scholarly journals The materiality or ‘thingness’ of words and their effects: Some examples from the Book of Proverbs

2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hendrik Viviers

Words are more than vehicles for semantic meaning; they can also be regarded as ‘things’ with an ‘agency’ of their own. This happens when they are seen (iconic to legitimise) or heard (performative to inspire). According to S. Brent Plate, a key researcher on materiality (see reference list) ‘words are bodies, full of power’. Words, along with many ‘things’ (fetish, ritual, book, nature, place, etc.) mediate between the material known and the immaterial unknown; they make the invisible visible or experienceable. Birgit Meyer , the pioneer of the so-called material turn in the study of religion, says, words ‘effect the transcendental’ for the initiated. Not inherently potent but through ascribed or endowed meanings they in turn affect their creators. The so-called material turn in the study of religion has rediscovered that matter or ‘things’ really ‘matters.’ Words as powerful ‘things’ or agents are also attested to in Proverbs. When wisdom words are externalised (e.g. through ornaments, Pr 1:8–9), they legitimise their users; when they are internalised (in the heart or mind, Pr 2), they persuade almost like ‘powerful personae’ to follow the wise lifestyle; and when they are personified (Pr 8), they become the ‘mediatrix’ to the thought-world of wisdom, and its ultimate source, Yahweh.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The material turn in the study of religion (anthropology) emphasises the appreciation of materiality or ‘things’. It questions an exclusive mentalistic or inward approach in cognate disciplines, such as Religious Science, Theology and Old Testament and New Testament textual studies. It also stimulates a dialogue with other humaniora such as philosophy, psychology, literary studies, media studies and art history.

The Septuagint is the term commonly used to refer to the corpus of early Greek versions of Hebrew Scriptures. The collection is of immense importance in the history of both Judaism and Christianity. The renderings of individual books attest to the religious interests of the substantial Jewish population of Egypt during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, and to the development of the Greek language in its Koine phase. The narrative ascribing the Septuagint’s origins to the work of seventy translators in Alexandria attained legendary status among both Jews and Christians. The Septuagint was the version of Scripture most familiar to the writers of the New Testament, and became the authoritative Old Testament of the Greek and Latin Churches. In the early centuries of Christianity it was itself translated into several other languages, and it has had a continuing influence on the style and content of biblical translations. In the Oxford Handbook of the Septuagint leading experts in the field write on the history and manuscript transmission of the version, and explain the study of translation technique and textual criticism. They provide surveys of previous and current research on individual books of the Septuagint corpus, on alternative Jewish Greek versions, the Christian ‘daughter’ translations, and reception in early Jewish and Christian writers. The handbook also includes several ‘conversations’ with related fields of interest such as New Testament studies, liturgy, and art history.


2019 ◽  
Vol 139 ◽  
pp. 222-232
Author(s):  
Lilah Grace Canevaro

AbstractIn this article I review 11 books published since 2010 that bring the ‘material turn’ to classics. Some start from emic ancient perspectives on matter and materiality; others take their cue from current theoretical models such as those of the new materialisms. All offer new insights into our relationship with the material world and consider the material object as active within different paradigms. In reviewing these important volumes together, I question entrenched boundaries: from those between (sub-)disciplines to those between human and non-human agents. I explore the material turn not as an isolated phenomenon, but, first, as a cyclical ‘re’-turn and, second, as an integrated set of ideas incorporating (to name but a few strands) aesthetics, cognitive humanities, embodiment, affect and the senses. The books reviewed range from literary studies to archaeology to art history to material culture to heritage. Taken together, they set new directions for classics, and indeed for our thinking about our place in the world.


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marianne Van Remoortel ◽  
Kristin Ewins ◽  
Maaike Koffeman ◽  
Matthew Philpotts

In recent decades, periodical studies have burgeoned into a vibrant field of research. Increasing numbers of scholars working in disciplines across the humanities — literary studies, history, art history, gender studies, media studies, legal history, to name a few — are exploring the press as a key site for cultural production, public debate and the dissemination of knowledge. [...]


