The Interface of Orality and Writing: Speaking, Seeing, Writing in the Shaping of New Genres

Description

How did the visual, the oral, and the written interrelate in antiquity? The essays in this collection address the competing and complementary roles of visual media, forms of memory, oral performance, and literacy and popular culture in the ancient Mediterranean world. Incorporating both customary and innovative perspectives, the essays advance the frontiers of our understanding of the nature of ancient texts as regards audibility and performance, the vital importance of the visual in the comprehension of texts, and basic concepts of communication, particularly the need to account for disjunctive and non-reciprocal social relations in communication. Thus the contributions show how the investigation of the interface of the oral and written, across the spectrum of seeing, hearing, and writing, generates new concepts of media and mediation. Cover Table of Contents Preface Part I: Introduction: Speaking, Seeing, Writing in the Shaping of New Genres Susan Niditch: Hebrew Bible and Oral Literature: Misconceptions and New Directions Teun L. Tieleman: Orality and Writing in Ancient Philosophy: Their Interrelationship and the Shaping of Literary Forms 1. Introduction 2. Literacy and the Origins of Philosophy 3. Socrates and Plato 4. The Hellenistic and Imperial Periods 5. Conclusion Catherine Hezser: From Oral Conversations toWritten Texts: Randomness in the Transmission of Rabbinic Traditions 1. The Oral-Cultural Context of Rabbinic Teaching and Discussion 2. The Circumstantial Expression and Transmission of Rabbinic Views 3. Randomness in the Transmission of Rabbinic Opinions 4. The Collection and Editing of Traditions 5. The Writing and Copying of the Documents and the Study of the Written Texts Antoinette Clark Wire: Mark: News as Tradition 1. Markan Genre or Story Pattern 2. Story Pattern as Conflict 3. Story Pattern as Sequence 4. Integration of Story Patterns 5. News as Tradition in Writing Werner Kelber: The History of the Closure of Biblical Texts 1. Prologue 2. The Mouvance of Tradition 3. Jewish and Christian Textual Pluriformity 4. Codex and Canon 5. Memory and Manuscript 6. The Word Made Print 7. Afterthought Part II: Speaking in the Shaping of New Genres John Miles Foley: Plenitude and Diversity: Interactions between Orality and Writing Overview 1. The trajectory of theory 2. A model for oral traditions 3. Viable approaches 4. Shared issues across a diverse spectrum 5. Proverbs on oral tradition 6. An unexpected homology: Oral Tradition and Internet Technology Summary Kristina Dronsch: Transmissions from Scripturality to Orality: Hearing the Voice of Jesus in Mark 4:1–34 Ruben Zimmermann: Memory and Form Criticism: The Typicality of Memory as a Bridge between Orality and Literality in the Early Christian Remembering Process 1. Memory, Media and Form 2. Forms and Functions of Memory The tradition-giving function The community-giving function The meaning-giving function 3. Early Christianity as a remembering community 4. Parables – as a case study 5. Memory and Form Criticism – Some Final Statements Richard A. Horsley: The Gospel of Mark in the Interface of Orality and Writing 1. The Interface of Orality and Writing 2. The Gospel of Mark’s Relation to Written Texts (1) How does the Gospel compare with Judean (scribal) textst hat already existed in writing? (2) What was the Gospel’s relation to the Judean “scriptural” texts? (3) When and to what extent did the Gospel itself exist in writing? 3. The Plotting/Composition of the Gospel midst the interface of orality and writing David Rhoads: Performance Events in Early Christianity: New Testament Writings in an Oral Context 1. The Embodied Nature of a performance 2. Composition-as-performance 3. The Performer 4. Communities of Reception 5. Setting of Time and Place 6. Cultural Ethos 7. Socio-Historical context 8. Rhetorical impact on the audience Conclusion David Trobisch: Performance Criticism as an Exegetical Method: A Story, Three Insights, and Two Jokes 1. A Story 2. Three Insights Performance Criticism and Form Criticism Jesus Tells a Bathroom Joke Experiential Historical Criticism Summary Part III: Seeing in the Shaping of New Genres Kristina Dronsch and Annette Weissenrieder: A Theory of the Message for New Testament Writings or Communicating the Words of Jesus: From Angelos to Euangelion 1. Introduction 2. Graphical material: Dimensions of messengers in visual media in antiquity 2.1 Distance und Heteronomy 2.2 Relationality: The category of the “third” 2.3 Self-neutralization? 