Literature and Theology - current issue

Towards A Judaic Milton: Translating Samson Agonistes Into Hebrew

Einboden, J. — 2008-05-22

Joseph Massel's 1890 translation of Samson Agonistes into biblical Hebrew represents a problematic amalgam of Christian poetics and Judaic scripture. Published as a means of promoting Hebrew language renewal, Massel's rendition succeeds in transforming not only the linguistic constitution of the Miltonic drama, but also its religious and cultural meaning. The following essay examines the implications of translating Samson Agonistes into the language of the Tanakh, proposing that this Hebrew rendition functions to amend the historical, theological and political significance of its English source.

The Daimones of C. S. Lewis

Sick, D. H. — 2008-05-22

The eldila of C. S. Lewis's science fiction trilogy hold a unique position in the author's cosmology. Lewis derived these spirits, angels or daimones chiefly from Apuleius’ De Deo Socratis, although the authorial voice cites medieval sources. He, moreover, acknowledged their existence in the material universe. His willingness to accept a pagan divinity results from his understanding of Graeco-Roman myth as a distorted revelation of truth and his own spiritual and intellectual relationship with Apuleius over many years.

Atonement and the Crime of Seeing: Patrick White's, Riders in the Chariot

D'Costa, G. — 2008-05-22

Patrick White's ‘religious’ vision in ‘Riders in the Chariot’ is explored. Against readings from a Jewish perspective, a Christian perspective or a secular non-religious perspective, this article proposes an alternative. It suggests that White brings together a synthetic vision in which three religious traditions are affirmed as complimentary—with a new fourth, the artist as religious visionary. In doing so, White respects the deep differences between these traditions while also drawing on an analogical commonality: the redemptive value of suffering and the nature of an unfinished atonement within our lives.

By the Waters of a Death Camp: An Intertextual Reading of Psalm 137

Plank, K. A. — 2008-05-22

To the Reader: The Structure of Power in Biblical Translation, from Tyndale to the NRSV

Glowacki, D. R. — 2008-05-22

This article investigates the mechanisms by which the ‘To the Reader’ essay that prefaces the NRSV constructs power. The mechanisms and strategies that characterise modern discursive structures of power are used as a theoretical lens for examining the prefatory essay's self-awareness of the forces associated with its arising. Unlike the manner in which power is manifest in earlier biblical translations, power in the NRSV's ‘To the Reader’ is more subtle—implying an autonomous, unified and unarticulated biblical message which is its own first cause. The analysis presented herein suggests that the construction of power in ‘To the Reader’ relies on obscuring the limits of its relationship with those forces that encompass the NRSV translation enterprise.

Theological Humanism as Living Praxis: Reading Surfaces and Depth in Margaret Edson's Wit

Wriglesworth, C. — 2008-05-22

This essay outlines and illustrates ways that ‘theological humanism’ provides methodological possibilities for scholars working in religion and literary studies. I suggest there is a need to investigate more humanistic methods of interpreting literature by exploring approaches that engage questions of sacred depth. After stressing the necessary paradoxes of theological humanism as an interpretive and lived stance in the world, I offer a reading of Margaret Edson's Wit that is shaped by these principles.

Peregrination, Hermeneutics, Hospitality: On the Way to a Theologically Informed General Hermeneutics

Huelin, S. — 2008-05-22

The recent and laudable revival of ethical criticism, both in its neo-humanist and postmodern forms, leads inexorably to either elitist exclusivism or uncritical relativism. We are, at present, lacking an account of general hermeneutics that can transcend this divide, one that takes seriously the dangers involved in opening oneself to the other while also maintaining the intellectual and moral necessity of hospitality to strangers. An analysis of this problem points, via St Augustine, to the possibility of a theologically informed hermeneutics of hospitality, and the essay goes on to limn the contours, in theory and practice, of such a hermeneutic.

Redeeming Time: T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets. By Kenneth Paul Kramer.

Whistler, D. — 2008-05-22

Eating Beauty. The Eucharist and the Spiritual Arts of the Middle Ages. By Ann W. Astell.

Pfeiffer, K. — 2008-05-22

Christ and Horrors: The Coherence of Christology. By Marilyn McCord Adams.

Knight, M. — 2008-05-22

God is Not a Story: Realism Revisited. By Francesca Aran Murphy.

Jasper, D. — 2008-05-22

Envisager Dieu avec Edmond Jabes, By Nathalie Debrauwere-Miller.

Davison, C. — 2008-05-22

Murder, Manners, Mystery. Reflections on Faith in Contemporary Detective Fiction. By Peter C. Erb.

Murdoch, B. — 2008-05-22

Chesterton and Tolkien as Theologians. The Fantasy of the Real. By Alison Milbank.

Murdoch, B. — 2008-05-22

Notices and Reports

2008-05-22