature 8 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 293.

5 Claassens, The God who Feeds: A Feminist-Theological Analysis of Key Pentateuchal and Intertestamental Texts, 19-20.

6 Mikhail M. Bakhtin, Speech Genres & Other Late Essays, trans. Vern W. McGee (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), 94.

7 Claassens, The God who Feeds: A Feminist-Theological Analysis of Key Pentateuchal and Intertestamental Texts, 22.

8 Claassens, The God who Feeds: A Feminist-Theological Analysis of Key Pentateuchal and Intertestamental Texts, 23.

9 Mikhail M. Bakhtin, Speech Genres & Other Late Essays, 170.

10 Claassens, The God who Feeds: A Feminist-Theological Analysis of Key Pentateuchal and Intertestamental Texts, 24-5.

11 Claassens, The God who Feeds: A Feminist-Theological Analysis of Key Pentateuchal and Intertestamental Texts, 25.

12 Peter D. Miscall, “Isaiah: New Heaven, New Earth, New Book,” In Reading Between Texts: Intertextuality and the Hebrew Bible, ed. Danna Nolan Fewell, (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992), 44.

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