2.4 Embodiment 3. The messenger in the Gospels Mark, Luke and John 3. 1. The Gospel of Mark: 3.2 The Gospel of Luke 3.3 The Gospel of John David L. Balch: Women Prophets/Maenads Visually Represented in Two Roman Colonies: Pompeii and Corinth 1. Roman domestic art in Pompeii and Corinth: Dionysus and death 1.1 Two Roman colonies, Pompeii and Corinth: two amphitheaters 1.2 Methodology: Roman domestic art and texts, the latter only if they support the art 2. Dionysian myth, ritual, and visual representations in Corinth, Athens, and Sicyon 2.1 Visual representations of the deaths of Dionysus and Penthus in Roman colonies 2. 1.1 The Roman Dionysus, god of wine harvest, no longer of tragedy? 2. 1.2 “Resistance” to worship of Dionysus in Roman Athens and Corinth 2.2 Dirce and the city of Sicyon, a polis near Corinth 3. Comparison of Dionysian and Corinthian Christian enthusiasm 4. Summary and conclusions: comparisons and contrasts Annette Weissenrieder: The Didactics of Images: The Fig Tree in Mark 11:12–14 and 20–21 I. The didactics of visual images: The fig tree as an emblem for the founding of Rome and its founding fathers 1.1 The Prototype: The Portrayal of the Fig tree and the Foundation of the City of Rome 1.2 The Fig tree as a Cultural Commemoration of Rome’s Founding Fathers 1.3 The founder of the city as the personification of the “Golden Age” II. The historical classification of the withered fig tree The Caligula Coin The pediment of the Temple of Quirinus and the Nero Coin The Jewish version of the fig tree and the she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus III. Rome – The withered Fig tree? Part IV: Writing in the Shaping of New Genres Annette Schellenberg: A “lying pen of the scribes” (Jer 8:8)? Orality and Writing in the Formation of Prophetic Books 1. The two ends of the story: oral prophets and written prophetic books 2. Ancient Near Eastern prophecy and history of research 3. (Orality and) Writing in the world of prophets 4. Questioning theories of an institutional setting as Sitz im Leben of prophetic compositions 5. “Followers” as editors 6. Orality (and writing) in the world of prophetic editors 7. The “lying pen of the scribes” and the Torah “written on the hearts” (Jer 8:8–9; 31:31–34) Roger S. Nam: Writing Songs, Singing Songs: The Oral and the Written in the Commission of the Levitical Singers (1 Chr 25:1–6) 1. Introduction 2. The Written Word in the Commission of the Levitical Singers 3. The Spoken Word in the Commission of the Levitical Singers 4. Synthesis and Conclusions Andreas Schuele: “Call on me in the day of trouble . . .” From Oral Lament to Lament Psalms 1. Introduction 2. Setting in Life and Setting in Speech 3. From the spoken to the written word of lament 4. Lament and Protest Pieter J. J. Botha: “Publishing” a Gospel: Notes on Historical Constraints to Gospel Criticism 1. Manuscript Culture 1.1 Reading manuscripts 1.2 Citations, references and manuscripts 1.3 Books as interactive enterprises 2. Scenarios for Writing a Book 2.1 The “mad” scientist 2.2 The sponsored intellectual 2.3 The lecturer’s notes 2.4 Networking 3. Early Christian Manuscripts Daniel Boyarin: The Sovereignty of the Son of Man: Reading Mark 2 1. A Read Herring: “The Son of Man” as Periphrasis for “I” 2. Robert B. Coote: Scripture and the Writer of Mark 1. The Scriptural Story and Markan Irony 2. Mark as Baptismal Polemic 3. Markan Irony and the Latter Prophets 4. Mark, Empire, Judaism, and Church 5. Mark as Writer Holly Hearon: Mapping Written and Spoken Word in the Gospel of Mark 1. Reading Written Words 2. Scripture: Perceived, Encountered, Engaged 3. The Scriptures as Spoken Word 4. The Gospel as Written and Spoken Word 5. Implications Trevor W. Thompson: Writing in Character: Claudius Lysias to Felix as a Double-Pseudepigraphon (Acts 23:26–30) 1. Conflicts and Omissions in Claudius Lysias’s “Revised” Narration 2. Letter Citation or Literary Letter-in-Character 3. Intentional Narratives in Conflict 3.1 Aelius Theon and the Refutation of a Narrative 3.2 The Refutation of Claudius Lysias’s Epistolary Narrative 4. Conclusion List of Authors Index of Sources Index of Names Subject Index