Interpretations of beginning narration and doctrine /
Readings of the story of creation in the book of genesis ordinarily focus upon referentiality; they paraphrase and explicate what the text tells us about how the world came into being. Even literary approaches, which attend to the way that the formal properties of the text engender meaning, still se...
Elmentve itt :
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| Dokumentumtípus: | Könyv része |
| Megjelent: |
1992
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| Sorozat: | Acta Universitatis Szegediensis de Attila József nominatae : papers in english and american studies
4 Papers in English and American studies : Tomus IV. - Literary theory and biblical hermeneutics : proceedings of the International Conference: "Reading Scripture - Literary Criticism and Biblical Hermeneutics", Pannonhalma, 4-6 July, 1991 4 |
| Kulcsszavak: | Hermeneutika - bibliai, Bibliamagyarázat |
| Tárgyszavak: | |
| Online Access: | http://acta.bibl.u-szeged.hu/68661 |
| Tartalmi kivonat: | Readings of the story of creation in the book of genesis ordinarily focus upon referentiality; they paraphrase and explicate what the text tells us about how the world came into being. Even literary approaches, which attend to the way that the formal properties of the text engender meaning, still seek the world behind the words. We might, however, ask an additional question: can we learn anything from the language of the story of creation about the creation of language itself? We note, first of all, that language of Genesis does not only describe the creative act, but actually the tool of creation. Interspersed within the narrating voice, are the direct quotations of the divine speech which brought things into being. In terms of modern Speech Act Theory, those quotations would be classed as supernatural . declaratives. When G — d says: „Let there be light", there is as yet no world to which these words can refer; only at their utterance does light come into existence. Unlike other sorts of speech acts which seek, without ever fully succeding, to make the word fit the world (assertives), or the world fit the word (directives and commissives), declaratives actually close the gap between language and a state of affairs in the world. They can do this because they function within a closed system of extra-linguistic constitutive rules which endow them with this definitive power. For instance, the court is indeed open once the properly appointed official pronounces the words designated by the judiciary institution. The reason this works is that a social or ritual definition hs become accepted as itself a reality. According to Searle, extra-linguistic support of this sort can be dispensed with only in meta-linguistic and supernatural declaratives. Meta-linguistic declaratives are not dependent upon extra-linguistic constitutive rules because they function only within the linguistic system; they bring about a change in the language, not in the world. We may agree to use language in a certain way for purely formal reasons which make no appeal to reality. Supernatural declarations, in the other hand, bear a direct relationship to reality; they make it! From Searle's examples we learn that the supernatural declarations that he has in mind are those world-creating pronouncements which open the Book of Genesis. Their language does not refer to a pre-existing state of affairs, but brings some state of affairs into existence. In this sense, supernatural declarations are also definitive; they put in place a world to which language can refer. It would thus appear to be inevitable that the supernatural declarations of Genesis create a world which fully conforms to G — d's world-making word; no source of distance between word and world is apparent. When G — d says: „Let there be light", the coming into existence of light coincides with the utterance. Man, too, seems to have been created by the same sort of declaration, but a close examination of its language reveals several differential features. Until the sixth day of creation all of the divine declarations follow a similar grammatical pattern: the creatures are fully defined by their stated function. The creation of man, however, is accomplished through a declaration which foregrounds, both grammatically and semantically, the play of dimilarities and differences characteristics of human language. While the Speech Act: „Let us make man in our image after our likeness", which brings the creature into existence declaratively, as in all the other cases, it also introduces new grammatical distinctions. The first person speaking subject entails the categories of second and third person upon which subject/object relations are posited, and the syntax and semantics of the phrase „in our image, after our likeness" suggests comparison, that is similarity and relatedness rather than identity. The language, then, which creates man simultaneously makes evident the way that man, the only creature who shares language with G — d, will function. It is perhaps significant that the Book of Genesis is silent about the creation of speech. We suggest, that the way language functions in the creation story, enacts the evolution of human language itself. Furthermore, there is a rationale for enacting rather than explicating the human linguistic faculty. An analysis of Adam's naming of the animals in the Garden of Eden exemplifies the conditions of man's freedom in respect to G — d and the world. Any attempt to speak definitively about these aspects of human speech would be a pretense that words can be adequate to reality, it is only language's acting out of its function, rather than an assertion of its essence which can provide a figure for that which differentiates man both from the other creatures and from his creator. The Jewish hermeneutic tradition has always given high priority to language, has indeed imagined it as prior to all other aspects of reality. In this paper, we shall show how midrashic readings of the first chapters of the Book of Genesis reflect upon the role of man through the figure of a speaking creature, and through the figures of speech of the primary text. |
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| Terjedelem/Fizikai jellemzők: | 171-185 |
| ISSN: | 0230-2780 |