Ritröð Guðfræðistofnunar - 01.09.2012, Page 18

The reception history of the Bible
If you want illustrations of what I have said now you can study the reception
history ofthe Bible, “a treasure house of interpretations of biblical texts” (F.A.
Sawyer 2009). Rather than attempting to recover the original meaning of
biblical texts you focus on exploring the history of the manifold receptions
of the Bible you have in our culture, or other cultures. Reception history
has been defined as the history of how a book or a passage or a word has
been contextualized and interpreted through the centuries in different parts
of the world. It includes interpretation of the Bible, articulation of doctrine
and worship, and various forms of artistic expression. The influence of the
Bible on literature, art, music, and film, its role in the evolution of religious
beliefs and practices, and its impact on social and political developments are
often as interesting and historically important as what it originally meant.
Reception history has received many names: history of effects, effective
history, history of influences, in German Wirkungsgeschichte. I would prefer
reception history as the general term. There is not any specific method for
this new discipline. There is always some biblical material, some reception
material and an interpreter of these two kinds of material and of the rela-
tions between them. You can define the biblical material as a singular Bible
book, specific narratives, smaller passages, or individual themes or words,
and you can choose the reception material from different media or genres.
And we know that the interpreter may have different premises, hermeneu-
tical interests, special perspectives, or experiences, and so on. Therefore, the
methods can vary significantly. Reception history has an interdisciplinary
character, but I hope it will become a legitimate part of biblical scholarship.
It is still in its infancy.
The background of my increasing interest in reception history during the
last decades is to be found in my engagement with Bible translations and
history of translations, as well as in my approach to the texts as we now have
them, and my work in the field hermeneutics and history of interpretation.
Other scholars may mention the recurrent critique against historical-critical
research, new ways to interpret texts, an increasing interest in synchronic
analyses and in hermeneutic and its questioning of our possibilities to catch
the meaning of a text, and our longing for a more culture-oriented analysis
of biblical texts.
The motivations for more analyses of the receptions of a text are many.
Reception history is open for several meanings in one text, it mediates
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