What is it about?
Mikhail Bakhtin's literary criticism has been influential over the last 50 years. Bakhtin was a Russian scholar whose scholarly ideas about language led to his arrest and exile during Stalin's regime. This chapter outlines his main literary concepts, and then focuses on one of them, "inserted genre," and how this can be used in biblical interpretation.
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Why is it important?
Intertextual interpretation of the Bible is essential to understanding its many different but interconnected texts. However, most attention is given to the words and phrases in a text that connect with other specific intertext/s in the Bible. The intertext gains a meaning-creating presence in the text through the connecting words or phrases. Bakhtin's concept of inserted genre pushes this further, recognizing that elements in the text can make connections, not just with other specific texts, but also with genres. This gives the world to which inserted genre belongs a meaning-creating presence in the text.
Perspectives
My co-author, Allan Bell, Professor of Sociolinguistics, gives a concise overview of Bahktin's key contributions to understanding language and texts. I then analyze Zephaniah 3:5 as an example of inserted genre, demonstrating how the concept can contribute to biblical interpretation by moving beyond seeing the verse as either a later addition or simply a flat reading of the words.
John de Jong
Laidlaw College
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Application of Bakhtin’s Incorporated Genre in Biblical Studies, September 2024, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004698963_012.
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