2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 141-178
Author(s):  
Jacob Haubenreich

Abstract This article examines the persistence of the notion of the immaterial text in literary studies, now decades into the so-called material turn. Digitization of manuscripts increasingly confronts us with the facts of textual materiality and material authorship, yet many scholars remain ill-equipped to engage these traces in order to expand the possibilities of textual interpretation. The journeys of Peter Handke’s notebooks serve as a case study on how to interrogate various definitions of text and methodological approaches that reinforce an understanding of texts as immaterial. This article thus elucidates the conceptual and methodological impediments to more comprehensively integrating materiality into interpretation; an uneasiness, for example, about approaching authorship—the process and agency of textual production—lingers despite resurrections since the Author’s “death” and more recent transdisciplinary retheorizations of agency. The article finally looks to reflections on materiality in another field, art history, to clarify the reasons that integrating materiality into interpretative criticism remains so difficult, so that the field might begin to move beyond these obstacles.


First Monday ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Crystal Abidin ◽  
Joel Gn

This special issue, curated by Joel Gn and Crystal Abidin, provides an investigation of the uses and impacts of emoji within the domains of culture, race, language, and art and commerce. Considering the broader socio-cultural implications of emoji and the various ways that emoji negotiate and mediate the tenuous boundary between art and application, the eight papers draw from disciplines including media studies and communications, sociology and digital anthropology, literary studies and art history, and philosophy, and are authored by (mostly) Early Career Researchers.


MediaTropes ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. i-xvi
Author(s):  
Jordan Kinder ◽  
Lucie Stepanik

In this introduction to the special issue of MediaTropes on “Oil and Media, Oil as Media,” Jordan B. Kinder and Lucie Stepanik provide an account of the stakes and consequences of approaching oil as media as they situate it within the “material turn” of media studies and the broader project energy humanities. They argue that by critically approaching oil and its infrastructures as media, the contributions that comprise this issue puts forward one way to develop an account of oil that further refines the larger tasks and stakes implicit in the energy humanities. Together, these address the myriad ways in which oil mediates social, cultural, and ecological relations, on the one hand, and the ways in which it is mediated, on the other, while thinking through how such mediations might offer glimpses of a future beyond oil.


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-38
Author(s):  
Jonathan Octavianus

As every epoch there are there a transition time, on Old Testament like Moses with Joshua, Joshua selected by God an supported fully by Moses, Conversely Moses have liberally to be changed. Like Elijah to Elisha too.Pattern on New Testament there are an examples of transition time too, like Jesus Christ to His Disciples, an transition from Paul to his successor Timothy. This is a heart and soul a big leader, and shall all leadership owners shepherd in church, Christian institution, etc.Which most be remembered in transition of leadership, that people of God leadership, about who will lead, who continue leadership, like a principle in biblical, hence a role of God, is determinant an anoint man which be selected the absolute God choice and constitute all other, but a succession router leader is which have been selected His own. An can be anointed in front of believers.


2012 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 16-21
Author(s):  
Tony Burke

Scholars interested in the Christian Apocrypha (CA) typically appeal to CA collections when in need of primary sources. But many of these collections limit themselves to material believed to have been written within the first to fourth centuries CE. As a result a large amount of non-canonical Christian texts important for the study of ancient and medieval Christianity have been neglected. The More Christian Apocrypha Project will address this neglect by providing a collection of new editions (some for the first time) of these texts for English readers. The project is inspired by the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project headed by Richard Bauckham and Jim Davila from the University of Edinburgh. Like the MOTP, the MCAP is envisioned as a supplement to an earlier collection of texts—in this case J. K. Elliott’s The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford 1991), the most recent English-language CA collection (but now almost two decades old). The texts to be included are either absent in Elliott or require significant revision. Many of the texts have scarcely been examined in over a century and are in dire need of new examination. One of the goals of the project is to spotlight the abilities and achievements of English (i.e., British and North American) scholars of the CA, so that English readers have access to material that has achieved some exposure in French, German, and Italian collections.


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