‘A Table In The Wilderness?’ The Rhetorical Function Of Food Language In Psalm 78 -- By: Michelle A. Stinson
Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 69:2 (NA 2018)
Article: ‘A Table In The Wilderness?’ The Rhetorical Function Of Food Language In Psalm 78
Author: Michelle A. Stinson
TynBull 69:2 (2018) p. 313
‘A Table In The Wilderness?’
The Rhetorical Function Of Food Language
In Psalm 781
Across time and cultures, the daily need to eat and drink has ordered and consumed human life. It is not surprising that this preoccupation with food is also reflected in the biblical text. While scholars have shown a far-reaching and protracted interest in food and meals in the New Testament, little attention has been directed to this topic in the Hebrew Bible (HB). Food texts in the Psalter remain largely untouched.
Psalm 78’s historical recital provides an excellent text for exploring the rhetorical function of food language through its combination of depictions of food events (i.e., the wilderness food account and Egyptian plagues) and the use of descriptive language drawn from the arenas of food production, distribution, and consumption. This thesis argues that the psalmist’s use of food language in the recital of Israel’s past is a rhetorically driven means to instil confident trust in the possibility of YHWH’s renewed intervention in the present. Food language provides a rhetorically powerful medium to facilitate this goal through its multidimensionality and literary flexibility.
In order to situate this rhetorical study of Psalm 78, Chapter Two surveys the historical trends in scholarship on Psalm 78 over the past 150 years. While literary and rhetorical features in the psalm have been noted by early commentators and explored in some recent studies, no substantial work has been done on the persuasive force of the language of the psalmist’s recital. One of the often-neglected sections of the psalm is the wilderness frame (vv. 13–53). This thesis provides a much-
TynBull 69:2 (2018) p. 314
needed examination of two key events depicted within this frame: the wilderness food events (vv. 15–31) and the Egyptian plagues (vv. 44–51).
Chapter Three explores the multi-dimensionality of food language and considers its rhetorical potential. This chapter introduces five central dimensions of food—its physical, sensory, social, locational, and patterned dimensions—and then illustrates these dimensions with examples from historical narratives and individual psalms. The chapter closes with a discussion of the rhetorical potential of food language, asking the question ‘Why might t...
Click here to subscribe